Brickspert

砖家 (zhuānjiā): brickspert

A "brickspert" explains that high housing prices are “completely normal.” The fox screams back, “What else can we do besides complain and throw bricks?”

The first character in “expert” (专家 zhuānjiā) is replaced with the character for “brick.” The Chinese public is increasingly suspicious of so-called experts, who are often beholden to government or corporate interests. Bricksperts downplay health and safety risks and justify difficult economic conditions. Take, for example, this response to the August 6, 2013 People’s Daily article “Experts Say Half of People Want to Delay Retirement, [National] Pension Increases 30 Billion [Yuan] Annually” (专家称近一半人想延迟退休 养老金年增收300亿):

zening: The bricksperts are wrong. It’s that no Chinese person wants to retire—they want to offer their entire lives to the Party as tribute!

砖家说的不对，应该是全体中国人都不想退休～～为党奉献终生！！

Bricksperts are especially famous for their opinions on the real estate market:

黄日涵-白鹤: Those bricksperts who claim that low housing prices don't meet urban standards, aren't they lap dogs for developers? What about lap dogs for economists and scholars of international relations?

那些说房价低不符合城市水准的砖家是不是地产商的宠物，有宠物经济学家，有没有宠物国际关系学者呢？