Passive era

被时代 (bèi shídài): passive era

Will you be “made relatively well-off,” or will you be “suicided”?

A time when euphemistic labels are given to actions that belie the underlying compulsion behind those actions—that is, the present.

In Chinese, the grammatical construction 被X (bèi-X) means “to be X-ed,” and implies that that the X-ed party is unwilling or will suffer from the effects of X. For example, someone invited to drink tea (i.e. called in by the police for interrogation) could say she “was tea-drinked” (被喝茶 bèi hé chá). This has given rise to the “passive era.”

See also be X-ed.