In the autumn of 1934, Hu Shi praised the merits of the vernacular Chinese during his lecture at Peking University. A classmate protested: “Mr. Hu, I think the vernacular is not good, and the language is not refined. If you use the telegram, you use more words and spend more money.”
Hu Shi explained softly, “Not necessarily! A friend of the Executive Yuan called me a few days ago and invited me to be the secretary of the Executive Yuan. I was unwilling to enter politics and decided not to go. Repudiation is rejected. Revoicing is written in vernacular, and it seems that it is also very word-saving. Please follow the wishes of my students to write a repetition in classical Chinese to see if it is the vernacular or the classical Chinese.”
After 15 minutes, Hu Shi asked the students to raise their hands automatically, report the number of words used, and then select a Chinese text message with the least amount of words.
Hu Shi said that this telegram was indeed concise and used only 12 words, but my vernacular telegram used only 5 words: “Can’t do it, thank you.”