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with ideological expressions, and political flavour have infiltrated sports news and editorials in the People's Daily. In short, sports demonstrates to be a very powerful tool for studying human thoughts and behaviour.
Although this study is a rather small scale study on the concept of face, it makes a pioneer step to confirm the existence of a nation's face. Given this, the concern of a nation's face may cast some influence in the behaviour of the government and the leaders. If more could be found about a nation's face, particularly from a comparative perspective, it may elucidate many of the political processes and economic bargaining that are vital to everyday international affairs and thereby the study of such. Hence, the present project, being the first of its kind to examine the concept of a nation's face, could prove to be helpful in the understanding of political processes and economic bargaining exercised by a nation via the concept of face.
NOTES
A story was quoted from history books of the later Tang Dynasty in C: Yuan (1982: 3362) It is about a military commander who had face because of his power over the army while his face also rested upon the performance of the army under his control
For example, Jinpingmet, Dream of the Red Chamber; San Xia Wu Yi etc. A collection of the usages of the concept of face in these works could be found in Collier (1979) and Tien (1984)
$
For example, in Liu Dah-ren`s (1981: 743, 1257-1258) and William's (1974: 58-59) works, there are more than a dozen idioms using the concept of face
4
Unless otherwise stated and unless some Chinese words and names have well established English transcriptions, all others in this paper follow those provided in the Concise Chinese-English Dictionary Beijing Languages Institute, 1979
*
For example, Giles (1892), Liang Shih-chiu (1986), Lin Yutang (1972), Liu Dah-ren (1978), Wei Wen (1970), Wu Jingrong (1979), Yu Yunxia (1985) They contain explanations of the figurative meanings of face, such as 'reputation', 'show due respect for somebody's feeling', 'social standing, public image', etc.
6 It is about how an old official strives to maintain face, to live up to the expected material standards accorded to his position in the administration. It is about an old maid, who has become one as she tries hard but in vain to find a suitable match so that she won't lose face. All characters, except one or two, in the play strive to gain face by hook or by crook. Even though they acknowledge their unscrupulous behaviour, they deem it justified in the name of face (Lao, 1982: 259-260)