jibe, tell sb off, run the gauntlet. Yoshida Kenko bristled in "Tsurezuregusa" (Essays in Idleness), "Aside from medicines, we can do perfectly well without goods from China."

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It appears that every period in history has its share of people who resent seeing their country inundated with foreign influences and products.
In the Kamakura Period (1192-1333), for instance, the monk Yoshida Kenko bristled in "Tsurezuregusa" (Essays in Idleness), "Aside from medicines, we can do perfectly well without goods from China."
He went on, "How stupid it is to load up ships with unnecessary items and risk sailing the treacherous waters from China." Were Kenko to live in present-day Japan and see households overflowing with Chinese consumer goods, he would probably flip.




Back to Kenko the monk. His diatribe was also directed at people who tended to appreciate only foreign imports. In telling them off, however, he quoted a classic Chinese maxim that warns against coveting exotic goods from faraway places.
His apparently unconscious self-contradiction offers a glimpse of the history that has always bound Japan and China together.


tell sb off phrasal verb [M]
to speak angrily at someone because they have done something wrong:

The teacher told me off for swearing.
 .

telling-off 
noun [C usually singular] plural tellings-off
He gave me a good telling-off for forgetting the meeting.

run the gauntlet, jibe

Impairing Europe, Gibe by Gibe

By STEVEN ERLANGER 40 minutes ago

The bitterness at the top of the union is undermining the alliance’s ability to cope with the economic crisis.

If you or your teenage daughter or sister has ever had to run the gauntlet of sneers for wearing the wrong outfit, jeers for saying the wrong thing, or jibes for having the wrong friends, you know how treacherous and unkind adolescence can be.

If Tibet was not part of China, why had the Chinese emperor been the one to give the Dalai Lama his title? How did the tenets of Buddhism jibe with the “slavery system” in Tibet before China’s modernization efforts? What about the Dalai Lama’s connection to Hitler?
中共解放西在藏之農奴制









jibe with sth phrasal verb (ALSO jive with sth) US INFORMAL

If one statement or opinion jibes with another, it is similar to it and matches it:

"Her account of the accident jibes with mine."




run the gauntlet

to have to deal with a lot of people who are criticizing or attacking you:

Every day they had to run the gauntlet of hostile journalists on their way to school.







jibe, US USUALLY gibe Show phonetics

noun [C]an insulting remark that is intended to make someone look stupid:

Unlike many other politicians, he refuses to indulge in cheap jibes at other people's expense.

jibe, US USUALLY gibe Show phonetics verb [I]

She jibed constantly at the way he ran his business.