Foshan flip-flop on housing purchases

An urgent notice was published at midnight on Tuesday by the Bureau of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of Foshan, scrapping an online circular issued only 12 hours earlier.

My comments:

If you flip a coin, you turn it over and over by using a light, quick hit with you thumb to toss it up into the air.

Flop, on the other hand, refers to the sound something makes when it falls to the floor.

Flip-flop then gives a picture of something rapidly changing position, going up and down, up and down. Hence, figuratively speaking, a flip-flop in opinion means you’re suddenly changing your mind.

Foshan flip-flop on housing purchases? That means the local governing body overseeing housing development went back on its word, publishing an “urgent notice” to replace a different circular issued just 12 hours earlier.

If you’re in the Foshan area, read that “urgent notice” now, just in case they change their mind again.

Or don’t bother reading anything – for the same reason.

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.