Re:Letter from Shenzhen
by cromwellian on Monday July 16, 2018 @03:38AM
(#17539443)
I think of it as a guy building a shelf. He hangs the shelf, puts a level on it, and it's clearly not level, but only off by say, 2 degrees. Job done. Pay me. I won't mention to the person who hired me that it's off-spec.
To be fair, this happens all the time in the US, that's why we have building codes, building inspectors, etc.
差不多 literally means "not much difference". It's usually used by Chinese workers to dismiss shortfalls in quality/quantity that are, in their view, inconsequential. I'm also not sure it's prevalent enough to be a "culture", though I remember reading several-year-old blog posts about it.