If you had Chinese literacy education (which is mandatory) through high school in mainland China, you would not have much problem in understanding those literary expressions.Chinese literary speech is something else. It makes use of a far larger variety of characters compared to everyday speech, which while not at all a bad thing does present a noticeable barrier to understanding for less fluent people. I'm fluent enough in everyday speech that I can engage in regular conversation but I am completely clueless the moment someone engages in literary speech or writing.
If those people in Taiwan are really more Chinese than mainlanders as they claimed to be, they should not have problems in understanding the literary expressions.
Anyone else are not really the audience anyway. I mean this People's daily article isn't aiming at foreigners.
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