中国网站品牌栏目（频道）
My comments:
“Fact of life” is a great idiom. Fact refers to some irrefutable truth, as against falsehood. In other words, facts are real.
“Fact of life” literally means everything real that we find in life. Obviously not everything we find and face in life is pleasant, and that is the point here. “A fact of life” refers to something unpleasant, undesirable, negative – and yet it is something prevalent, unavoidable.
Bribery and corruption is one such fact of life – it’s ugly and yet it’s always present. Its presence, like the elephant in the room, is keenly felt.
In other words, there’s no getting around it.
You know what I mean: there’s no getting around acknowledging the fact that bribery and corruption exist. There is a way of getting around having to do it yourself.
There is a way, as they say, if there is a will.
Related stories:
Making knee-jerk changes is not in our DNA
Go to Zhang Xin's column本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。
About the author:
Zhang Xin（张欣） 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.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
A fact of life
