They want pressure on the Government to change its policies, and they want the leadership to eat bitterness.

I sor- row for you that this was so, that now you must eat bitterness and ashes.

Ma likes to say that he selects the kind of girls who "can eat bitterness," which means endure the hardship of his training regime.

For too many years he had eaten bitterness.

"My husband learned to eat bitterness," she said, using an expression heard among Chinese hardened by history.

The capacity to endure suffering without complaint is considered a defining trait of the Chinese character; in Mandarin, it's called "eating bitterness."

The writer's use of the words "eating bitterness" is rather misleading.

But when the two words are put together, they only mean hard-working; they have nothing to do with "eating bitterness," as the writer exclaims.

She added a familiar Chinese expression: "They are eating bitterness."

It was a time of eating bitterness, as the Chinese like to say.