Bu xiang is Shanghainese, a Wu dialect: it means to say nothing, to let a remark go unanswered. In standard Mandarin 不响 would only mean that something makes no noise; in Shanghai it is how people describe a silence that is itself an answer, whether of refusal, embarrassment or tact. Jin Yucheng's novel Blossoms, written in Shanghainese-inflected prose, uses it more than a thousand times, and its characters keep their feelings in those silences. Blossoms Shanghai, the series adapted from the novel, carries the same habit of leaving things unsaid.
