Zui sun xin ruan describes someone whose words cut while their intentions are kind: the teasing, scolding and backhanded remarks are how they show they care. It is everyday northern colloquial speech rather than a dialect word, close to the better-known 刀子嘴豆腐心 (a knife's mouth, a tofu heart). Many people pin it on Northeasterners in particular, whose humour runs to the blunt. In an essay on Small Town Remedy, the screenwriter Meng Qiqi named it as the Northeastern habit the show's characters live by.
Dramas
Where it comes up
Small Town Remedy: How a Town Takes a Man Back
A boy sent south at eight comes home in his thirties to a Northeastern town he no longer knows. Small Town Remedy is less about whom its doctor cures than about how the town refuses to leave him alone, and about the actor who says he had never wanted a role this much.