An elephant in the chat room

Today's English lesson is about an expression that many Chinese may never have heard, but certainly would understand all too well: "There's an elephant in the room."

This doesn't refer to a literal truth, of course. It's a discreet way of mentioning something that everybody knows but nobody wants to mention, a fact so big it's unavoidable and so potentially dangerous it's hard to face. For example, consider the newly announced policy of protecting the public in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou from "illegal" or "unhealthy" text messages.

According to news reports, nine departments of the government made 13 criteria for deciding whether to punish someone for the content of a text message.