He's ridden the ups and downs of the business world for thirty years.
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culture
The figurative use is iconic - Mao Zedong's 1925 poem 《沁园春·长沙》 ends with the line 问苍茫大地，谁主沉浮？ ('I ask the vast and hazy earth: who masters its rise and fall?') - a line so famous it's drilled into every Chinese high schooler. The word now carries that grand, fate-of-empires register whenever it's used metaphorically.
