This study shows that the temporal interpretation of Mandarin bare clauses is fully underspecified when these clauses describe scheduled, preprogrammed events. The paper defines the key syntactic properties of such bare clauses and their context of use. On the basis of this definition, the paper proposes that these clauses are copular constructions, which in all relevant respects behave like regular copular constructions. Bare clauses contain a subject and a predicate, related by the (sometimes covert) copula