From our desk of You Don’t Say, there’s a common belief that an old Chinese curse states, “May you live in interesting times.” But the best source researchers have found for this adage is a second-hand anecdote from a British ambassador.

The Quote Investigator says the saying has close ties to the family of Sir Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937), who shared the saying at a meeting of Birmingham Unionist Association in 1936. It’s a statement he may have heard his father, Joseph Chamberlain, say on occasion, not as a Chinese curse, but as his own observation.

In 1898, Joseph was reported as saying this before an audience: “I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. (Hear, hear.) I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety. (Hear, hear.)”

It’s not spelled out in the research, but you could easily imagine how a statement like this could be slightly misremembered, if not simply misunderstood in context we do not have.

[See yesterday’s post on the supposed Chinese word for crisis]