{"id":14068,"date":"2020-08-17T07:33:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T11:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14068"},"modified":"2020-08-17T07:33:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T11:33:00","slug":"the-chinese-word-for-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14068","title":{"rendered":"The Chinese Word for Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From our You Have Heard It Said But I Tell You desk, the Chinese word for crisis, w\u0113ij\u012b \u5371\u673a, is not a pictogram of danger plus opportunity.<\/em> You can see this definition in action in this 2009 book, Crossing the Soul’s River<\/em><\/a>, in which the author says he was given this explanation first-hand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, very few Chinese letters represent little pictures of their ideas. More importantly, j\u012b alone is not opportunity<\/em>; it’s only part of several words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A whole industry of pundits and therapists has grown up around this one grossly inaccurate statement. A casual search of the Web turns up more than a million references to this spurious proverb. It appears, often complete with Chinese characters, on the covers of books, on advertisements for seminars, on expensive courses for \u201cthinking outside of the box,\u201d and practically everywhere one turns in the world of quick-buck business, pop psychology, and orientalist hocus-pocus. This catchy expression (Crisis = Danger + Opportunity) <\/strong>has rapidly become nearly as ubiquitous as The Tao of Pooh and Sun Zi’s Art of War for the Board \/ Bed \/ Bath \/ Whichever Room.<\/p>

…<\/p>

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to offer another example from English that is closer to our Chinese word\u00a0w\u0113ij\u012b\u00a0(\u201ccrisis\u201d). Let\u2019s take the \u2013ity component of \u201copportunity,\u201d \u201ccalamity\u201d (\u201ccalamity\u201d has a complicated etymology; see the Oxford English Dictionary, Barnhart, etc.), \u201cfelicity,\u201d \u201ccordiality,\u201d \u201chostility,\u201d and so forth. This \u2013ity is a suffix that is used to form abstract nouns expressing state, quality, or condition. The words that it helps to form have a vast range of meanings, some of which are completely contradictory. Similarly the \u2013j\u012b of\u00a0w\u0113ij\u012b\u00a0by itself does not mean the same thing as\u00a0w\u0113ij\u012b\u00a0(\u201ccrisis\u201d), j\u012bhu\u00ec (\u201copportunity\u201d), and so forth. The signification of j\u012b changes according to the environment in which it occurs.<\/p>“Danger + Opportunity \u2260 Crisis<\/a>“, Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Pennsylvania<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From our You Have Heard It Said But I Tell You desk, the Chinese word for crisis, w\u0113ij\u012b \u5371\u673a, is not a pictogram of danger plus opportunity. You can see this definition in action in this 2009 book, Crossing the Soul’s River, in which the author says he was given this explanation first-hand. In fact, … Continue reading The Chinese Word for Crisis<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[491,1604,2288],"class_list":["post-14068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chinese","tag-language","tag-quotations"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}