{"id":14075,"date":"2020-08-18T17:46:38","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T21:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14075"},"modified":"2020-08-18T17:46:38","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T21:46:38","slug":"cursed-with-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14075","title":{"rendered":"Cursed with Interest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/a>.” But the best source researchers have found for this adage is a second-hand anecdote from a British ambassador.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1898, Joseph was reported as saying this before an audience: “I think that you will all agree that\u00a0we are living in most interesting times.<\/strong>\u00a0(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,\u00a0new objects for anxiety.<\/strong>\u00a0(Hear, hear.)”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[See yesterday’s post on the supposed Chinese word for crisis<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Cursed with Interest<\/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":[491,2288],"class_list":["post-14075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chinese","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\/14075","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=14075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}