Calling all Mandarin experts

Howdy,

I have a question. You know how you sometimes hear an anecdote about the Chinese word for ‘crisis’ and how “part of the word/character” has the meaning of opportunity, and how, by extension, the Chinese see opportunity in even the most dire of situations… Well, is that true, or it just a myth? How do you say ‘crisis’? According to my intermediate textbook, it’s fengbao or the same word as ‘storm.’ I only know one way to say opportunity, which is jihui. I don’t see any connection between these 2 words, but my understanding of Chinese is only, say, high intermediate. Does anyone know the answer?

Thanks.

Ed. :notworthy:

The reason it doesn’t make sense it because it’s bullshit.

Pinyin Info has a good article about the whole thing by Victor Mair.

You’rethey’re probably thinking of the word 危机 WEIJI for “crisis”, which you could argue is made up of the WEI from WEIxian (‘dangerous’) and the JI from JIHui (‘opportunity’).

But then again, you could just as well argue that this is the JI for ‘machine’…or its archiac meaning of ‘loom’. It gets kind of, um, delicate, if you want to argue that individual characters have meaning, as opposed to their combinations. They do, but then again they don’t. Hard to say.

Thanks to Taffy and Ironlady,

I suspected that it wasn’t true. Most of what Western people think about Asia isn’t.

Thanks again,

Ed

My understanding of it is that ji here means “moment.” Weiji (crisis) is a dangerous moment, and jihui (opportunity) is a moment of opportunity. Jihui can also mean chance, possibility or probability (jihui bu da = there’s not much chance.)

Loom?? Hmm…A crisis is looming…??? :ponder:

One meaning of “hui” is “meet”. As I understand it, “ji” means more than just “moment”, but “critical moment” or “turning point”. So “jihui” could mean something like a convergence of critical events; in other words, an opportunity.

Tab means a protruding piece of paper on a folder’s edge, and let means to allow, but tablet doesn’t mean tolerating those protruding edges on your folders.

Semantics are, at some point, arbitrary. If a story helps you remember the word, fine. There may be some legitimate basis for it, there may not be. But the point is for you to be able to use the language, unless you’re writing a book or something. :wink: