Is it true that the Chinese have a proverb “God give you God to live in an era of change”?

During discussions about stability in society, you can often hear a Chinese proverb about the difficulties of life in a changing world as an argument. We checked whether such an oriental saying exists.

The expression “God forbid you to live in an era of change” (there is also a wording “do not bring the Lord to live in an era of change”) have been used for several decades in discussions about the pluses and minuses of stability. Almost always this idiom is identified as a Chinese proverb or Chinese proverb, and not only in Internet discusionsbut also in media publications - for example, in a historical journal "Amateur". Egor Gaidar in the book "For a long time" calls This phrase “Chinese wisdom”, and the author of the article in Vedomosti and attributes Confucius saying.

The earliest use of this “Chinese proverb” that we managed to find are dated to 1998. One of them is found in article “Civilization choice and scenarios of world development” Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vyacheslav Stepin in the formulation “God do not bring you to live in an era of change”. The option that has been established now "God forbid you to live in the era of change" mentioned Nikolai Chapaev in the training manual “Introduction to the course“ Philosophy and the History of Education ””, which from afar in Yekaterinburg. In both cases, the authors do not give a source where the expression would be called a Chinese proverb. At the same time in the largest Chinese encyclopedia Baidu This expression could not be found. It is extremely suspicious that there is no such phrase in "Sino-Russian phraseological dictionary"containing about 3,500 winged Chinese expressions. It is also unlikely that the author of the saying was Confucius - in the works of a specialist in his heritage, Kitian Ivan Semenenko, it Not mentionedAlthough a lot of reflection has been given the meaning of the “changes” in the philosophy of the Eastern sage.

An expression that is very similar to "God forbid you to live in an era of change", There is In English. It sounds like “May You Live in Interesting Times” and is literally translated “so that you live in an interesting time”. For a long time it was believed that this sarcastic idiom was borrowed from the Chinese. In the English -language world, the expression became especially popular after the brother of US President Robert Kennedy mentioned him in his speech. During a performance in Cape Town in 1966, he said: "There is a Chinese curse that says:" So that you live in an interesting time! " Like it or not, we live in an interesting time. ”

The origin of the proverb in English was investigated much better than in Russian. Translator and teacher of the Vasseric College in the USA Brian van Norden in his book “Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy” claimsthat the existence of such an idiom in Chinese is a myth. With him agree and teacher of Yale University, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations Fred Shapiro collection. Chinese surveyed by researchers on forums also Dressed From this “curse”, and Nancy McFy in the “Book of Insults” published in 1978 at all I attributed The authorship of idioms are not the Chinese, but to the Scots.

For the first time in connection with the Chinese, the expression “May Youl in Interesting Times” was used in 1936. The Yorkshire Post British newspaper quoted The performance of Sir Austin Chamberlain, who said: “Not so long ago in London, a diplomat who worked for several years in China told me that there is a Chinese curse that sounds like" you live in interesting times. " There is no doubt that a curse collapsed on us. ” By the way, about "interesting times" in their speeches more than once He said Ostin Chamberlain's father, prominent statesman Joseph Chamberlain. True, he did not connect this expression with the Chinese.

It is not known for certain who was the diplomat who spoke about the “Chinese curse” by Austin Chamberlain. Hugh Natchbull-Hugess, who in 1936-1937 served as a British ambassador in China, in his memoirs Remembering: “Before you go from England to China, one friend told me about the Chinese curse" so that you live in an interesting time. " If everything is so, then our generation, of course, became a witness to how this curse came true. ” American congressman Frederick Kudert told: In that very 1936, he corresponded with Ostin Chamberlain, and at the meeting he commented on his remark that “we live in an interesting time” a story about a diplomat, which was written about in the same year in The Yorkshire Post.

Be that as it may, the phrase that appeared in the UK in the mid-1930s confidently gained popularity as a “Chinese curse”. Quite quickly, writers began to fall on the hook. For example, in 1951, French poet Pierre Emmanuel in his article for The Atlantic Monthly wrote: "The old Chinese curse sounds like" so that your children live in a historical era! "" A few years later, Albert Camus, at a speech at the University of Upsalus, mentioned the "eastern sage, who asked God in his prayers to be so kind to rid him of life in an interesting era." In 1965, the “curse” mentions Arthur Clark in his essay: “As the old Chinese curse reads:“ So that you live in an interesting time, ”and the 20th century, probably the most interesting period that humanity has ever known.” However, writers and poets did not end-in addition to the already mentioned Robert Kennedy, the former secretary and ex-first Lady of the United States Hillary Clinton used the phrase. In the 2003 autobiography, she writes: “There is an old Chinese curse“ To live in an interesting time ”, which in our family has become a popular joke.”

We repeat that to this moment there is no evidence that in China there is (or at least common) the proverb “God God forbid in the era of change”. At the same time, analogues close in meaning are really used in Chinese. For example, no later than the middle of the 17th century, the expression appeared "it is better to be a dog in the era of calm than a person in the era of chaos." On the forum about Chinese, resident of Shanghai reportedthat another similar expression "changing the world creates heroes is popular." But these idioms in the Russian -speaking environment did not receive distribution. Apparently, the phrase “God forbid you to live in an era of change” still came through English-speaking journalism and fiction, and the wording “took with you” supposedly Chinese origin.

We thank the senior teacher of the Department of Oriental Studies and Africanism to the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg Ekaterina Starikova For help in preparing the material.

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/12/18/
2. Sino-Russian phraseological dictionary
3. I. Semenenko. Confucius aphorisms
4. https://web.archive.org/web/2004040404010918/http://hawk.fab2.albany.edu/sidebar/sidebar.htm