Saturday, September 25, 2010

what does "May you live in interesting times" really means in Chinese?

Whatever what's its original meaning, and whatever if its original meaning is a curse, people now see it's as a ancient Chinese curse, you say "may you live in INTERESTING times", you really mean "may you live in hell".

But what is the Chinese version of this curse, most of the answer we can find in google point to "It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period" (寧為太平犬,不做亂世人; pinyin: níng wéi tàipíng quǎn, bù zuò luànshì rén) (From WIKI).

From what I know about Chinese language, I think "吃不了兜着走" makes a better pair. In the sentence "may you live in interesting times", it first comes with a good thing happen to you (interesting times), and then it should became bad since this is a curse. So this curse is actually a bless and followed by a prediction of that bless thing turn out to be a bad thing.



The whole wish what good happens to you became bad is what this curse really means. And  the explanation in wiki does not consist of the bless part and the turning part, while "吃不了兜着走" literally means you have food to eat( since in ancient times, food is scarce resource to people), and you got food is the bless part, then the food became to many, and you have to make a pack to take the food with you, it's food, you can't drop it, and it's heavy, it became a burden for you, so food became burden is what "吃不了兜着走" means.

So I think the Chinese version of "May you live in interesting times" is "吃不了兜着走".

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