Oops. It turns out that the Chinese word for “crisis” is NOT composed of elements that signify “danger” and “opportunity.” That’s embarrassing. An industry of pundits and therapists has grown up around this “grossly inaccurate formulation,” says Professor Victor H. Mair. But it’s his voice against a million inaccurate web references. In an essay titled “How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray,” Victor H. Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, sets the record straight. The phrase has become ubiquitous in the world of “quick-buck business, pop psychology, and orientalist hocus-pocus, says Professor Mair. In his detailed explanation of how the Chinese character for crisis (wēijī) is created, he translates it to mean “a genuine crisis, a dangerous moment, a time when things start to go awry.
“Wēijī is not a juncture when one goes looking for advantages and benefits,” he warns. “In a crisis, one wants above all to save one’s skin and neck!” And “for those who persist in disseminating the potentially perilous, fundamentally fallacious theory that “crisis” = “danger” + “opportunity,”’ says Professor Mair, “please don’t blame it on Chinese!”
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