Chinese Lesson

In the current issue of Vanity Fair, Al Gore kicks off an essay on global warming by shining the spotlight on a classic linguistic blunder:

Clichés are, by definition, overused. But here is the rare exception–a certifiable cliché that warrants more exposure, because it carries meaning deeply relevant to the biggest challenge our civilization has ever confronted.

The Chinese expression for “crisis” consists of two characters [wÄ“ijÄ«]. The first is a symbol for “danger”; the second is a symbol for “opportunity”.

Gore is right. It does warrant more exposure. Because it’s completely wrong. Victor Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania blasts this nonsense out of the water here. Here’s the key takeaway:

The jÄ« of wÄ“ijÄ«, in fact, means something like “incipient moment; crucial point (when something begins or changes).” Thus, a wÄ“ijÄ« is indeed a genuine crisis, a dangerous moment, a time when things start to go awry. A wÄ“ijÄ« indicates a perilous situation when one should be especially wary. It is not a juncture when one goes looking for advantages and benefits.

In other words, in Chinese, “crisis” means “crisis”. Got it?

If we want to understand–and benefit–from life in the borderless world, we have got to stop pulling words and phrases out of the air from languages that we don’t speak and turning them into weighty concepts in our own language. If we can’t get simple stuff like this right, there is no way we’re going to understand international business practices, accounting, stock valuations and so forth.

Btw, just so my friends at Vanity Fair don’t get upset, I will overlook Gore’s goof in light of the issue’s special travel section, which includes excellent features on Beijing, Moscow, Kenya and Baja among other items of interest to global travellers.