Crisis Charaters

[Jeff Wilson]

I have been told that the Chinese symbols for crisis were made up of the symbols for danger (or risky) and opportunity. Is this true?

This concept of the word for crisis makes a great story, but I have my doubts. I think that either combining the symbols for danger and opportunity together is something of western origin, or that it is a relatively new symbol in the Chinese language.

Thanks.

[Dylan Sung]

http://www.chineselanguage.org/cgi-bin/ ... in,english

http://www.chineselanguage.org/cgi-bin/ ... in,english

Looks like it to me.

Then again "thing" in Chinese is dongxi which means east-west.

You really ought to learn Chinese instead of listening to other folks, and feeling somewhat unsatisfied in not knowing if they're telling you something right or not. Once you start learning Chinese, you'll find that there are plenty of words formed of many character phrases which do not look straightforward as in English.

Dyl.

[Hanren]

"thing" is dongxi (east-west) is because during the Tang dynasty, markets are located at both east and west gates of a city. When people go buy "things", they go buy dongix (east-west).

[Dylan Sung]

Also the characters for "contradiction" mao2dun4 means a spear and a shield, and there is a story behind it. There was once a seller of weapons hawking his wares saying he had a spear that could penetrate anything and everything. Moreover, he had a shield which was impenetrable. When someone asked him if his superior spear could penetrate his impenetrable shield, they pointed out his contradiction.

Dyl.

[Hanren]

Haha yeah that's one of my favorite stories