{"id":117405,"date":"2026-09-30T08:34:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117405"},"modified":"2026-09-30T08:34:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:34:25","slug":"may-you-live-in-interesting-times-chinese-curse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/quotes\/may-you-live-in-interesting-times-chinese-curse\/","title":{"rendered":"“May You Live in Interesting Times”: Is It Really a Chinese Curse?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>10 Minute, 19 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

Is “May you live in interesting times” really an ancient Chinese curse? As far as anyone can find, no.<\/strong> Researchers have looked hard, and no Chinese saying like it has ever turned up. The oldest trace found so far is in English. It is a British newspaper report from March 1936. In it, the statesman Sir Austen Chamberlain says a diplomat friend told him about “a Chinese curse.” So the trail does not lead back to old China. It leads to British diplomats in the 1930s, and then it stops.<\/p>\n\n

Almost everyone has heard this one called a Chinese curse. It gets said in speeches, in news reports, and at kitchen tables in a frightening year. It is easy to see why it stuck. It sounds old, and it sounds wise. But the true story is stranger, and in the end it is kinder.<\/p>\n\n

Where “May You Live in Interesting Times” Really Comes From<\/h2>\n\n

The best digging on this has been done by the Quote Investigator website. It draws on finds by researchers such as Fred R. Shapiro, who edited The Yale Book of Quotations<\/em>. Shapiro’s verdict is plain: “No authentic Chinese saying to this effect has ever been found.”<\/p>\n\n

The oldest printing found so far is in the Yorkshire Post<\/em>, an English newspaper, on 21 March 1936. Sir Austen Chamberlain was speaking to a political meeting in Birmingham. Germany had just broken the Treaty of Locarno, and Europe was afraid. The paper reports him saying:<\/p>\n\n

“It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Look at what he is doing. He is not quoting a Chinese book. He is passing on what a friend told him. And we do not know the friend’s name.<\/p>\n\n

The story shows up again soon after. In 1939, an American lawyer named Frederic R. Coudert told two audiences that Chamberlain had written to him about the curse a few years before. In one telling the words are “May you live in interesting times.” In the other they are “May you live in an interesting age.” Even this early, the wording would not sit still.<\/p>\n\n

Then, in 1949, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, who had been Britain’s ambassador to China, put it in his memoir, Diplomat in Peace and War<\/em>. He wrote that “before I left England for China in 1936 a friend told me that there exists a Chinese curse.” Then he added two small words: “If so.” Even he was not sure.<\/p>\n\n

That is the whole early trail. Three British and American voices, all around 1936, all saying “a friend told me.” Not one of them names a Chinese book, a Chinese writer, or the Chinese words.<\/p>\n\n

The Speech That Sent It Around the World<\/h2>\n\n

The saying stayed fairly quiet for thirty years. Then, on 6 June 1966, the American senator Robert F. Kennedy spoke to students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He said:<\/p>\n\n

“There is a Chinese curse which says ‘May he live in interesting times.’ Like it or not, we live in interesting times.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

That speech was heard and reprinted around the world. After it, the “Chinese curse” was everywhere. Kennedy was not being careless. He was repeating what careful people had been repeating for thirty years. That is how nearly all of us learned it.<\/p>\n\n

A Surprising Clue From 1898<\/h2>\n\n

Here is a detail most people have never heard. Austen Chamberlain’s father was Joseph Chamberlain, a famous British politician. In 1898, thirty-eight years before his son’s speech, Joseph told an audience:<\/p>\n\n

“I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

No curse. No China. Just a man saying that the times were interesting, and a little frightening. Some researchers wonder if the family phrase and a half-remembered story from a diplomat got mixed together over the years. That is only a guess, and nobody can prove it. But it is a striking thing to find in the same family.<\/p>\n\n

If a year of “interesting times” has left your own mind racing at night, there is a free guide that may help. It explains, simply, why the mind will not slow down, and what to do about it.<\/p>\n\n