Trope: Chinese word for crisis is composed of elements danger and opportunity (maybe 1937)

[Garson O'Toole]

Ben was able to find a great 1938 cite when he searched for this trope
a few years ago, and1938 still appears to be the earliest date.

Here is a link into Google Books that shows a snippet of a work that
is probably properly dated 1937.

http://books.google.com/books?id=nUrPAAAAMAAJ&q=meaningful#search_anchor

(Snippet text)

The inscribing was generously done by Pastor Y. C. Ching of the First
Baptist Church of Shanghai. Doubly meaningful are these characters:
one is the Chinese way of describing danger; the other pictures
opportunity. Synonyms of the English word crisis have been discovered
likewise to be danger, opportunity—a discovery which makes ...

The cover displayed by Google Books says the volume is the "Report of
the Forty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Woman's Missionary Union,
Auxiliary to Southern Baptist Convention". The Duke catalog says the
37th meeting was held in 1925 and the 38th was held in 1926.
Extrapolating suggests the 49th was held in 1937 which is consistent
with the date assigned by Google Books.

HathiTrust has the work and also gives it a date of 1937. It is
"Limited (search only)".

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89096037247

Checking this on paper is a hassle since it is not available in many
libraries – none near me. The date could be inaccurate if several
convention reports are combined in one volume, or for other reasons.

Garson

On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: well-traveled snowclone
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 9:00 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  An old business snowclone involves the alleged danger/opportunity or
>> risk/opportunity duality in a single character. Another version that
>> made it into Tom Wolfe's novels is that the Chinese word for "crisis" is
>> composed of two symbols--for danger and for opportunity.
>>
>> Language Log had covered this before:
>>
>> http://bit.ly/c9HFXl
>>
>> with a nod to a more direct debunking
>>
>> http://bit.ly/cWaoWs
>>
>> This morning, on Colorado Public Radio, Tom Tancredo invented yet
>> another version:
>>
>> "Chinese symbol for opportunity and problem is the same symbol."
>
> For historical background on the spread of the trope, both in its
> "crisis = danger + opportunity" and "crisis = opportunity" variants,
> see my Language Log post:
>
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004343.html
>
> Related posts listed here:
>
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1212
>
> --bgz
>
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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