危机会: Crisis ≠ Opportunity

Has someone ever told you, "Y'know, the Chinese word for crisis contains the word for opportunity"?

Yeah well, as a card-carrying Chinese person I'm (belatedly) going to show you why that's BS.

The words in question are:

危机 (wéijī) - Crisis, and ...
机会 (jīhuì) - Opportunity.

Oh look! They share 机 (jī)!

We'll get back to that.

Let's break down the characters:

危 (wéi) - indeed connotes danger.
机 (jī) - is used in many words. The relevant connotation is 'occasion', or 'point in time'.
会 (huì) - is also used in many words, and often connotes 'meeting' or an 'assembling', hence its use in accounting.

Put together, 危机 means a 'dangerous occasion' - crisis!

机会 means 'a time for things to come together'. Kind of vague, and not as optimistic as 'opportunity' suggests.

It's more accurate to say that the Chinese term for crisis shares an ideogram with the Chinese term for opportunity.

Just as every 'weekday' bears the seed of a 'birthday'. (Why aren't you nodding at my wisdom?!1!)

机 Whiz

机 also connotes 'device', as in airplane (飞机) or mobile/handphone (手机). So you have to wonder here about instrumentality.

In my experience, the crisis-opportunity cliché is used by people desperately polishing turd-y situations they have involved me in.

In that context, the real danger is continuing to believe that crises are intrinsically fortunate.

To those who insist on looking for silver linings around clouds, I would offer this compromise:

Crisis can only turn into opportunity if the danger is removed and resources assembled.

Resources

Comments

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