I protest.

"May you live in interesting times."

I heard the "ancient chinese curse," "may you live in interesting times" many years ago. I have used it ever since, never really thinking anything of it. Until recently, that is.

On July 8, 2001 I married my wife, Yan, who is from HangZhou, China. It took a while, but eventually I got around to asking her about the phrase.

She had never heard of it.

Well, honestly, that wasn't all that surprising, considering how many "chinese" things have been invented in the United States. (Fortune cookies are the famous example, invented in San Francisco.) It looks like this is another of those.

Tonight I noticed the quotation on the Interesting Times blog and thought I would see if I could track down the real source of the phrase. Fortunately, someone has been there before me. My first hit was this site: Origin of Phrase: May You Live In Interesting Times. Nice, but not the definitive answer. It, though, has a link to Stephen DeLong's "Get a(n interesting) Life!" page.

So it looks like this is one of those questions destined to remain unanswered, at least for now. It definitely ain't Chinese, though, that's for sure.