Expert: Terry Thatcher Waltz - 6/3/2006

Question
Dear Sir

I was reading about the Seven Warring States and came across the sentence:

A popular Chinese proverb referring to a chaotic situation is "Seven states in turmoil". What is the chinese proverb of this?

Thank you

Answer
It's hard to be certain, but it sounds like the expression might be "qi1 guo2 zhi1 luan4". You can see the Chinese characters for this, and get the basic story, at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_rebellions (catchy URL title, what? :-)  )
I'm not aware it's used as a proverb, though; it's not in my dictionaries (which doesn't mean it ISN'T,but...) and a quick Google didn't seem to turn it up as a proverb.

There are lots of expressions using the number "seven" that refer to chaos, though: luan qi ba zao (all messed up), qi dian ba dao (in great confusion, topsy-turvy), qi ling ba luo (in chaos), and so on.