Expert: Terry Thatcher Waltz - 9/12/2007

Question
My father once mentioned to me how his own father, a renowned Chinese-history expert(my grandfather once wrote book on the Chinese in Malaysia and one on the Boxer Rebellion) stated once that a particular  Chinese character/pictogram   meant either "woman" or "female", and that 2 of these pictograms/characters put together  meant "evil", and 3 of these same female/woman pictogram/characters together had the slightly different meaning "disaster/catastrophe" etc. Since I don't know a word of Chinese, I have no way of confirming the veracity of this. My father was a bit sexist, so it could well be an urban-myth of sorts, but he claimed that this was a reflection of the Chinese view of women.(I should add that my grandfather could speak, read and write the  Cantonese and Mandarin dialects fluently, at the very least, and might have known others, so it might be from a specific dialect or something.

Thanks,
Geoff

Answer
Hi,

Three woman radicals together is jian1, which as an individual character carries the meaning of 'adultery' (but really, "many women" would seem to be more a slam at the man than the woman here!)

Any such characters as you describe (other than the above) are not in common use in modern Mandarin. If you want, you could consult a really big Chinese-Chinese dictionary such as might be found in 15 or 20 volumes in a library -- I don't have access to one right here -- and find the obscure characters that might fit this story.