"Give a man a fish" is a Commentary on Us

(image credit)

I have read Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching a few times over 35 years, and I have to review all 81 chapters again to see if this well known fish saying is actually in it.  I just don't remember seeing it in that venerable text.  But if it sounds remotely ancient Chinese in origin, then so it is, I suppose, a commentary on us:

The English version that Yeti posted is what I hear foreigners use all the time. The inherited Chinese version is now becoming common, too, but the wording is still all over the place — I have also seen the “授人鱼，供一餐之用；授人渔，则享用不尽” version. The citers basically all begin with “ancient people stated…”, “ancient people said…”, “there’s an old saying…” with some going so far as to use “foreigners say China has this ancient saying…” etc. This is one of the many unsettled issues in the world’s gold-jade beautiful words industry. Everybody propagates, everybody uses, full of creativity and wisdom. Even though everybody keeps saying this is “Chinese wisdom”, Chinese scholars are still pedantic. Is this really a case of “[cultural] exchange” or “piracy” and “counterfeit”? No one can determine. Where do words originate? Very likely only God knows :-)

“Confucius says, ‘May you live in interesting times!’”，“There’s a Chinese proverb, “Don’t take off your pants when having sex.” This type of dubious [“] Chinese [”] old sayings are as abundant as a cow’s hair, no way to verify them one by one. Some are altogether made up by foreigners who, in order to heighten effects, put their own witticism on Chinese philosophers’ heads. If the thing is composed rather cleverly, like this “fish/fishing” one, then it becomes widespread. When it spreads to China, prominent people have this translation, and it sounds authentic to boot. Such a high-quality maxim, who can refuse? This process of establishing a common expression as “a Chinese ancient saying” is actually quite logical.

However, China does have the expression “救急不救穷” [“to relieve emergency doesn’t relieve poverty”], now that’s indeed very Chinese. “Fish/fishing” looks like the complement of “救急不救穷”, with illustrative metaphors added. Translated to Chinese, it becomes all kinds of versions of a “Chinese ancient saying”.

Reference: Give a man a fish...

Because Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime speaks well to the Theory of Algorithms, I believe in its emphasis on self-sufficiency and hard work.  In other words, education may indeed be at the heart of solving any and all problems we may face.  But the saying itself is a curiosity, isn't it.  It is easy enough on the internet to find threads on a topic and follow them wherever they may lead.  A couple of sites did attribute it to an ancient Chinese proverb, as in the image above.  But apparently that is not true:

The expression actually originated in Britain in the mid 19th century.

Anne Isabella Ritchie, the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray... wrote a story titled Mrs. Dymond, sometime in the 1880s and it includes this line:

"He certainly doesn't practise his precepts, but I suppose the patron meant that if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour; if you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn."

The proverb dates from 1885 or shortly before and there's every reason to suppose that it was coined by Anne Ritchie.

The source of the mid-20th century and Chinese origin theories are various US magazines from the 1960s, for example, The Rotarian (June 1964):

... the Chinese axiom "Give a man a fish, and you have fed him once. Teach him how to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime."

Publications of that sort were what brought the proverb into general use but, as we have seen, weren't the actual source.

Reference: Give a man a fish...

Nevertheless, I marvel at how the internet, and social media in particular, enables our drawing of such a saying for inspiration, sharing it with countless others, and attributing it to whomever and whatever sounds good (or not even attributing it to anything at all).  It is impractical to verify this saying completely, but now that I have my eyes and ear open for additional clues on its origins, I am doubly delighted.  I smile at how some prominent Chinese apparently own it and propagate it on its faux origins, because why not after all.