"May you live in interesting times"
Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/12/18/live/ may be helpful here in terms of background. It could not find an earlier citation than a "March 1936 newspaper report in “The Yorkshire Post”:

Sir Austen Chamberlain....said: “It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us. We move from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another.