One of my students shared this one with me and it just made my day...very funny! I wish I had seen it myself, but who knows, maybe I'll run into her one day.
My student saw a girl with the character 妹妹 (mei4 mei) tattooed on the back of her neck. 妹妹 means, "little sister"....it's too bad that in Taiwan it's also slang for "vagina".
Whoops.
I know I shouldn't, but I hope this girl actually has an interest in Chinese. Perhaps she'll travel to Taiwan or China, where she can have earnest conversations galore in broken Chinese with locals desperately trying to maintain a poker face in the midst of such gems as "I love my little sister"..."My little sister is very important to me"...I guess "I love to play with my little sister" might be too much to hope for, but then again, maybe not...I could go on, but you can think of more on your own!
Moral of the story: Chinese characters are great. Many tattoos are great. Chinese tattoos CAN BE great - just do your homework!
I told my co-worker this story. She has The Tao tattooed on her back, and told me that she brought three versions of it to the Chinese Studies department of her university, to find out which one was the most accurate/most beautiful, and to make sure there were no mistakes/typos.
Seems like a good way to go.
Showing posts with label tattoos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tattoos. Show all posts
Monday, July 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Funny Chinese Tattoos
Here is a link to a fun website:
http://www.hanzismatter.com/
It explores the misuse of Chinese characters/Japanese Kanji by Westerners. (Perhaps we could be kind and say “misguided” use?) It’s a phenomenon for which any Westerner who has taken the time to learn characters has one or two good stories, given the explosion in popularity of Chinese tattoos in recent years.
My first experience with wacky Chinese tattoos (on an equally wacky but hopefully not too demented person) was in Taiwan, when I ran into a man with the character 惡 tattooed on his upper chest. By co-incidence, it was one of the few I knew. Upon first seeing it, I remember thinking it was quite Celtic looking and rather pretty looking. I wondered if this man had made the same mistake, and asked him if he knew what it meant. He said, “Yes, it means evil, and it’s on my heart because I have an evil heart.” Erm, okay…I backed up (I’m sure my face conveyed my shock) and that was the end of that conversation. I wonder what Mr. Evil Heart is doing today…
While on the beach just the other day I commented on the tattoo that another dog owner had prominently displayed on his bicep. “So you’re a tiger,” I ventured. The man looked rather nonplussed and said that he was, and the conversation didn’t go anywhere, which left me wondering if he thought he had tattooed some mystical symbol on his arm, one that only wise and learned stoics could decipher, rather than what it really was for the billion plus people who read Chinese or Japanese, i.e. the equivalent of spelling T-I-G-E-R in VERY BIG letters on your arm.
This reminded me of the time that my mother and father and I travelled to Hong Kong and my mother was transfixed by the beauty of the neon signs. “Aren’t they lovely?” she beamed. While I appreciated their colours, I was unable to appreciate them as aesthetic works of art only, since I kept getting distracted by their meanings, with decidedly unromantic words like “barber shop” (which generally means brothel) “sale”, and “fried chicken” jumping out at me. At that point, having a finely tuned sense of aesthetics, (thanks to my mother) I wished I didn’t know how to read them and could have appreciated them for their beauty alone.
By far the most stupid tattoo I’ve seen in a while (quite literally!) was a few months back, when I spied a girl in a bar with the phrase 愚蠢的女孩 tattooed down her back. I did a double take, and checked my dictionary as soon as I got home. Sure enough, it was indeed “stupid girl”. Why? I mean, really…why?? Perhaps she liked the song “Stupid Girl” by Garbage and thought it would be a neat “inside joke”. However an inside joke is by definition one that few get, and her chances of going under the radar with this ridiculous tattoo were slim to none in Vancouver, the most Chinese city in North America…
It’s probably good to have cases of Westerners misusing Chinese as it evens things up, given the propensity of Chinese/Japanese speakers to misuse English, but I would like to point out that the latter have an advantage over the former, as they generally display their English language gaffers on T-shirts!!
http://www.hanzismatter.com/
It explores the misuse of Chinese characters/Japanese Kanji by Westerners. (Perhaps we could be kind and say “misguided” use?) It’s a phenomenon for which any Westerner who has taken the time to learn characters has one or two good stories, given the explosion in popularity of Chinese tattoos in recent years.
My first experience with wacky Chinese tattoos (on an equally wacky but hopefully not too demented person) was in Taiwan, when I ran into a man with the character 惡 tattooed on his upper chest. By co-incidence, it was one of the few I knew. Upon first seeing it, I remember thinking it was quite Celtic looking and rather pretty looking. I wondered if this man had made the same mistake, and asked him if he knew what it meant. He said, “Yes, it means evil, and it’s on my heart because I have an evil heart.” Erm, okay…I backed up (I’m sure my face conveyed my shock) and that was the end of that conversation. I wonder what Mr. Evil Heart is doing today…
While on the beach just the other day I commented on the tattoo that another dog owner had prominently displayed on his bicep. “So you’re a tiger,” I ventured. The man looked rather nonplussed and said that he was, and the conversation didn’t go anywhere, which left me wondering if he thought he had tattooed some mystical symbol on his arm, one that only wise and learned stoics could decipher, rather than what it really was for the billion plus people who read Chinese or Japanese, i.e. the equivalent of spelling T-I-G-E-R in VERY BIG letters on your arm.
This reminded me of the time that my mother and father and I travelled to Hong Kong and my mother was transfixed by the beauty of the neon signs. “Aren’t they lovely?” she beamed. While I appreciated their colours, I was unable to appreciate them as aesthetic works of art only, since I kept getting distracted by their meanings, with decidedly unromantic words like “barber shop” (which generally means brothel) “sale”, and “fried chicken” jumping out at me. At that point, having a finely tuned sense of aesthetics, (thanks to my mother) I wished I didn’t know how to read them and could have appreciated them for their beauty alone.
By far the most stupid tattoo I’ve seen in a while (quite literally!) was a few months back, when I spied a girl in a bar with the phrase 愚蠢的女孩 tattooed down her back. I did a double take, and checked my dictionary as soon as I got home. Sure enough, it was indeed “stupid girl”. Why? I mean, really…why?? Perhaps she liked the song “Stupid Girl” by Garbage and thought it would be a neat “inside joke”. However an inside joke is by definition one that few get, and her chances of going under the radar with this ridiculous tattoo were slim to none in Vancouver, the most Chinese city in North America…
It’s probably good to have cases of Westerners misusing Chinese as it evens things up, given the propensity of Chinese/Japanese speakers to misuse English, but I would like to point out that the latter have an advantage over the former, as they generally display their English language gaffers on T-shirts!!
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