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Friday, June 23, 2006

Trend: Hanzi Suckers


Pseudo-hipsters have been tattooing their arses with cryptic, yet philosophical asian characters. Long gone is the era of having a mere heart and "Mom" on your arm.

Perhaps donning these asian texts infuses the wearer with instant character and worldly experience. Surely they lend a touch of smoky intrigue and mystery when you discover these tattoos in someone's secret garden (yay!), and then hear the story of what the character means to the wearer..."so deep."

Unfortunately, it seems most of these asian character tattoos mean absolutely nothing at all, or mean something funnier than intended as the wearer has been hoodwinked by witty pranksters.

http://www.hanzismatter.com is dedicated to translating many an asian tattoo or art trinket for us easily-impressed westerners.

*The above tattoo apparently was supposed to say "Dare not to accept"...yet the actual translation is closer to "Thank you, come again". Nice.

2 comments:

Seth said...

scroll down on the site to watch seth macfarlane, creator of family guy's speech at this year's harvard graduation. first piece of advice, don't get a tattoo in a language you don't understand. later reveals an important piece of trendwork: "the world is going digital. i don't know what that means. but remember who told you." overall worth the watch.

Rob Mortimer (aka Famous Rob) said...

I can top that:

My girlfriends family are Chinese. One day (late 90s) we were in a shop, and a big burly guy walked past in a nike t-shirt with big chinese script on the back.

My girlfriend started laughing hysterically, I asked what it said and she replied:

"Girl Power"