Reiki Trinkets

Tiger Tie by Burton

    Andy from UK has purchased this tie from Burton sometime ago when he needed one. While the tie is often covered by the jacket, Andy has always assumed the Chinese characters had something to do with tiger.



    After seeing my site, he started to have doubts about his original assumption and wanted to know just exactly what Burton is putting on their products.

    I personally have never seen tiger been described in such way ; but what I can tell is four out of the seven characters are written incorrectly.

    My guess is these are random characters chosen to be used as marketing tools.


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The Stubborn Italian

Ease of Gas Retention

    From Brazil, reader Joao (a long time Japanese student) sent in a photo of this young man proudly displaying his cool tattoo at a party.



    Besides the fact the characters are poorly written, the true meaning of the tattoo may not be as what the owner intended.

    (air, gas, steam, vapor; spirit), (stop, halt, desist; detain), (peaceful, quiet; happy, healthy), could be interpreted as “ease of gas retention”.

    Perhaps this is some kind of viral ad campaign by makers of gas-relief medications?


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Bad Hanzi in Beijing

"Wilson"

"Rock On, Girl!"

Downloadable Gibberish Asian Fonts

New York Times and Tattoo Choices

    I just finished my interview with Cindy Chang of New York Times last night. I thought it went pretty well.

    We discussed about the phenomenon of tattoos/body modifications and how Western companies trying to break into the Chinese market with mistranslated slogans. My friend Jeremy Goldkorn’s Danwei.org and Andy Chuang’s Goodcharacters.com both have a few examples.

    Cindy would also like to hear more from Hanzi Smatter’s readers’ perspective. If you would like to voice your opinion, please let me know via email , and I will forward Cindy your contact information.



    Soon after my interview, I got this email this morning from Valen Farcas.

    gmail - tattoo choices
    (transcript)

    Farcas is “bothered” by the fact that many of my entries are too sarcastic and I should “think a little self-restrain would do a great deal instead of a minute and a half of laughter.”

    He/she is also unhappy about my “obsession with trying to make YOUR native language so exotic and exciting by denying people of its uses with the explanation that it has nothing to do with their culture and nature, so what?”

    I truly enjoy and welcome comments like this since I believe strongly in “check-and-balance”. But if Farcas really want to call me an “elitist”, why bother with sugarcoating it with “your [awesome] blog”?


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Marquis Antoine Daniels

"Skin, Hair, Body"

Interviews and Comics

    I have been a little busy lately.

    One of my short films called “Brokeback Heat”, actually it was just a parody thing I put together in two hours with Sony Vegas, was mentioned in March 2nd issue of New York Times (24 KB pdf file). Before that, I got interviewed by Larry Carroll of MTV about the short film as well.

    I have also done several Hanzi Smatter related interviews with Joe Ventura of Hiragana Times, Christine Ziemba of Los Angeles Times, Janet Tzou of Inked Magazine and I am scheduled to do an interview next week with Cindy Chang of New York Times.

    Over the week, I got three comic strips sent to me that are both entertaining and somewhat related to Hanzi Smatter.

    Travis in Hiroshima sent me to the extremely funny David Malki's called “Wondermark”.

    wondermark087

    In an email, David told me that he was “considering offering a T-shirt joking about how ‘strength’ or ‘peace’ kanji on merchandise probably mean something like ‘dumb whitey’ or ‘balls’.” Perhaps David should submit his idea to Jlist.com. By the way, the character on the guy’s chest is , it’s frequently used in both Chinese and Japanese city names.

    Aron emailed me Guy & Rodd’s “Brevity”, where Confucius is upset about noisy neighbors.

    brevity20122123060307

    Aron has this to say: “[Brevity] it's not usually very funny, but the characters in the first panel caught my eye. It seems like they read (with extra stroke) (radical version, backwards) (extra stroke) (sheep). Something about a sheep?”

    Indeed, it does look like something dealing with goats or sheep, just like my local fire chief.

    The last one was sent to me by the Patrick Brousseau,

    leasticoulddo20031013

    Wherein the womanizing protagonist meets a Chinese girl and then her parents. Her parents are mystical because they appear to speak entirely in Chinese Zodiac calendar terms.


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"Child Offering God"

NBA Body Art - Tale of My Chinese Tattoo

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