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google translate, translated that as:
Independence River is curious and ruthless
not bad in the realm of Chinese tattoos
Right? A lot of the worse ones are menu items
btw the Independence River is capitalized because it is interpreting it as a name, the word is just independence.
Bruh what? Imagine thinking water - the bringer of life - isn’t cool enough to warrant getting a tattoo of it. I hope his mouth remains eternally slightly dry.
Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.
- Derek Zoolander
Def not a hydro homie
It’s the universal solvent
Yup toxic as fuck.
Definitely. Live and drink.
Wouldn’t it be more like this?
It’s more like this
Soooo… She is perpetually wet
So what DOES her tattoo say?
独立 independent/independence
無情 heartless/heartlessness
好奇 curiosityAnd something more under her shirt
With some of the word written vertically and some horizontally for whatever reason
Ok but what does his tattoo say?
Dude!
Sweet!
Rick fucked me!
水
W
A
T
E
ROh cool thanks!
NP, its a hard legnuage to pick up
legnuage
Mizu
Thank you very much.
She’s proud of being heartless? Gross.
Undead people deserve respect too
Dear China, stop having such a beautiful language then. signed, Mandarin is really hard
If the western alphabet looks artistic to you, go for it. It you’re trying to climb up onto some cultural appropriation moral high ground, well okay then, bye-bye now.
While I get people poking fun at it, people do also get calligraphy or just plain English tattoos too, so clearly pretty writing is used generally for tattoos.
True, I’ve seen lots of tattoos of English text. Have also seen people stretch way too far to try to make a weak point like this guy.
Calligraphy is a traditional art form in China and Japan, so it seems to me like many people there recognize the beauty of the characters. Some people just want an excuse to hate on other people (and for some reason tattoos on other people really draw this behavior out).
Compare the OP with some actual Chinese artists doing Chinese calligraphy tattoos - for example in Hong Kong or Taiwan (some of the photos are a bit NSFW, so be warned)
There is a bit of difference between “Chinese calligraphy” and “write me a list of words in plain Chinese characters”
I have no problem with people tattooing whatever they want on themselves btw - but it’s true that from the perspective of someone who can read Chinese, these tattoos (like in the OP) are not “beautiful Chinese characters” or “calligraphy” - they do come across as mostly just confusing lists of strangely formatted and crudely written random words.
Yeah I appreciate that there are certainly a lot of bad tattoos that involve Chinese characters. The one shown is probably one of them. I just don’t think westerners who use Chinese characters deserve special scorn. There are a lot of bad tattoos that involve western lettering as well.
Certainly scorn is too strong. I feel like this was a fad that has mostly passed anyway - both due to increased globalization leading to demystification of the “Orient” in general, and Chinese cultural symbols in particular, as well as general trends towards more boldness and self-expression in Western tattoo culture, such as increasing popularity of face tattoos, intentionally “ugly” tattoo aesthetics and much less hesitation tattooing random English words all over the place. Not that I am necessarily a fan of that either, but I feel like it’s at least some progress, not hiding the meanings behind some “exotic” Chinese characters, and just embracing what you want to say directly.
If you wouldn’t get something tattooed in English because it seems a bit cringe, well it will still be cringe in Chinese - possibly more if you mess it up. And if you do like Chinese culture, characters or calligraphy - at least try to get something that does it some justice and maybe has at least some cultural relevance beyond just “some words, but in Chinese”
Getting a tattoo is a more or less permanent decision. It’s soooo very important to make sure tattooed people understand they made a bad decision, because it’s permanent! Otherwise I won’t feel better about me and my boring small minded self :(
Also of people are aware of what it says, or that there’s no grammar involved, or it’s off the real script a bit, they really do just like the calligraphy.
This site is now dead, but it used to be one of my favorites. It’s someone who would translate the Asian-language tattoos people would send in. A lot of them were not even using real symbols or letters, but a lot of others were hilarious.
https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/
This is one of their last posts and, to be fair to them, it’s pretty hard to continue a blog like that once your irony meter has exploded.
Yeah, a lot of them are in the gibberish font, but there are some entries where they’re like “that’s not even the gibberish font, I have no idea what the hell that is, what is going on here?!”
That one is probably temporary, at least. During the first few weeks, tattoo ink can be rubbed away every time you wash your hands. You also have a lot of nerves on that side of your hand and the needle hurts like hell. So you go through a lot of pain for something that gets washed away.
It’s probably plain ink.
I have a wedding ring tattoo, and the guy who did it strongly discouraged me from going 100% of the way around. Pain kicked up quite a bit when it hit the fleshy part in between fingers.
Wait, so did you go 100% around anyway?
Nah, just down the sides.
I mean why not? Goes kinda hard
Chinese writing is a vast world of art and ideas, with probably over 30 thousand different characters, nobody knows for sure how many there are. Not knowing what a character is, to strip it of meaning or cultural baggage, kind of frees one up to appreciate the rhythm and delicate balance of lines as their own thing.
Then again, you do not want to end up with PIG SWAMP MOUNTAIN DWARF NOODLE in permanent ink on your skin.If you want to see Ewan McGregor naked and his body covered in Chinese calligraphy, sometime between Trainspotting and Star Wars, do check out Peter Greenaway’s bonkers visual masterpiece The Pillow Book.
If you want to see Ewan McGregor naked and his body covered in Chinese calligraphy
Uh yes please!
PIG SWAMP MOUNTAIN DWARF NOODLE
Perfectly explainable.
“Pig Swamp” was our frat name in college.
“Mountain Dwarf Noodle” was my nickname.
Could also be the cousin hold of the most venerable dwarven hold “Boat Murder”
deleted by creator
Well, three of those five words are awesome together. SWAMP MOUNTAIN DWARF.
China: Makes the most beautiful calligraphy writing where every word is a pleasure to write and see. Also China: It says ‘Soup’ down your arm, man. Why are you writing Soup all down your arm?
To express my love for the soup store.
According to Google translate the visible part says: “Independent, curious and ruthless” which isn’t that bad of a text.
The last one is 狡猾 which means “sly”
It came with “Independence River is curious and ruthless” to me… interesting
Hydro homies out here loving both.
kanji look so much more like art than the latin alphabet do, to us
But kanji is limited in font choices.
This is a tattoo, not a computer. They can do any kind of stylization they want. Make the vertical lines fire and the horizontal lines ice. Do a lightning bolt for any tick mark. Etc.
Have you even seen different fonts?
The important thing is to know what it actually says. Outside of that, Chinese and other type writings are artistic in themselves already, so even if it only said “water”, if that looked nice why not?
This picture shows that artistic character. If her back had the meaning tattooed in English it might get some odd stares. Unless it was in Papyrus font.
Papyrus font? like the title from that movie?
Yeah really, it’s like these people have never heard of calligraphy.
More likely that finding someone in the west competent enough to do calligraphy is a lot more uncommon, and if for people who never see the characters they all look exotic, so the basic font is good enough for them. At the very least the tat in this pic doesn’t seem to be fucked up (mirrored, missing radicals, etc) or using the fake font to “mimic” the latin alphabet.
Or Wingdings
It might look artistic to you, but to a Chinese reader this example looks basic and dull, so they just see the meaning of the words much the same as the “WATER” on the left. There just isn’t any real aesthetic or artistic value here, in the context of Chinese writing.
It kind of goes both ways though, back in the day there was a fad in Asia too of people wearing clothes with random English words on them, because there those looked exotic and cool, even though to Westerners it looked a bit dumb.
That’s a good point. Elvish it is then.
Get a tramp stamp that says “Speak, friend, and enter”
