A friend of mine (a native Chinese speaker) grumbled about the silly tattoos that Westerners often get. The "value*" tattoo actually strikes me as being somewhat analogous to the tattoos that Westerners get with Chinese words, in that, in both cases, what seems to be lost is a sense of context.
(see the third comment, by "Anonymous", i.e., Tian Zi (Chauncy) I really hope that the asterisk leads to a footnote tattooed on her actual foot.Ĭompared to fēngkuáng mǔgǒu 瘋狂母狗 ("crazy bitch" " ), "value" is eminently sensible. Maybe she is a Theodore tugboat fan, and that is her "V" word. And the asterisk doesn't do anything to make it sensible. "Value" on it's own doesn't mean anything. Perhaps neat, clear, and well-formed, but I'm not seeing "sensible". Wish I had had a camera but you will just have to believe me. Not that there's such a thing as a "fair" price, but you get the drift.īest one I ever saw was when I was standing in line in a shop here in Oz behind a young Chinese woman and she had tattooed on the back of her neck "Made in China". While bargain = you get more than you pay for (aka the price is "more than fair," or tilted in the purchaser's favor). I would think that value = you get what you pay for (aka the price is "fair"). Maybe it's just because of my familiarity of English words and unfamiliarity with Chinese characters, but Chinese characters seem to me to have aesthetic qualities apart from their meaning that an English word lacks.Īugust 29, 7:57 not sure value = bargain. She may have tried to express the sentiment of "Because I'm worth it" from L’Oréal. It would be more of a problem if the word is 'value-added'.Ĭhinese people appreciate positive words such as 'value, respect, tradition, culture, morality." I read 'value' as "I value (myself, education……)".
I find the word 'value' on the lady's arm rather endearing. It's unfortunate as it implies she's selling herself at a bargain.
SERENITY TATTOO ASIAN SKIN
It could be that this person is a Word in Shelley Jackson's short story "Skin," which is published on the skin of 2,095 volunteers across the world. The tattoo looks like a mashup of the two. Their cheap economy range is called "value", and their premium range is called "Finest*" with a star. Personally, this makes me think of Tesco (UK's biggest supermarket chain). Filed by Victor Mair under Writing systems.But perhaps my scholarly instincts are getting the best of me.Īnyway, it's nice to see a neat, clear, well-formed, sensible English word on the shoulder of a Chinese person, and I'd be happy to see other example of such tattoos. I would also speculate that maybe, just maybe, the star that follows the word and is slightly above it may be functioning as an asterisk, and that the woman may sport another star elsewhere on her body where there is an annotation explaining the precise significance of the word "value" for her.
SERENITY TATTOO ASIAN FULL
I'd wager that it wasn't "random" at all, but that the wearer of the tattoo picked it in full awareness of its meaning. On imgur, where the photograph above originally appeared, it was labeled "a random English word as a tattoo". We've seen proof of that over and over again, e.g., here and here (with references to earlier posts and other resources for the study of Chinese tattoos on the bodies of non-Chinese people). In contrast, many Westerners who get Chinese tattoos can't read a single Chinese character, and most of them have only the foggiest notion of what their tattoos say. I suspect, however, that most Chinese who get tattoos in Western languages know the meaning of their tattoos, indeed, can probably read them off correctly by themselves. We sometimes get the impression that it's only Westerners who are getting Chinese tattoos, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were just as many, if not more, Chinese getting tattoos in English and other Western languages as there are Westerners getting Chinese tattoos. Andy Averill sent in the following picture of a Chinese person with the English word "value" tattooed on her right shoulder:
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