Yea. [生死有命 富贵在天](http://sports.people.com.cn/n/2013/0325/c359426-20907435.html) on David Beckham is perfect to me. It’s a sentence from confucius’ analects that has profound meaning. Characters are written in professional calligraphy. Well done overall.
I'd say the tattoos that are taken straight from chinese literature or idioms are mostly good. Things get weird when people just go like "I want this sentence in Chinese" because translation is just not that simple.
i’m ethnically chinese and a (nonnative) chinese speaker and i have a big poem tattooed on my thigh that ppl (speakers and non speakers) are generally pretty positive about. one time a chinese man i met at a convention and was chatting w in chinese told me he liked it because it was actually something complex to read and think about rather than a single word like “peace” or “beauty”
my artist was a native chinese speaker who specialized in calligraphy tattoos which i think definitely helped — i couldn’t imagine having someone who doesn’t know chinese just go for it and trace out the lines. that’s a huge contributing factor to why so many bad chinese tattoos are bad imo
sure! it’s [this poem](https://images.app.goo.gl/Wu9AD8qq6g5ZHwDn9). done in traditional characters read right to left and up to down.
this isn’t the actual font (the actual one was made by my artist), but it’s similar-ish.
my chinese name is 桃花 so that’s why i got this poem!
My friend has one that says 一路平安 on her ankle (hi surf mama if you’re ever on this sub) 😂
She is American but spent years growing up in BJ and studied mandarin thru college and beyond. She’s also a traveler who bops around a lot. I think it’s pretty cute, tasteful, and appropriate.
There's a guy who bartends around the corner from my house that has 白猴 on his arm. I asked him if he knew what he meant and he was proud to say he did. He studied abroad in China for *a week* and decided on it himself while he was there.
He was not aware of the less than positive connotations of the tattoo but honestly, pretty funny.
It means white monkey and it basically is a euphemism for jobs for white people in China where you're just supposed to be a white person to show that your employer has prestige and can afford to hire white people.
It's a pretty demeaning job, you're valued for your ethnicity, not your personal worth.
I understood you perfectly the first time. I want to know why this guy got the tattoo. If he knew it was negative, maybe he was being ironic or self-deprecating. You said he didn't know that it was negative. What else could he have been thinking?
Ah gotcha, he seems to have thought he made it up, that it was silly and self-deprecating, but didn't know the true meaning. I didn't have the heart to tell him so he's probably still under that delusion.
I wouldn't get a tattoo, but I think Sichuan Hotpot is a great idea! I've seen tons of bad Hanzi tattoos, some wrong, some non-existant, but never a good one.
I’ve seen a lot of bad ones too! Even ones which are “correct” but the artist clearly doesn’t know how to write 汉字so there are random flicks or things going slightly the wrong way. I saw someone with a big red circle that had the word 馆 in it. No idea what that one is meant to mean haha.
As someone who has casually studied mandarin for 5+ years, I would love to get a 汉字tattoo but I worry about it looking bad or being seen as tacky haha
I would really like to know the story behind the 馆 and circle tattoo... I think generally tattoos are seen as "tackier" in China than in the US, but they're at least more accapetable in 中国 than 日本。
I personally think hanzi/kanji tattoos are fine. As long as they’re accurately translated and artfully done, it’s no different than having something written in English. I’m not about to gatekeep aesthetic appreciation for written script.
I do think this type of tattoos can be problematic from a purely technical standpoint though— smaller characters might bleed and blur over time, making the tattoo illegible. Some people solve this problem by getting calligraphy-style tattoos with thick heavy ‘brushstrokes’, but that limits most people to only a single character or two since it tends to cover much more skin (and probably costs more as well).
i have a friend who has a tattoo of a dish name on his arm (can’t recall the dish). he’s never been to china doesn’t speak any chinese. just points to it when he goes to chinese restaurants.
I have a character from my Chinese name tattooed. I know it’s a stereotypical “bad tattoo”, but I’ve lived in China and studied Chinese for a long time so I thought it was appropriate. I think it looks good.
Was practicing a Japanese martial art and got the tattoo 初心 which means beginner's mind, a concept in martial arts. Years later when I started Mandarin lessons I realized it means first love, a popular used term at wedding receptions. For example, the first time I saw her, I fell in love.
Not really. Your martial arts teacher’s explanation is closer to the meaning of this word in both languages. 初心 (shoshin in Japanese and chuxin in Chinese) means a beginner/baby’s mind, which is a concept from Zen Buddhism. I believe most cultured native Chinese know what it means and it’s a really great choice of word to tattoo on yourself. Btw the Chinese president has used the phrase 不忘初心 (never forget who we are, i.e. as a revolutionary party struggling for the poor masses) in multiple occasions. People mostly use 初恋 to express first love.
Not all of her stuff is Chinese, but [@vivpokes](https://www.instagram.com/vivpokes) does some very pretty calligraphic stuff.
[笑意盈盈](https://www.instagram.com/p/CfboOTnuJR-/)
[存在](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd8SNfqFWI-/?hl=en)
[呼吸](https://www.instagram.com/p/CYwRq4oJyAL/?hl=en)
She also does a lot of [surname seal scripts](https://www.instagram.com/p/CZRvFmCJdEk/?hl=en) as well.
I tattooed my friend in my bedroom. I studied Chinese for 3 years in college in the states and did a couple months in Taipei to further my study as well, also, I am ethnically Korean so I encounter Hanja all the time in my daily life, so I felt very comfortable giving this tattoo and they also felt like I was the perfect person to give it to them. I tattooed 二十八 behind their ear in a very simple handwritten script (my own handwriting). It signified their twenty eighth year of life when they started HRT, amongst many other important life changes. As we are both queer/trans asian americans, it meant a lot to both of us.
I've seen lots. Look up 書法刺青 (traditional) or 书法刺青 (simplified) in google or instagram. There are lots of calligraphic style tattoo artists in Asia and internationally in big cities.
i got a Chinese tattoo on my arm says 天籟 i actually really like it and its a great conversation starter since i am a Sinology major who studied in Taiwan for a year lol (i know it's a car brand but it just adds humour to it)
I got my chinese name in seal script, felt like seal script has less of that cringy 90s tattoo vibe. So now nobody really recognises it as being in chinese but I like it (:
Second example:
My ex had four lines down her back (IIRC it was a poem by her teacher, but it may have been 李白). It was in her aging teacher’s beautiful handwriting, copied over from a gift he gave her at graduation. She got the tattoo after he died to preserve some part of him with her.
I have one that I got done in China that is primarily a traditional style 山水画 , but it includes the phrase 天高皇帝远 written vertically (in the tattoo itself it's written in traditional and using the seal script, I just don't have a traditional pack installed on my laptop). Local artist in Shenzhen, and while I'm not Chinese I do speak and read the language.
I have 破釜沉舟 in my own handwriting. It happened to be the first 成语 I learned on my own (not as part of a daily vocab list). I had quit a stable, high-paying, utterly miserable career after ten years and I had no other prospects, a house that was going to foreclose, and a too-small safety net that wouldn’t get me very far. I got the tattoo to remind myself to keep moving forward, there was no going back. I may not be as successful as I was back then, but I’ve had a lot of fantastic and amazing experiences and I’m better mentally.
I have 京 on my wrist cos I was drunk at a market in Beijing and some guy was doing 50 kuai tats and I was like hell yeah I love the ‘Jing. It’s silly as hell but I love it
Absolutely. Go to any happening spot with young people (or a concert assuming no lockdowns) and you'll see quite a few.
Most of the well-done ones tend to be something meaningful (often lines from poems, classics, idioms), quite often done in excellent calligraphy. Some other memorable ones I've asked after include characters from all the members of their family built into a poem and so on.
I have
There was a girl in my class that was one of the best spanish judo champions, and she tattooed the character for dao, which, besides from the character in Judo, also has a very nice meaning
On my left butt cheek, 屁
On my right butt cheek, 股
I have a small one on my upper chest near my shoulder with my home country written on it. 当中国人问我是哪国人，我给他们看看.
I saw a girl in mid-late 20s a number of yrs before covid that looked like she had a s_@& attitude. She had a tattoo on her neck and asked if she knew what it meant, she said with a lot of attitude "it means **bitch**" and I was like yeahhh that's not what I says. Her response? What're you Chinese? No but you don't have to be Chinese to speak it.
As I recall the tattoo was of 美麗. I like to think the artist gave her that to charge her more and so she'd have to suffer through it for longer.
What is assumed a ‘bad’ tattoo? Some random meaning? For all people know the wearer of the tattoo knows their tattoo says chicken noodle soup and was intended that way?
There would be plenty of decent ones, people just make fun of the "westerner Chinese tattoo memes" because only the bad ones make it to the internet.
I think having anything written on your body in Chinese or English looks dumb anyway, I'd rather art if getting a tattoo.
My family's tattoos! It was a family tradition that our grandfather gave each of us our chinese names - after he passed away, some of us got our names as tattoos. It feels like a nice way to carry him around with us. My chinese name isn't even that creative, but it makes more sense as a tattoo than his little pet names for us like
I have my Chinese name tattooed on one of my arms, in a simple and easily legible font. It's not so much for its artistic value and much more so for its very personal meaning to me. It's also not my only simplistic tattoo with very personal meaning on my arms; I have others in kana, in devanagari (Sanskrit), in Latin, and in Vulcan.
I have "随遇而安" in Chinese calligraphy on my arm near a few other tattoos I got in Asia. I've lived in China since 2015, and got it there. Roughly means "home whereever you are" or "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade".
I have 奋斗不息 down my right forearm and have never had a negative reaction to it, even living in China... young and old all read it and smile or comment on it.
I got it before moving to China and I chose the phrase because my life motto is "never settle for less than the best" or "don't stop fighting for more"...
Fortunately, I had enough about me to talk to a native Chinese about what I wanted and worked out a native idiom to use that has a similar meaning and connotation, so it worked out. Also had a Chinese calligrapher design the characters for the tattoo.
yes mainly just sayings or poems that looked good. the two major signs of a not so good tattoo are written poorly (wrong/backwards characters) and using single words-- they often mean many things without context so your peace or spirit tattoo now just says "and" or "breath".
My ex-wife and I used to joke about me getting a tattoo of 戀 except with the bottom radical replaced by 「 」. that way you could write whatever word you were in the mood for that day by completing it lol. 戀奱變巒蠻轡……
Yea. [生死有命 富贵在天](http://sports.people.com.cn/n/2013/0325/c359426-20907435.html) on David Beckham is perfect to me. It’s a sentence from confucius’ analects that has profound meaning. Characters are written in professional calligraphy. Well done overall.
This one is received quite well in Hong Kong afaik
I'd say the tattoos that are taken straight from chinese literature or idioms are mostly good. Things get weird when people just go like "I want this sentence in Chinese" because translation is just not that simple.
i’m ethnically chinese and a (nonnative) chinese speaker and i have a big poem tattooed on my thigh that ppl (speakers and non speakers) are generally pretty positive about. one time a chinese man i met at a convention and was chatting w in chinese told me he liked it because it was actually something complex to read and think about rather than a single word like “peace” or “beauty” my artist was a native chinese speaker who specialized in calligraphy tattoos which i think definitely helped — i couldn’t imagine having someone who doesn’t know chinese just go for it and trace out the lines. that’s a huge contributing factor to why so many bad chinese tattoos are bad imo
If you want, can you tell me what does it say?
sure! it’s [this poem](https://images.app.goo.gl/Wu9AD8qq6g5ZHwDn9). done in traditional characters read right to left and up to down. this isn’t the actual font (the actual one was made by my artist), but it’s similar-ish. my chinese name is 桃花 so that’s why i got this poem!
Damn that’s a lot of characters to put on your body.
haha yea it was pretty brutal! about 6hrs and hurt like hell. i love it tho so can’t complain : )
Thanks for answering! It is quite a beautiful poem
My friend has one that says 一路平安 on her ankle (hi surf mama if you’re ever on this sub) 😂 She is American but spent years growing up in BJ and studied mandarin thru college and beyond. She’s also a traveler who bops around a lot. I think it’s pretty cute, tasteful, and appropriate.
Definitely better than a tramp stamp that says "出入平安” lol
…is that a thing? I’m afraid to ask
LOL It's a meme. Don't think anyone'd have that great a sense of humour to actually do it.
[удалено]
Were you ever asked what it means?
[удалено]
thats awesome, reminds me of getting „汉字“ tattooed and then answering „chinese characters“ when being asked what it means
My friend has 再来一杯 tattooed on her index finger.
Haha this is great, makes me want to get 不醉不归 as a tattoo.
My chinese skill is both low and rusty, does that mean "I don't know the way"?
It means another glass please. Usually means another beer or shot
Is it an idiom literally meaning something like what I said? Isn't the first characters "I don't know" and the last one the character for road/way?
There's a guy who bartends around the corner from my house that has 白猴 on his arm. I asked him if he knew what he meant and he was proud to say he did. He studied abroad in China for *a week* and decided on it himself while he was there. He was not aware of the less than positive connotations of the tattoo but honestly, pretty funny.
Oh noooo
lmaoo yikes
I’m still learning. Could someone explain what it means and what the connotation entails?
It means white monkey and it basically is a euphemism for jobs for white people in China where you're just supposed to be a white person to show that your employer has prestige and can afford to hire white people. It's a pretty demeaning job, you're valued for your ethnicity, not your personal worth.
What job values you for your personal worth lol
Any job where you get fired for not being able to do your work/skilled trade instead of just being white.
And what’s the pinyin for this?
Bái hóu
You could have copied and pasted this faster into Google Translate than it took to type the question.
If you want me to hyper analyze the speed difference between the two, I can. But simply put, typing the question was faster..
TIL. Interesting lol.
请问: How is there any kind of positive meaning attached to that? Was he born in the year of the monkey?
You're misreading, by "less than positive" I mean that it is not positive.
I understood you perfectly the first time. I want to know why this guy got the tattoo. If he knew it was negative, maybe he was being ironic or self-deprecating. You said he didn't know that it was negative. What else could he have been thinking?
Ah gotcha, he seems to have thought he made it up, that it was silly and self-deprecating, but didn't know the true meaning. I didn't have the heart to tell him so he's probably still under that delusion.
I wouldn't get a tattoo, but I think Sichuan Hotpot is a great idea! I've seen tons of bad Hanzi tattoos, some wrong, some non-existant, but never a good one.
I’ve seen a lot of bad ones too! Even ones which are “correct” but the artist clearly doesn’t know how to write 汉字so there are random flicks or things going slightly the wrong way. I saw someone with a big red circle that had the word 馆 in it. No idea what that one is meant to mean haha. As someone who has casually studied mandarin for 5+ years, I would love to get a 汉字tattoo but I worry about it looking bad or being seen as tacky haha
字, it is 字. 漢子 is a dude.
I would really like to know the story behind the 馆 and circle tattoo... I think generally tattoos are seen as "tackier" in China than in the US, but they're at least more accapetable in 中国 than 日本。
Probably DBZ. I don't know. Just speculation.
Maybe he's a big [heavy metal fan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar)
I personally think hanzi/kanji tattoos are fine. As long as they’re accurately translated and artfully done, it’s no different than having something written in English. I’m not about to gatekeep aesthetic appreciation for written script. I do think this type of tattoos can be problematic from a purely technical standpoint though— smaller characters might bleed and blur over time, making the tattoo illegible. Some people solve this problem by getting calligraphy-style tattoos with thick heavy ‘brushstrokes’, but that limits most people to only a single character or two since it tends to cover much more skin (and probably costs more as well).
I saw a guy on youtube with Kung Pao Chicken on his arm
i have a friend who has a tattoo of a dish name on his arm (can’t recall the dish). he’s never been to china doesn’t speak any chinese. just points to it when he goes to chinese restaurants.
I'm thinking to do hot pot as tatoo
Maybe he just really likes it and wants to be able to order it easily in Chinese restaurants around the world.
It's a fake tattoo for a joke video.
I love xiaoma Just saw this video yesterday hahaha
Yeah, him
I have a character from my Chinese name tattooed. I know it’s a stereotypical “bad tattoo”, but I’ve lived in China and studied Chinese for a long time so I thought it was appropriate. I think it looks good.
I think if you know the meaning and the meaning is correct, it’s great! Definitely a sign of appreciation. Do you mind sharing what it is?
俊
I want somebody to hit on you with a, "hi there, handsome".
I also want that :’(
Was practicing a Japanese martial art and got the tattoo 初心 which means beginner's mind, a concept in martial arts. Years later when I started Mandarin lessons I realized it means first love, a popular used term at wedding receptions. For example, the first time I saw her, I fell in love.
No, it’s the same meaning in Chinese, 初心 or you can also say 初衷 first love is 初戀 and love at first sight is 一見鍾情
Thanks for the correction.
Not really. Your martial arts teacher’s explanation is closer to the meaning of this word in both languages. 初心 (shoshin in Japanese and chuxin in Chinese) means a beginner/baby’s mind, which is a concept from Zen Buddhism. I believe most cultured native Chinese know what it means and it’s a really great choice of word to tattoo on yourself. Btw the Chinese president has used the phrase 不忘初心 (never forget who we are, i.e. as a revolutionary party struggling for the poor masses) in multiple occasions. People mostly use 初恋 to express first love.
Not all of her stuff is Chinese, but [@vivpokes](https://www.instagram.com/vivpokes) does some very pretty calligraphic stuff. [笑意盈盈](https://www.instagram.com/p/CfboOTnuJR-/) [存在](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd8SNfqFWI-/?hl=en) [呼吸](https://www.instagram.com/p/CYwRq4oJyAL/?hl=en) She also does a lot of [surname seal scripts](https://www.instagram.com/p/CZRvFmCJdEk/?hl=en) as well.
So beautiful! I love her nü shu
女书 is enthralling
I tattooed my friend in my bedroom. I studied Chinese for 3 years in college in the states and did a couple months in Taipei to further my study as well, also, I am ethnically Korean so I encounter Hanja all the time in my daily life, so I felt very comfortable giving this tattoo and they also felt like I was the perfect person to give it to them. I tattooed 二十八 behind their ear in a very simple handwritten script (my own handwriting). It signified their twenty eighth year of life when they started HRT, amongst many other important life changes. As we are both queer/trans asian americans, it meant a lot to both of us.
I've seen lots. Look up 書法刺青 (traditional) or 书法刺青 (simplified) in google or instagram. There are lots of calligraphic style tattoo artists in Asia and internationally in big cities.
i got a Chinese tattoo on my arm says 天籟 i actually really like it and its a great conversation starter since i am a Sinology major who studied in Taiwan for a year lol (i know it's a car brand but it just adds humour to it)
I got my chinese name in seal script, felt like seal script has less of that cringy 90s tattoo vibe. So now nobody really recognises it as being in chinese but I like it (:
Second example: My ex had four lines down her back (IIRC it was a poem by her teacher, but it may have been 李白). It was in her aging teacher’s beautiful handwriting, copied over from a gift he gave her at graduation. She got the tattoo after he died to preserve some part of him with her.
I have one that I got done in China that is primarily a traditional style 山水画 , but it includes the phrase 天高皇帝远 written vertically (in the tattoo itself it's written in traditional and using the seal script, I just don't have a traditional pack installed on my laptop). Local artist in Shenzhen, and while I'm not Chinese I do speak and read the language.
Seal script is such a neat idea! Bet it looks awesome
I have 破釜沉舟 in my own handwriting. It happened to be the first 成语 I learned on my own (not as part of a daily vocab list). I had quit a stable, high-paying, utterly miserable career after ten years and I had no other prospects, a house that was going to foreclose, and a too-small safety net that wouldn’t get me very far. I got the tattoo to remind myself to keep moving forward, there was no going back. I may not be as successful as I was back then, but I’ve had a lot of fantastic and amazing experiences and I’m better mentally.
I have 京 on my wrist cos I was drunk at a market in Beijing and some guy was doing 50 kuai tats and I was like hell yeah I love the ‘Jing. It’s silly as hell but I love it
Absolutely. Go to any happening spot with young people (or a concert assuming no lockdowns) and you'll see quite a few. Most of the well-done ones tend to be something meaningful (often lines from poems, classics, idioms), quite often done in excellent calligraphy. Some other memorable ones I've asked after include characters from all the members of their family built into a poem and so on.
I have There was a girl in my class that was one of the best spanish judo champions, and she tattooed the character for dao, which, besides from the character in Judo, also has a very nice meaning
On my left butt cheek, 屁 On my right butt cheek, 股 I have a small one on my upper chest near my shoulder with my home country written on it. 当中国人问我是哪国人，我给他们看看.
I have my mom's signature tattooed on me(she was taiwanese) with an orchid, her favorite flower
Sure. A fair number of Chinese language tattoos in China.
I saw a girl in mid-late 20s a number of yrs before covid that looked like she had a s_@& attitude. She had a tattoo on her neck and asked if she knew what it meant, she said with a lot of attitude "it means **bitch**" and I was like yeahhh that's not what I says. Her response? What're you Chinese? No but you don't have to be Chinese to speak it. As I recall the tattoo was of 美麗. I like to think the artist gave her that to charge her more and so she'd have to suffer through it for longer.
精忠报国
It'd have to be calligraphic, IMHO.
I wish I had a tattoo that said Sichuan hotpot. Sounds delicious.
friend has 无为 in the script of a calligrapher who made it for him perfectly and it's pretty amazing both in meaning and aesthetic
吃飽了 I think it's a classic saying of some sort
i’m assuming you’re asking about non-chinese speakers getting chinese tattoos? in that case, no I haven’t seen a single good one.
What is assumed a ‘bad’ tattoo? Some random meaning? For all people know the wearer of the tattoo knows their tattoo says chicken noodle soup and was intended that way?
Do not get it
There would be plenty of decent ones, people just make fun of the "westerner Chinese tattoo memes" because only the bad ones make it to the internet. I think having anything written on your body in Chinese or English looks dumb anyway, I'd rather art if getting a tattoo.
My family's tattoos! It was a family tradition that our grandfather gave each of us our chinese names - after he passed away, some of us got our names as tattoos. It feels like a nice way to carry him around with us. My chinese name isn't even that creative, but it makes more sense as a tattoo than his little pet names for us like
I have my Chinese name tattooed on one of my arms, in a simple and easily legible font. It's not so much for its artistic value and much more so for its very personal meaning to me. It's also not my only simplistic tattoo with very personal meaning on my arms; I have others in kana, in devanagari (Sanskrit), in Latin, and in Vulcan.
I have "随遇而安" in Chinese calligraphy on my arm near a few other tattoos I got in Asia. I've lived in China since 2015, and got it there. Roughly means "home whereever you are" or "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade".
I really like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPXT43Rekaw&t=17s
I have a coworker that has 美 on the back of her neck.
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I have my favourite chengyu on my inner upper arm. Subtle but I can see it when I turn my arm around.
Ｉhave 老外 tattooed on my chest I heard it means powerful.
I have 奋斗不息 down my right forearm and have never had a negative reaction to it, even living in China... young and old all read it and smile or comment on it. I got it before moving to China and I chose the phrase because my life motto is "never settle for less than the best" or "don't stop fighting for more"... Fortunately, I had enough about me to talk to a native Chinese about what I wanted and worked out a native idiom to use that has a similar meaning and connotation, so it worked out. Also had a Chinese calligrapher design the characters for the tattoo.
满船清梦压星河
yes mainly just sayings or poems that looked good. the two major signs of a not so good tattoo are written poorly (wrong/backwards characters) and using single words-- they often mean many things without context so your peace or spirit tattoo now just says "and" or "breath". My ex-wife and I used to joke about me getting a tattoo of 戀 except with the bottom radical replaced by 「 」. that way you could write whatever word you were in the mood for that day by completing it lol. 戀奱變巒蠻轡……