Tuesday, April 5, 2005

"Healthy Empty Peaceful Fist"



Starting from the left upper corner and going clockwise direction:

1. It suppose to be , but the partial is all blurred together.
2. I have no idea what this character suppose to be.
3. with the partial missing a dot on the right side.
4. is correct and means "peaceful, tranquil, quiet".
5. with missing dot on the left upper corner and partial is missing one horizontal stroke.

One out of five characters correct, I would give this a "F" grade.



14 comments:

  1. My guesses for 2, in the order that they came to mind: fucked-up versions of 超, 道, 造 ,and 适.

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  2. I cannot shake the feeling that it is 方 mixed in with the 'path partial' from 道, but a search on zhongwen.com as well as WWWJDIC and using my handwriting recognition software turns up no such character.

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  3. My guess is that the second word is 逍 from 逍遥.

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  4. at first, i thot it might be 迶, but seeing as 道 is much more common (and in actual regular use), that would make more sense.

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  5. Kyle - Are you thinking of 迈? Interesting. I can kind of see that...

    Don't know about 逍, though 逍遥 would make a good motto. The two characters are bound morphemes a la 旮旯, aren't they?

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  6. Isn't 安 also used as "inexpensive," or is that only in Japanese?

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  7. brendan: I think you are right. I would never use 逍 by itself.

    dan: I don't think 安 ever means "inexpensive" in Chinese. I find it really interesting how identical characters can have very different meanings in Chinese and Japanese. For example, 忍 means "to tolerate" in Chinese but in Japanese, it means "to conceal" (as in "忍者"). Go figure.

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  8. I'm guessing a mutilated 道 as well. Hey, everyone loves 道. It must be one of the most popular Chinese tattoo characters amongst non-Daoists.

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  9. 忍 is also used for the "toleration" thing in Japanese, in words like 堅忍 (patience or perseverance) or phrases like 恥を忍ぶ (haji o shinobu, "swallow (your) pride" [literally "endure (your) shame"]).

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  10. I am guessing: if the #2 can be 道 then this could be a badly fucked-up 空道安康拳 reading vertically from right to left, whatever that is.

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  11. ^ Sounds like some sort of kung-fu move. =)

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  12. at quick glance, i thought it is 廉价 (cheap) for the first two words :) i'm from a simplified chinese country.

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  13. At first glance, the second character was 道 to me. And it remains the same at subsequent glances.

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  14. This is evidence of another way in which it is dangerous for those who can't read hanzi to get them tattooed: they can't evaluate the competence of the tattoo artist.

    The way these characters are rendered makes me think the artist was basing his style on the "chop suey" English-language typefaces once seen in Chinese restaurants. Ugh.

    That third character kind of looks like 室 (not that it would make any more sense that way).

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