"Healthy Catch Empty Achievement"

From reader "Christina S.":



"Hello, I’ve been to your site many times and I have a tattoo on my lower back in Chinese. I know there is not such thing as letters in Chinese NOW, but these characters are supposed to represent MIKE. Now I’m am really curious to what I have inked on my back. Can you help me? Thanks."



I feel really bad about this one, because it is no where near "MIKE". Especially the second character does not even exist in Hanzi or Kanji vocabulary. The closest one is "弋" which means "catch", but there is an extra dot in the tattoo.



康 = peaceful, quiet; happy, healthy

弋 = catch, arrest; shoot with bow

空 = empty, hollow, bare, deserted

功 = achievement, merit, good result

Master of Stupidity

Roddy from Chinese Forums tipped me about an user "insanejester" on his forum wanting to get a Chinese tattoo for his 18th birthday.



The photo shown above is what the young man finally got.



It means "idiot".



呆 = dull; dull-minded, simple, stupid

子 = offspring, child; fruit, seed of; 1st terrestrial branch

Site News: Shannon Larratt from BMEzine

Shannon Larratt, founder of the largest body modification magazine BMEzine, has emailed me with the following:



"I liked your Kanji page. I did a similar article some time ago:



http://www.bmezine.com/news/pubring/20031006.html



I have a gallery of kanji tattoos here:



http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/kanji001.html



If you would ever like to write an article for my zine using the photos from my galleries, I'd love to publish it.



Shannon"

Botched Female, Dog, Tiger

From reader "Jan I.":



"The picture is just a random encounter during a shopping afternoon - a cap with some random looking letters .. I wonder if they carry any meaning at all? Cheers."



The first character looks like a botched "female".



女 = female, woman, girl; feminine



The second one can be either "dog" or "to protect" depends on it is a dot or stroke in the center.



戌 = eleventh sign of Chinese zodiac (The Dog, 7pm-9pm, west-northwest, September)



戍 = defend borders, guard frontiers



The last one is correct and it means "tiger"



寅 = third sign of Chinese zodiac (The Tiger, 3am-5am, east-northeast, January); to respect, reverence; respectfully

"Green Rice"

This guy might thought it was a great idea to tattoo "essence" (精) on his elbows. But by spliting the character into two halves, he got "Green Rice".



米 = hulled or husked uncooked rice; meter

青 = blue-green; young