Wednesday, December 1, 2004

"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



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7 comments:

  1. kenDecember 1, 2004 at 6:48 AM

    FYI: 米 also stands for "America" in Japanese
    due to the pronunciation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. wulongDecember 2, 2004 at 3:19 PM

    I think 米 is also used for America in Korean hanja as well... (I could be mistaken, however).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Roy BermanDecember 5, 2004 at 10:35 AM

    Korea uses 美, just like China. Only Japan uses 米.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousDecember 6, 2004 at 11:17 AM

    The fact that 米 represents America in Japanese is completely irrelevant to this sorry-ass tatoo. The [米] character in the tattoo above is clearly not in independent character form, but in radical form, indicating Super-Sized ignorance from the dim-witted schmuck who decided to cleave [精] in two.

    Imagine if there was an Asian guy walking around with "dip" on one forearm and "shit" on the other. You wouldn't have a clue what a complete idiot he was until he put his arms together and presented you with "dipshit". Such is the nature of the lexical mutilations which are perpetrated on Chinese characters.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousDecember 7, 2004 at 3:10 PM

    Actually, I think someone who had "shit" tattooed on one arm, whether it was accompanied by "dip" on the other or not, would still look like a complete idiot.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousDecember 12, 2004 at 10:54 PM

    The left side of the character is clearly only half a character to anyone who can read Chinese, so this guy's tattoo, although a little weird by splitting it in half, is not really wrong.

    --Randy Alexander
    Jilin City, China

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousDecember 14, 2004 at 10:23 AM

    Relax, guys. Breaking Chinese words into radicals and having fun with them is an old literary tradition in China.

    On the other hand, one of the derived meaning of "essence" (精) is "sperm". Another pitfall of using isolated Chinese words.

    ReplyDelete

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