Saturday, January 15, 2005

You Must Really Love Lemon Chicken


video: http://tinyurl.com/gqgdh

In the Jan. 11, 2005 episode of NBC's new sitcom "Committed", there is a story about Bowie's (Darius McCrary) Chinese character tattoo.

柠檬 = lemon
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24 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2005 at 1:33 AM

    Were there ever a TV episode made for Hanzi Smatter, that was it.

    Hilarious!

    -BWG
    Hong Kong
    http://www.bigwhiteguy.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. tianJanuary 15, 2005 at 1:35 AM

    Thanks. I had an interview on the phone yesterday with Chris Mincher from Washington Post about Hanzi Smatter.

    ReplyDelete
  3. inqueJanuary 15, 2005 at 3:58 AM

    hahaha . im a tattoo artist my self. man sometimes people want the most stupid shit.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2005 at 8:12 AM

    Wow! Tian, please let us know when that piece from the Washington Post is published. I want to read it!

    Angela

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2005 at 12:37 PM

    i saw that show and i was like the first word he had on doaesn't mean "little bitch" it's the same as the second word he got on ...Lemon or citus! not even lemon chicken

    ReplyDelete
  6. Patch MonkeyJanuary 15, 2005 at 3:05 PM

    I love this - I used to be much more fluent in Japanese, and once, while I was walking around with a teacher, she just started cracking up.

    There was a kid sitting there with a shirt on with kanji and hirigana, which said "I'm a Illiterate American".

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2005 at 6:56 PM

    Patch Monkey - Actually, that's a real shirt.

    True story - my girlfriend got it for me for Christmas - she can't read Kanji or Japanese kana, but I took 2 years of Japanese in college.

    I don't have the heart to tell her I would never wear this...

    http://www.twoevils.org/images/photos/funny/baka-shirt.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousJanuary 16, 2005 at 5:08 AM

    I would wear that shirt. It's true and funny to a Japanese reader.

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousJanuary 16, 2005 at 5:09 PM

    It reminds me of a prank that I read over at Zug a while ago (http://www.zug.com/pranks/tattoo/) Very very funny :D

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousJanuary 17, 2005 at 2:19 AM

    Lemon: another example of a simplified character being used in a tattoo. Please, folks, don't tattoo yourselves with simplified characters!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousJanuary 17, 2005 at 3:56 AM

    what's your problem with simplified chinese characters?
    they are just as ancient as traditional characters.
    if you don't know the history of simplified chinese characters, go to read some articles.

    ReplyDelete
  12. AnonymousJanuary 17, 2005 at 10:10 AM

    I visit your site every now and then, and these kind of posts are the reason why I keep coming back. Hilarious!

    Big thumbs up!

    ReplyDelete
  13. OlivanderJanuary 17, 2005 at 11:55 AM

    A doc where I work used to wear a tie with a single repeated character on it. One day a visiting doctor from China saw his tie and began laughing hysterically. The doc's like, "What's so funny?" The Chinese doc says, "Your tie says, 'Soup, soup, soup, soup, soup, soup, soup'."

    ReplyDelete
  14. AnonymousJanuary 17, 2005 at 1:23 PM

    Simplified characters are for writing and reading quickly. For newspapers. Signage. Not for art. Traditional characters/calligraphy are used for art. Decoration. Important formal documents.

    If you are getting a tattoo to decorate your body, you should use a traditional character. This is, in my opinion, the exact same 'should' as 'You should have a clue about what your hanzi tattoo means before you get it inked'. You're just a moron if you get a tattoo like this without understanding both the meaning, and the cultural context, of the characters.

    Maybe if you've been hired as a human sign in a grocery store you should get a tattoo that says 'lemon' in simplified characters.

    ReplyDelete
  15. BarryJanuary 17, 2005 at 4:59 PM

    I have been waiting for these and they were definitely worth the wait.

    "...of two men who love each other, you are the one who plays the woman."

    LOL

    ReplyDelete
  16. AnonymousJanuary 20, 2005 at 1:13 AM

    Re: simplified characters... Many of them did indeed exist before the writing reforms of the Communists, particularly in the "grass script" style of calligraphy. However, the majority of simplified characters used in mainland China today have no historical equivalent.

    Simplified characters are utilitarian in nature, rather than artistic. They're easy to memorize and write, and when printed in standard fonts they're easy to read. But they lack soul. They look like pruned trees. My advice is to use them only in grass script tattoos where the simplified character form has historical (i.e. pre-Communist) precedent.

    ReplyDelete
  17. TimFebruary 20, 2005 at 4:56 AM

    Hi All,

    I've heard there is a company producing t-shirts with funny kanji, does anyone know the name of this compnay? Is it baka-gaijin?

    Mail me at; tigerjapan@virtualtourist.com

    ReplyDelete
  18. tianFebruary 20, 2005 at 2:24 PM

    Tim,

    I don't know the actual company's name, but Jlist.com sells t-shirts with wacky Japanese phrases. All the phrases are correct and done on purpose.

    http://www.jlist.com/SHRT/-tian

    ReplyDelete
  19. JackieMarch 1, 2005 at 1:05 PM

    Cool and entertaining site here! I read about this site from the Washington Post today

    ReplyDelete
  20. AnonymousApril 16, 2005 at 2:18 PM

    And a "lemon" is slang for a smutty bit of fanfic porn...

    ReplyDelete
  21. AnonymousApril 17, 2005 at 5:29 PM

    "Soup" all over his tie? That's just hysterical!

    ReplyDelete
  22. AnonymousApril 17, 2005 at 5:29 PM

    "Soup" all over his tie? That's just hysterical.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Josh SmithJune 4, 2005 at 6:31 AM

    Man, just saw the 私は、バカなアメリカ人です shirt.

    I've studied Japanese for 6 years now, am living in Japan at the moment, and would totally wear that :)

    I'm a bit of a karaoke showoff as is, and a shirt like that would be the ultimate complement.

    ReplyDelete
  24. valueprep.comNovember 20, 2005 at 6:08 PM

    Really got entertained, the look on his face was priceless.
    Great technology!
    B.
    http://valueprep.com/lemon_law.html

    ReplyDelete

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