David Beckham's Chinese Tattoo

I have received many emails regarding David Beckham's new tattoo.



Many gossip sites are questioning the actual meaning & legitimacy behind his tattoo.

Lucky for Beckham, his tattoo styled in Chinese Cursive Script (also known as Grass Script) is correct.

生死有命 富貴在天, which is Chinese proverb of "death and life have determined appointments, riches and honor depend upon heaven."

Two Women Under One Roof

A few days ago reader Glenn emailed me a clip of NBC's television series, Life. The episode's title is "Farthingale".


NBC_Life_s01e08_Farthingale.wmv

In this clip, Detective Crews (Damian Lewis) is telling his partner that "the Chinese symbol for 'war' is two women under one roof".

This absolutely incorrect & there is no such character in Chinese dictionaries.

Matter of fact, this somewhat sexist proverb originated from English in 1417. The original quote in Old English was:

Two wymen in one howse,
Two cattes and one mowce,
Two dogges and one bone,
Maye never accorde in one.

Western Folklore, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Apr., 1957), pp. 121-124, doi:10.2307/1497029

In the book titled "A Short History of the Chinese People" by L. Carrington Goodrich (ISBN 1406769762), it has stated that "there is no such character exist in Chinese dictionaries".



As Dr. Kelley L. Ross (interesting trivia: Dr. Ross is the nephew of R. L. Les Kelley, the founder of Kelley Blue Book) pointed out on his website:

It is sometimes said that the Chinese character for "trouble" shows two women under one roof. Such a character is possible, and would look like this , but there actually is no such Chinese character, though I understand that the myth lives on the internet.

The way I suspect how this hoax spread so rapidly is because the Chinese character for peace & tranquil is 安, which illustrates a woman 女 under the roof.

However, someone has decided to piece two cultural & linguistic references together to make a joke:

"You know the Chinese character for peaceful or tranquil is 安, one woman under a roof. Do you know what the character for war is?"

"Two women under one roof?"

"Bingo!"

*laughter*

All right people, let's put an end to this urban myth!

Continental Airline's Ad with Chinese

I was in George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) last Friday & saw this advertisement for Continental Airlines.



The translation for Chinese is not exactly correct, or incorrect.



This is because 我的头发冷 can be read in two ways:

1. 我的头发+冷 means "my hair is cold", which is not "my head is cold".

2. 我的头+发冷 means "my head is getting cold".

Whether this was done intentionally or not, it is indeed clever.

Like Father, Like Son

Over three years ago, my friend John Pasden sent me a tattoo photo he took of an Australian acquaintance. The tattoo was "Death before Dishonor" in Chinese, however the orientation of characters was reversed, therefore the youngman is proudly displaying "[I] rather to be a coward than die honorably" on his forearm.

A few days ago, I took a peek at BMEzine's tattoo gallery and saw this:


http://bmeink.com/A80127/high/npsp-henry.jpg

有其父必有其子 is a Chinese idiom which means "like father, like son". Once again, the orientation of characters are reversed & the phrase is now gibberish.

His father must be really proud of his idiot son.

"Crisis" in Painkiller Jane

Glenn sent a video clip from Sci-Fi's Painkiller Jane to me.


scifi_painkillerjane.wmv

In this scene, Tate Donovan's character has written down the character 易 on a piece of paper, then proceeds to claim it is 危機, "crisis".

"Here, it is Chinese. Wei ji. The top part is danger & bottom is opportunity. Two characters, one word "crisis"..."

Many non-Chinese speakers have used this misleading "danger+opportunity=crisis" reference in their speech, including Condoleezza Rice. My good friend Mark Swofford at Pinyin.info has posted an essay by Victor H. Mair about this misperception.

Kinoki Detox Foot Pads

I have received several emails about Kinoki detoxifying foot pads.



Both Alan and I had a good laugh about the bizarre marketing tactic used by this company. Wired is calling this "the most appalling medical scam since magnetic immortality devices."

The three characters 木樹液 literally means "wood/tree sap". There is nothing traditionally Japanese about the product or the name. Our suspicion is that the manufacturer just picked a
Japanese-sounding name to peddle their schlock product to gullible Americans with a little bit of "Oriental mystique", and then afterward decided to slap the characters 木樹液 onto the TV ad as a sort of decoration.

Matter of fact, Kinoki is a direct rip-off from a brand of Japanese shoe inserts called 竹樹液, or "bamboo sap". They are only used to remove excess sweat from one's feet, therefore to eliminate foot odor. There is absolutely no claim of detoxifying heavy metal from one's body.

In my opinion, the people behind Kinoki detox foot pads should commit seppuku for misleading consumers.


Update: August 18, 2008 - NPR did a story today about this.

The newest craze in consumer health is adhesive pads filled with "detox" herbs that supposedly suck toxins out of the bottom of our feet while we sleep.

An analysis at a California laboratory shows no significant difference between used and unused pads.

Librarian's Freebie

Everyone has a different opinion about librarians. Some may think they are a bunch stiffy nerds who are addicted to books & obsessive compulsively trying keep everything in order. While, other urban myth has branded librarians as a naughty bunch of nympho sexual freaks.

Few weeks ago I received this photo from a librarian. She got it over ten years ago and thought it mean "to give love". Of course with time, certain phrases in any language would morph astray from their original meaning.



I had a discussion with Alan, my senior Japanese linguistic consultant (I want my "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" back, damn it!), about this and here is our conclusion.

Tian: 付 in Chinese means "to give/pay". To me, this tattoo 付恋 means "pay(paid) love". What do you think?

Alan: This combination 付恋 is not found in Japanese, so it has no fixed meaning.

I can't think of an instance in Japanese where 付 or 付ける has the meaning of "to give/pay" but it certainly does have lots of meanings. A lot of them have to with adding something, fixing or attaching something to something else. There is one sense where 付け means a "tab" or "bill" at a bar or the like, so it has more of the sense of running up or adding to a bill rather than paying it.

The phrase -付き as a suffix means "with" in the sense of something that comes with something else like an apartment that comes with a garage or a lunch set with coffee.

Perhaps the creator of this tattoo wanted 付恋 to mean "with love" but the character order is wrong for Japanese. This would also not be the normal way to write "with love" anyway, because it would be more like 愛を込めて as a set phrase for this.

Well, I guess it could be interpreted as something like giving love in addition to something else. A "freebie" perhaps? Giving a little love on the side? I don't know.

Tian: The owner of this tattoo is a librarian, and you know the rumors about how naughty those librarians... ;)

Alan: Oh, yeah? You don't say... I thought those librarians were a pretty straitlaced, bookish sort. You'll have to tell me some of those rumors...