Tattoos

Recently I was talking with a friend who has several tattoos. He had several Chinese symbols that he was showing me. Which of course sparked the typical question “what does that mean?” for each of the symbols. And he had an answer for all of them, this one is the symbol for strength, this one is the symbol for harmony, this one is the symbol for happiness, this one is the symbol for passion and so on.

Now I don’t know if I am just a gigantic smart ass or if this is something that other people have thought/asked but I had to know. So I ask him “how do you know?” I mean unless you know Chinese, how do you really know what has been put under your skin?

Now with the internet you can use a search engine to find what a symbol looks like but do you carry your laptop to the tattoo shop? Do they have an internet hookup in the shops? If not, how do you know? I mean you are taking it on blind faith that the guy with the ink and needle is honest and really knows what he is talking about. And before the internet was invented how did anyone know?

It’s a good thing that I am not a tattoo artist because I would be screwing with people big time. Someone would come into my shop and want the Chinese symbol for leadership or something like that and I would tattoo them with the Chinese symbol for virgin or something like that. Just simply because I am a jackass. So I wonder, has anyone ever gotten a different symbol than what they wanted? That would be pretty damn funny to me.

But that leads me to something else that I wonder about. It seems that in America the Chinese symbols are very popular. Unless I am mistaken, these symbols are words in the Chinese culture. So, are American words popular as tattoos in China? Is there so guy running around China with the word “power” or “strength” or “happiness” or something like that tattooed on them? Which also makes me wonder, are there jackass tattoo artist in China would tattoo “booger” or something like that on a guy who wanted to get “power” tattooed on them? That would be classic.

Don’t get dead