For a number of years, I’ve daydreamed about the idea of getting a small tattoo, and thought about what I could put on my body that I would really, really be sure to still like and believe in 50 or 60 years down the line. One idea I’ve had is to get little flags representing the countries I’ve visited…even if some countries cease to exist, I’d have a record that I visited them when they did exist.
Anyway, the last few days, I’ve come up with a new idea. A lot of Western folks get tattoos of Chinese characters, not really knowing what the heck they mean, or trusting someone else who doesn’t really know or care what they mean. Fortunately for me, I’ve actually learned a bit of the language and writing system.
So…my idea is to get a tattoo with a local slang phrase. I’ve found the correct hanzi for one of them: “太尖啊”, pronounced “tài jiān a”, which literally means “too sharp” in Mandarin, but which in Guiyang dialect means “very clever”. The “a” part of it is sort of like Canadians’ “eh?”.
Tattoos are not a popular part of Chinese culture…in fact, when I mentioned my idea to some of my students, they told me things like “tattoos give you cancer” and “you know they hurt a lot, right?” One student, an NBA fan (like most of them, at least the boys) told me that he thinks Allen Iverson has a tattoo “addiction”.
February 17th, 2011 - 4:19 pm
“太尖啊” sounds like a great idea……but do you know it has the same pronunciation as ”太监啊“， which means “you are an eunuch”@@?
anyways，hope you had a good time in China^^|||