Bad Ink

December 15, 2004

Haven't we all witnessed lame-ass tattoos in Asian languages, mostly on people who don't know the language in the first place? For your browsing amusement, I bring to you Hanzi Smatter, where users submit photos of such tattoos to a guy named Tian, who then posts on whether or not they actually mean anything. As Tian writes: "I have been a fan of the website Engrish.com for years. To my surprise, there is virtually no website existent for pointing out the faults in Westerners' interest of Eastern culture, especially the usage of Hanzi Chinese characters. As a Chinese American, I felt it was my duty and honor to educate the public about the misusage of Chinese characters." The results are somewhat unintentionally hilarious: witness such photographic evidence as the sorry sucker who got the Chinese word for "idiot" permanently etched on his flesh.

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