Tattoo...

[iron_leg_dave]

Greetings forums.

I am posting this here, because I'm not sure where it fits... and also this forums gets the most hits.

Here is my predicament:

I have been waiting to get my first tattoo until I go to China, and meet someone in the Chen family, or a monk at Shaolin, or something completely awesome like that. I have been waiting since I was 18, and everyone got their first tat, and all of the beautiful subsequent work. My desire was to get a master to write something relevant to Shaolin or Taiji and pay them for the work, which I would come back to the states and get permanently placed on my wrist or left pectoral.

Unfortunately, I turned 28 this year, and the future looks less likely to involve a trip to Shaolin or Chen villiage than the past.

SO....


Who has an image of kung fu/tai ji relevant characters, written by a kung fu/tai ji master, which wouldn't mind them being tattooed on a random kung fu/tai ji practitioner's body?


Hook a gong fu brother up.

[KC Elbows]

You should seek the characters drawn by a calligraphy master first and foremost, if they do taiji, that's a bonus.

Keep in mind, traditional Chinese culture thinks pretty low of tattoos. Not that that should dissuade you either way, just so you know, most teachers in China would be silently mortified at the idea: they don't see that as a representation of dedication.

However, really, focus your search to what a calligraphy master has done, not a kung fu one. Search for images of calligraphy.

Hopefully someone else may help with some images.

[iron_leg_dave]

You should seek the characters drawn by a calligraphy master first and foremost, if they do taiji, that's a bonus.

Keep in mind, traditional Chinese culture thinks pretty low of tattoos. Not that that should dissuade you either way, just so you know, most teachers in China would be silently mortified at the idea: they don't see that as a representation of dedication.

However, really, focus your search to what a calligraphy master has done, not a kung fu one. Search for images of calligraphy.

Hopefully someone else may help with some images.

Thanks.

I do understand your points.

I however, am culturally American via Sweden, and while calligraphy mastery is important, I really want something done by a master of gong fu/tai ji. A Chinese hand that holds strong kung fu is a hand that I want to write the label that will become a part of me.

Thanks very much for your input.

[David Jamieson]

Here's a few for a start

enjoy.

[iron_leg_dave]

Here's a few for a start

enjoy.

[KC Elbows]

Seriously, many kungfu teachers act as if they're a calligraphy master, and most suck. I leave your decisions to your discretion, but urge you to narrow the field by choosing from only true calligraphy masters, as they better capture the characters.

Just because one can fight well doesn't mean they have the same fury in their handwriting.

This is writing that is permanently on you, and you are not likely to learn beforehand the subtleties of chinese calligraphy(or you'd just do it yourself), so there's really nno harm in looking for calligraphy masters' works in the field.

Past that, hopefully someone here can post a pic of some famous kung fu master's work for ya.

[ghostexorcist]

Keep in mind, traditional Chinese culture thinks pretty low of tattoos.

It was traditionally associated with criminals. This has nothing to do with Yakuza-like body tattoos. In ancient China, men found guilty of crimes were often tattooed on the face. These tattoos were made to look similar to military face tattoos so criminals could easily be absorbed into the Chinese army.

I know this sounds weird, but try to get a another person to verify what the tattoo says. Otherwise, you might be in a changing room when a Chinese persons asks you why it says "Cat anus" on your back (no, I'm not speaking from personal experience.)

A lot of people tend to get 尽忠报国 because it is associated withe Yue Fei. But there is no proof he ever had such a tattoo or that he has any connection to the many styles attributed to him.

I've always thought about getting a Maori tattoo myself. Tattoo guns are for pussies. Bone needles, ink, and a hammer are the only way to go.

[Syn7]

It was traditionally associated with criminals. This has nothing to do with Yakuza-like body tattoos. In ancient China, men found guilty of crimes were often tattooed on the face. These tattoos were made to look similar to military face tattoos so criminals could easily be absorbed into the Chinese army.

I know this sounds weird, but try to get a another person to verify what the tattoo says. Otherwise, you might be in a changing room when a Chinese persons asks you why it says "Cat anus" on your back (no, I'm not speaking from personal experience.)

A lot of people tend to get 尽忠报国 because it is associated withe Yue Fei. But there is no proof he ever had such a tattoo or that he has any connection to the many styles attributed to him.

I've always thought about getting a Maori tattoo myself. Tattoo guns are for pussies. Bone needles, ink, and a hammer are the only way to go.

yeah, i have heard lots of stories of people getting chinese or japanese words and finding out the hard way that it isnt what they thought it was... i bet some asians do this on purpose for laughs at the stupid whiteboys...

yeah, who needs guns, its all about the hammer....!!!

[bawang]

It was traditionally associated with criminals. This has nothing to do with Yakuza-like body tattoos.

its exactly like yakuza tatoos. all the legendary gangsters had tatoos

[Xiao3 Meng4]

If you want a Kung Fu Tattoo, try this:

Go find a Daoist monk and have them paint a Calligraphic charm for you. Then use that as your tattoo.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's more to the disdain of Tattoos in Chinese culture than criminality. It has a lot to do with slavery - and acupuncture, in turn, has a lot to do with both.

Way back in the day, like around 5,300 years ago or something, lived a tattooed man.



No one knows where he got his tattoos, or why exactly he got them; when they discovered his body in a Alpian glacier in the early 90s


they took note of the tattoos and someone remarked that they were placed in areas that appeared to correspond to acupuncture points in TCM:

Expert opinions from three acupuncture societies indicate that nine of the tattoos could be identified as being located directly on or within 6 mm of traditional acupuncture points. Two more tattoos are located on an acupuncture meridian but not close to a point. One tattoo is a local point. Three tattoos are situated between 6 mm and 13 mm from the closest acupuncture points.

Further research indicated that the Tattoos were placed over areas exhibiting pathophysiological signs:



So at some early point there seems to have been a connection between Tattoos and therapy.

Later on, about 700 BC, we find this guy:


He was a Scythian who roamed the Central Eurasian Plains. His Tattoos are much more ornate, and we see what are thought to be "apotropaic" tattoos - charm tattoos for protection, possibly fertility, good hunting, and the like. Still, on his back near his spine we see a series of very simple dot tattoos which are not reflective of the tattoo skills of the time. I propose that they are tattoos which follow the same rationale as Oetzi's tattoos - namely, they are therapeutic.

Fast forward to the 1920s, to when the last Yupiget natives on St. Lawrence Island received traditional Arctic tribal tattoos. The Tattoo tradition in the arctic spans over 3500 years.


Its practice methods and rationale were recorded before they dissappeared completely - again, they correspond to a therapeutic, apotropaic and ancient Chinese Medical use:

Inuit (or Eskimos generally) and St. Lawrence Island Yupiget, in particular, like many other circumpolar peoples, regarded living bodies as inhabited by multiple souls, each soul residing in a particular joint. The anthropologist Robert Petersen has noted that the soul is the element that gives the body life processes, breath, warmth, feelings, and the ability to think and speak. Accordingly, the Eskimologist Edward Weyer stated in his tome, The Eskimos, that, "[a]ll disease is nothing but the loss of a soul; in every part of the human body there resides a little soul, and if part of the man's body is sick, it is because the little soul had abandoned that part, [namely, the joints]."

From this perspective, it is not surprising that tattoos had significant importance in funerary events, especially on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. Funerary tattoos (nafluq) consisted of small dots at the convergence of various joints: shoulders, elbows, hip, wrist, knee, ankle, neck, and waist joints. For applying them, the female tattooist, in cases of both men and women, used a large, skin-sewing needle with whale sinew dipped into a mixture of lubricating seal oil, urine, and lampblack scraped from a cooking pot. Lifting a fold of skin she passed the needle through one side and out the other, leaving two "spots" under the epidermis.

Paul Silook, a native of St. Lawrence Island, explained that these tattoos protected a pallbearer from spiritual attack. Death was characterized as a dangerous time in which the living could become possessed by the "shade" or malevolent spirit of the deceased. A spirit of the dead was believed to linger for some time in the vicinity of its former village. Though not visible to all, the "shade" was conceived as an absolute material double of the corpse. And because pallbearers were in direct contact with this spiritual entity, they were ritualistically tattooed to repel it. Their joints became the locus of tattoo because it was believed that the evil spirit entered the body at these points, as they were the seats of the soul(s). Urine and tattoo pigments, as the nexus of dynamic and apotropaic power, prevented the evil spirit from penetrating the pallbearer's body.

South East Asian tribes also have a history of tattooing, as do the tribes of Japan, such as the Ainu. All of them use Tattooing in much the same manner.

So what happened in China? Several theories exist. Here's mine.

With the gradual growth of kingdoms, a need arose for keeping track of whether or not the people on your land were friends or foes. Whereas prior identification may have rested with the types of tattoos a person had, the ever-growing alliances made tattoos an unreliable way to distinguish the enemy from an ally. With so many variations, how could one possibly know where the person approaching was from? So some king, at some point, abolished Tattoos. Maybe it was at the recommendation of Confucius in the Zhou dynasty. Maybe it was earlier, and Confucius reframed the idea in a "don't defile the body" kind of way. At any rate, it meant that Tattoos were no longer regarded as an element of a "civilized" people. It now belonged to "Barbarians" who were often enslaved, causing tattoos to become associated with slaves. Slaves and convicted criminals shared similar predicaments and so Tattooing eventually became associated with Criminals (plus, criminal acts are often described as "barbaric".)

Here's the thing: in China, tattoos appear to initially have been therapeutic and associated with ancestral medicine (ie illness was caused by unhappy ancestors / the Inuit "Shade.") Prior to the Zhou dynasty, Chinese medicine was primarily ancestral. During the Zhou, demonic medicine began replacing ancestral medicine: illness was no longer due to ancestors but to demons. Why the switch? Well, I think it connects back to Slavery. In China, a slave was socially viewed as an ancestorless orphan. As such, ancestral medicine didn't work - meaning slaves required a different explanatory model for their illness.

So demonic medicine came to the forefront: no longer was the goal to protect against dead spirits by shoring up the gates; now, it was to exorcise malevolent influences that had already entered. In urban village and city spaces, men were hired to shout, run down the roads and thrust spears into the darkened corners and alleyways in a ritualistic "exorcism" either every night or on special days. It is possible that this practice relates to acupuncture emergence as a primary method of "invisible tattooing/point exorcism" among doctors.

Even the Ling Shu, an acupuncture classic from about 300BC, provides technical details which point to "tonification" being linked to the insertion of material into and under the skin and "dispersing" being linked to the removal of material from inside and underneath the dermis, which strongly suggests a link between Tattoo therapy and acupuncture therapy in my mind.

The popularity of Tattooing ebbed and flowed over the centuries after that. During one dynasty, Tattooing was so popular that tattoo shops had stencils made that they would just dip in ink and then tap into the skin all at once - one (or two or three) taps = one complete tattoo.

In the last century, for the most part, Tattoos were associated with gangs and hence crime.

Ok, my rant is done. Now back to your regular programming.
CSP

[bawang]

In the last century, for the most part, Tattoos were associated with gangs and hence crime.

tatoo was asociated with gangs and revolutionary for over one thousad years

[ghostexorcist]

its exactly like yakuza tatoos. all the legendary gangsters had tatoos

I'm talking about the root of the stigma: tattoos as corporal punishment. Criminals were tattooed on their face. This is not something they could hide. The public knew to stay away from such people. It was later that gangsters embraced tattoos as apart of their cultural and social identity.

The "Five Punishments" during the Zhou Dynasty were death, castration, cutting off the feet, cutting off the nose, and tattooing.

So some king, at some point, abolished Tattoos. Maybe it was at the recommendation of Confucius in the Zhou dynasty. Maybe it was earlier, and Confucius reframed the idea in a "don't defile the body" kind of way.

Tattoos were considered one of the “mutilating punishments,” so you are on the right track.

[GeneChing]

This redefines 'dumb blonde'

MAY 2, 2016 8:42 PM
Woman accidentally gets Jeremy Lin tattoo, becomes 'biggest fan'

Woman asks for Chinese translation on Internet for tattoo – big mistake

‘Answer’ turned out to be Chinese for NBA star Jeremy Lin's name

On learning truth, she declares self his biggest fan, meets him


Screenshot from Holland Christensen’s confessional YouTube video. YouTube

The way Holland Christensen tells it – in an 11-minute video posted to YouTube – she did “something really stupid” a couple of months ago.

She says she wanted to get a tattoo with a Chinese phrase – because she “likes to travel” – and she asked for a translation from someone on the Internet. “Obviously, you don’t do that,” she says in the video. “You don’t ask anyone on the Internet for anything.”



Her Internet “friend” tricked her into getting Charlotte Hornet Jeremy Lin’s name in Chinese permanently etched onto her ankle. Holland didn’t even know who Jeremy Lin was. But, after getting the tattoo, she quickly became Lin’s biggest fan.

“My first thought was actually, well he’s really attractive, so if nothing else there’s that.”

Holland recently attended a Charlotte Hornets game but was unable to meet Lin. But Lin tweeted this to her after the game:

Jeremy Lin ✔ ‎@JLin7
What do you think of my new tattoo @hollyisyourstar - http://bit.ly/23sK6BB ? @NBA_Reddit
4:46 PM - 12 Apr 2016
Photo published for Saw this tattoo online and copied it, anyone know what it... • /r/nba
Saw this tattoo online and copied it, anyone know what it... • /r/nba
5825 points and 1012 comments so far on reddit
reddit.com
172 172 Retweets 644 644 likes

He also posted this photo to Reddit, showing that he had inked the same tattoo onto his own ankle.

Saw this tattoo online and copied it, anyone know what it means?
by jeremylin07 · 21 days ago


Saw this tattoo online and copied it, anyone know what it means? Saw this tattoo online and copied it, anyone know what it means?
66 points
1,277,726 views

And then finally, she met him, while attending another game in Charlotte on April 25, when the Hornets defeated the Miami Heat 89-85 in game 4 of their playoff series:

Holland Christensen
‏@hollyisyourstar



RETWEETS 89 LIKES 306
7:54 PM - 25 Apr 2016
Charlotte, NC

She tweeted that the meeting brought "closure" on her tattoo, adding, "I turned a mistake into something good."

[GeneChing]

34 Ridiculous Chinese Character Tattoos Translated
MEANIE CRIME POET HUSBAND HANDS.

Posted on August 2, 2013, at 10:43 a.m.
Ellie Hall
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Kevin Tang
BuzzFeed Staff


1. "What are you up to these days?" "Oh, being a meanie crime poet."

Via spiderdaily.wayi.com.tw

2. Thank you for telling us what kind of hands you have.

Via w.baike.com

3. A chill death metal jam band?

hanzismatter.blogspot.com

4. Whoa there.

Via xinhaiguang2008.blog.sohu.com

5. Stop fishing for compliments!

hanzismatter.blogspot.com

6. Me bite too.

Via epic-chinese-tattoo-fails.tumblr.com

7.

hanzismatter.blogspot.com

8. Cryptic review of Babe 2: Pig in the City.

hanzismatter.blogspot.com

9. I would actually get this.

hanzismatter.blogspot.com

10. This one too.

Via sports.qq.com

continued next post

[GeneChing]

11. This one not so much.


12. I would name my baby this.

Via bbs.tiexue.net

13.

Via spiderdaily.wayi.com.tw

14.

hanzismatter.blogspot.com

15.

hanzismatter.blogspot.com

16. I guess this could be a legit broke-pride tatt.

hanzismatter.blogspot.com

17. I think Shawne Merriman meant it to sound tougher than this.


18. All right, Marat Safin.


19. This sounds like a level in Diablo II.

Via xinhaiguang2008.blog.sohu.com

20. Sure thing, Sean May.

Via sports.espn.go.com

continued next post