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The Chinese Tattoo Prank
by Whistler My victim, the 20-something girl with the Chinese tattoo, has just walked into my office. "Hao dan!" I start. "Huhnwha?" she replies. "Wu zhuang diao?" "Are you talking to me?" "Mei yu sheng han?" She stands there, looking confused. "You don't speak Chinese?" I ask. "No, why?" "Well, I saw the tattoo, and I thought you must." "No." So I launch into the questions: what made her decide on a Chinese symbol, who was the artist, were they Chinese, everything except what the symbol stood for. She stammers through the answers, which boil down to no real reason for the Chinese, no real interest in Asian culture or language, just got the tat from some white American dude in a shop in Sayerville. Then she launches into an explanation of what it means: inner peace or some nonsense. "No," I tell her, "it says 'hao fu,' which means bean curd." "What?" "Bean curd. You know, like tofu. Kind of sounds like tofu -- hao fu, tofu, tofu, hao fu. Pleased to meet you!" "There's no way," she says, "it means inner peace." "Did you bring the art to him, or did you pick it from a book at his shop?" "He had a bunch of them on the wall." "Well, I think the guy is having you on," I tell her. "He probably copied a bunch of symbols from a take-out menu and hung them up on the wall." "I don't believe it," she says. "Well, believe what you want, but I spent six years in mainland China teaching English when I first got out of college, and I picked up a little bit of Mandarin while I was there." "Oh, shit." "Here, don't believe me, let's look at a menu." I lift up the blotter on my desk, and underneath it is a utili-jac (kind of a glassine envelope) filled with take-out menus. About halfway through the stack is one from The Great Wall. "Here it is, vegetarian meals, bean curd, HAO FU!" I hold out the menu, and there, in black and white, is the exact symbol she has on her arm (well, pretty close).  (Note: not the actual menu.) | ||||||||||
