Heya
A few weeks back I went to China and it was such an eye opening experience on so many levels that I decided I wanted my first tattoo to be some kind of Mandarin character. Thing is, there are so many horror stories on the internet- like that poor bastard who got ‘this is an ugly boy’ tattooed on his arm- that there are a few things I want to clear up before i take the plunge – I’d really appreciate it if anyone could answer some of these queries, Thanks! 😉
I want, for a number of reasons, to get the symbol ‘空 kong (1) ‘ in a cursive style – I’m right in thinking this means sky or empty or hollow right?
But does it have any negative connotations- I mean, i never saw the character ‘kong’ on front of a toilet cubicle door, meaning VACANT, in China- but could Chinese people associate that character with toilets, a vacant sign etc.? I know pretty much everything has some kind of stigma but still…
Does the character ‘kong’ actually make sense on its own as just an abstract word? i.e if u knew chinese and you saw a guy with that tattooed on them, would you stop and think ‘what the hell does that mean?’
Or is there anything else I need to be careful of before I jump in and get inked? I’m gonna wait four months anyway….and if I’m still not sick of the sight of it then… 🙂
Wow, wrote a lot….thanks very much for your time! xx
Excellent research material. You pretty much clarified everything in your first post.
As far as negative connotation implied – I think the character itself has wide enough of a realm for interpretation to make it look abstract. Although I would say, as a native Chinese speaker, that if I do see this design on someone’s body, my interpretation would vary depending on where it is tattooed.
For instance, I would connect it to somewhat negative meanings if it’s tattooed on the back of your head (your hindbrain) or your chest (i.e. that you’re mind is hollow or your heart is empty, vacant of feelings/thoughts).
But if you tattooed it somewhere else, I probably would not relate it to anything negative at first glance (or second, or third, maybe fourth, but if I had doubts about someone’s intention for getting a certain word, I would ask before judging its “correctness”).
If you’re thinking of a more “zen” word, I would suggest you look more into the Buddhist scripts and see if there is a better alternative. I can’t think of one on the top of my head right now for a one-character word that would embody all meanings of “sky”, “hollow”, “empty”, “free time”, etc.
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