Oriental Tattoo Symbols

By John Chan

Chinese tattoos hold a strange kind of charm for people and in spite of their ancient origin they are still extremely popular. The beauty of these tattoos has lately been discovered by the western world and they are very much in demand though they are not aware of the meaning of these tattoos.

The exotic Chinese tattoos are so attractive that people fancy them without being aware of what they mean. The western television media has popularized the Chinese tattoos to such an extent that the young people there get the tattoos done permanently on their body without bothering about their meaning.

At times racing to get a Chinese tattoo symbol on your body could leave you regretting it for the rest of your life. This is because what may seem to you as an aesthetically appealing design may have a totally awkward and embarrassing meaning that will get any one familiar with the meaning of Chinese symbols laughing and staring at you for all the wrong reasons.

As an art form Chinese tattoos present an exotic and interesting means of presenting it. It is so aesthetically presented that today it is claiming world wide fame though this form of expression have been around for centuries. Interestingly Chinese themselves do not put much value on tattooing as it is not considered to be respectable.

It is a amazing fact that tattoo as a form of art was considered to be barbaric in ancient China. In spite of such feelings the tattoo artists had expressed their art in a most artistic and philosophical way and the symbols representing the tattoos mean many different things.

You would be amazed to learn that what today is considered to be the final in fashion was shunned by the Chinese people in the ancient times. These vastly popular tattoo symbols were then used to stamp the body of the criminals so that they could be treated as outcasts.

People who are actually interested in getting a Chinese tattoo and do not understand the meaning of existing symbols wish to get names, ideas and concepts from other languages translated to Chinese tattoos. This does not create much problem because most of what they wish to be translated is already existing in the Chinese tattoo symbols and as an art form it goes back to 4000 years in history.

The Chinese writing system is a totally developed science that has more than 70,000 symbols. So you can't possibly even conceive as many concepts as can be translated into Chinese symbols for the use of tattoos or otherwise. Anything in any contemporary language can be converted into Chinese symbols and produce the same aesthetically pleasing look.

Some people misconceive conventional Chinese symbols to be the same as the script known as Kanji. The truth of the matter is that the Kanji although Chinese in origin was adopted and modified by the Japanese. Whereas the Chinese tattoo symbols that may even have a similar physical appearance can have drastically different meanings. - 33385

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