Patrick Havens on April 5th, 2006

Hanzi Smatter 一知半解 Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese charecters in Western Culture.

I was reading various news posts about people who had gotten tatoos only to find out they didn’t say what they thought they said. Generally with Chinese or Japaenese charecters, they sometimes where only partially off. But sometimes they weren’t even close. Someone meantioned that there was a blog dedicacted to just that.

I think the reason he started the site really “caps” it.

I have been a fan of the website, Engrish, 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 (汉字), Chinese characters.

As a Chinese-American(美籍华人), I felt it was my duty and honor to educate the public about the misusage of Chinese characters, Hanzi(汉字).

The idea came to me after I went to Gallup, New Mexico with my friend Matt in June 2004. During our road trip, we came across a Mitsubishi(三菱)Mirage with Hanzi(汉字) stickers on it.

It was nothing new, since most owners of Japanese(日本的) modified cars like to put on some decorative stickers on their vehicles. What was interesting is that the owner of this particular “Mirage(海市蜃楼)” has put on stickers of “Prelude(披露)” on his Mitsubishi(三菱), yet Prelude was made by Honda (本田) Motors.

I started reading through and I’ve got to say that I kept going back and forth between laughing and shaking my head.

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