Encounter with an Unknown "Dragon" Character

While browsing through Amazon.com for textbooks, I saw this Chinese dragon T-shirt for sale by ChoiceShirts. The odd thing is that the character on the shirt does not mean "dragon" (龍), matter of fact, I have never seen it before in my life.



The closest two characters I can find are these, which there is no connection with dragon:



遭 = come across, meet with, encounter

迪 = enlighten, advance; progress

Pointless Gibberish

From BMEzine's gallery, this is a prime example of someone who obviously did not do enough research or none at all. Not only the entire string of characters are gibberish, several characters are missing important dots,



貴 = expensive, costly, valuable

忍 = endure, bear, suffer; forbear



But they are mixture of Japanese Kanji, Traditional and Simplified versions of Hanzi.



栄 (Traditional Chinese 榮; Simplified Chinese 荣) = glory, honor; flourish, prosper

恵 (Traditional Chinese 惠) = favor, benefit, confer kindness

爱 (Traditional Chinese 愛) = love, be fond of, like

労 (Traditiona Chinese 勞; Simplified Chinese 劳) = labor, toil, do manual work



Granted, many Kanji and Hanzi are the same characters, but at least try to keep them in a consistant form.

Sacrificial Grasshopper Worshipping

(Thanks to Shannon Larrett's BMEzine.com)



I don't know if the person got this tattoo after watched Kung Fu too many times, where Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine) was called "Young Grasshopper", or he has some kind of deep connection with katydids (grasshoppers). Regardless, his tattoo says he worships grasshoppers.



Here are what some of my colleagues have commented:



Brendan: "Perhaps 'hold a sacrifice to katydids?' It doesn't even sound like a plausible transliteration of anything, except maybe a really halfassed way of writing 'Jason'. (In Cantonese it's 'jai jung,' or something like that, according to Wenlin.) I dunno - maybe it sounds like something with a Japanese reading of the characters?"



Jeremy: "Sacrificial grasshopper? 'Cultists sacrificed a grasshopper on my underwear, dying it red with blood'?"



Angela: "I simply don't have a clue. Unless I'm too ignorant of the Chinese language, I believe the bottom character doesn't even exist! If I have to guess, this tattoo means 'worship a scarified/dead grasshopper'."



祭 = sacrifice to, worship

螽 = katydid, grasshopper