At Gwangjang Market, after I spotted a golden brown seafood pancake sizzling on a flattop grill, I ordered one and devoured it. I told him that I wanted to get a Korean word tattooed after traveling to Seoul last year, and wondered what he thought.Īt the time I was struggling to find pleasure in food following a difficult breakup. His last name is inked in Korean on his throat, and the Korean characters for the number 17 tattooed on his neck, because he moved to Los Angeles at the age of 21 with just $1,700 in his pocket. His skin has enough ink to print a whole newspaper, with tattoos pretty much everywhere but his face. Cho said the store experiences steady demand for Chinese tattoos, as does pretty much every other tattoo parlor on the boardwalk. Later that day, I met Mike Cho, a Korean American from Philadelphia and the owner of Ocean Front Tattoo in Venice Beach for the last 11 years. “Now I open a bag of shrimp chips and I don’t give a f- about what anyone says,” said Jia, 26. I think it’s a natural reaction for anyone growing up with Long Duk Dong from the 1984 movie “Sixteen Candles” and racist Asian jokes on prime-time TV. They feel protective of their connection to Chinese culture and language. Tattooing the words was their way of refusing shame and practicing self acceptance, a “way of finding freedom,” Jia said.īut they’re still uncomfortable about seeing Chinese-character tattoos on non-Asian people. So Jia inked the words fu chi dou mei you, which means “luckless.” Their mother used to eye Jia’s tattoos with distaste, warning them that all the luck was bleeding out of their body. I spoke to a Chinese American tattoo artist, Em Jia, who has a tattoo that plays with this concept. Preserving the body is considered an important aspect of filial piety within the context of Confucianism, and that precept encourages long hair, forbids suicide and is interpreted as prohibiting tattoos. Trying to determine which Chinese-character tattoos are the most authentic or appropriate is pointless, because the most culturally accurate thing to do is to never get one. There are no easy rules that neatly separate cultural appropriation from cultural appreciation because there is no single way to respect people’s pain. When the words on my arm healed, my anger faded with the pain. I used to see tattoos as talismans of pain, but now I believe they also represent healing. Or at least, a sense that you have less to fear from it than before. What you’re left with is a feeling of victory over suffering. It’s enough pain to frustrate your attempts to avoid thinking about it.īut the most important thing about the pain of a tattoo is that it will end, as with most pain in life. When the tattoo gun’s twin needles pierce your skin, it stings enough that the body instinctively seeks to stop the pain, whether by flinching or flooding your brain with endorphins. The pain of a tattoo always seems to land just short of intolerable, depending on where you get it.
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