Vexed

Saw the most curious neck tattoo on the way into work this morning. Actually, I've seen it before, but couldn't read it. As it happens, I've been carrying my Chinese pocket dictionary with me lately (to help maintain the pretense that I'm finally going to finish working my through Lu Xun's 《故鄉》), so I was able to look up the characters this time. They are (definitions courtesy of Lin Yu-tang):

煩 fán Troublesome, bothersome, confusing; vexed, troubled.
魄 pò The baser animal spirits of man, contrasted with finer elements 魂 hún, the two together conceived as animating the human body.

In general, I find the only way to understand these tattoos is to work back to their literal English translation. So I'm guessing that what he was aiming for was "troubled soul".

But, as always, there are problems with the characters he chose. First of all, Chinese verbs aren't generally marked for voice. They can have either an active or passive interpretation depending on what best fits the context. You can see what that means for a verb like 煩 fán, whose basic meaning is active "trouble, vex". As a modifier, it can mean "that which is troubled", but an active interpretation, i.e. "that which is troublesome", is not only possible, but--I would argue--more common overall. Of course, it really depends on what the modified element is. A phrase like 煩心 fánxīn I would naturally interpret as "troubled heart/mind" and it would take a mighty unusual context to get me to accept "heart/mind which is troublesome".

Now look at the second element of the tattoo again. The 魄 pò is not the "soul" as those in the Western tradition would conceive of it. In fact, a number of Daoist techniques are dedicated to "starving" the 魄 pò in order to purify the body before death. It's more like an id that helps animate the body. According to supernatural lore, it can even do this without the assistance of the 魂 hún, but you know what you get then? That's right: A 殭屍 jiāngshī or Chinese vampire. Given that, are you more likely to interpret 煩魄 as "vexed spirit" or "vexatious spirit"? Personally, although I've still never seen Mr Vampire, I find it hard to imagine that the title character is afflicted by many cris de conscience à la Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Could this implication be deliberate? Could the tattoo's intention be bad-ass rather than emo? Perhaps, but in that case 煩 fán is still unfortunate because--as the translation "vexing" implies--it refers to petty irritations rather than serious torments. For instance, it forms the first element of several terms which imply fussiness, like 煩細, 煩碎, and 煩瑣. A 煩魄 strikes me as ghost whose vileness would consist of hiding your pens and making your beer go flat rather than, say, sucking all your cerebrospinal fluid out through the soles of your feet.

So now I'm vexed. How did he come up with this? And is there any way to ask him about it without coming off as a condescending know-it-all?

「詩聖杜拾遺像」

杜甫曾經做過一個叫做「拾遺」的小官，因以又稱做「杜拾遺」。在杜甫草堂中，有一個他的雕像，底下刻著「詩聖杜拾遺像」，正確的斷句應該是「詩聖」「杜拾遺」「像」，但是有人弄錯了（當地的導遊說的），於是就變成「詩聖」「杜拾」「遺像」。好好的一個詩聖「杜拾遺」當場變成了「杜拾」。如果杜甫有知的話，可能會馬上從天國下來教訓這些弄錯他名字的傢伙。