As many of you know, I lived in Beijing from 2000-02. I never became fluent and can only recognize some characters. However, it's become a bit of a pastime for me to ask clueless Laowais what their Chinese tattoos mean. Without fail, I later find out they were quite wrong.
And so it is with the Rosa Parks of Whores. Thanks to Tony Zeng, my former China Daily colleague and now a writer for Bloomberg in New York, for letting me know this is actually the symbol for... well... I'll just show ya:
Oops! Luckily for the New York Post, the tattoo isn't something obscene or nutty. That's the problem NBA players run into when they get tats they think say "Love" and "Harmony" but actually mean "Fuck you very much." Then they appear on Chinese TV because, post Yao Ming the Chinese are gaga over the NBA, and controversy erupts.
As it happens, had Stadtmiller checked it out, she would've had a brilliant ironic bit for her hit piece. You see, Chinese characters frequently have multiple meanings, all roughly in the same neighborhood. And Norton's tat could mean "destroy" or, perhaps even more pertinent...
How neatly that would've fit her narrative, huh? Bummer!
