Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness

[atariboy]

No I havent heard of those.

I have been thinking about "chī yí qiàn, zhǎng yí zhì" which I think means "Each Time You Stumble & Fall, You Gain Experience & Wisdom" or "Experience one moat, gain one wisdom/knowledge".

I understand that in chinese the first character can mean "eat", but in this case, it means to "experience" (as used in this proverb, it is suggesting that you have fallen into a moat and/or had a hard time crossing it).

Thus language is so complicated but I need to translate is correctly

[leeyah]

chī yí qiàn, zhǎng yí zhì = 吃一堑，长一智

It means experience is the best teacher or word-for-word: 吃 (means to eat but also figuratively) to suffer, endure 陷坑 a fall (into a pit) but 长 grow in wisdom 一智

It's good

[atariboy]

Yes I quite like that one. So if I had that down my back, should it look like this with lines in between.

吃

一

堑

长

一

智

I need to select the calligraphy carefully

[leeyah]

Sorry, but I know nothing about tattoo aesthetics, you'll have to wait for someone else's reply on this.

But oh, note that " 一 " is not a line it's a Chinese numeral, actually it's number 1.

In this context (proverb) it implies progressiveness of action.

& if you're going to do it traditional characters look better:

吃一塹，長一智

Cheers!

Edited July 31, 2009 at 09:16 PM by leeyah