Several years ago, my wife and I were visiting a friend and her girlfriend for the weekend. On Saturday night they threw a party with all of their friends, most of whom were also lesbian couples. I saw that one girl had Chinese characters tattooed on her forearms, so I asked to see them, as I had recently been living in China. She was like, “Oh, they’re actually Japanese characters. This one (万) means ‘man,’ and this one (女) means ‘woman.’ Basically, I’m trying to describe how all of us exist on a gender continuum between the two and integrate parts of both into our identities to different degrees.”
I responded, “Actually, Japanese characters (kanji) and Chinese characters (hanzi) are really the same thing. And I don’t think that one (万) means 'man.’ It actually means 'ten thousand.’ The correct character for man is 男. 万 and 男 aren’t that far off, but the calligraphic style on it would make it hard to replace…”
I look up and this poor girl is literally in tears. The entire party had come to a standstill as I pompously embarrassed this kid in front of all her friends. She had had the tattoo done two or three years earlier and no one had ever caught it.
I had to add, “On the bright side, Chinese doesn’t really have a plural, so 万女 is a perfectly grammatical way of saying 'ten thousand women.’ Make it a life goal!”
Crickets…