on back of an old photo

[MaryLennon]

Hello all

I was wondering if someone could help me please

I have a website where I have unidentified old photos and I have one at the moment which has some chinese writing on the back of it, 4 symbols and I was wondering if someone could tell me what they say, I'm hoping they might be the names of the 2 gents sitting at the front of the photo...

http://www.lennonwylie.co.uk/lost_photos_WW1.htm

its at the bottom of the page

Thank you and I appreciate any help:help

Mary

[saiyo]

The one on the upper right corner says: 坚 (jian1), meanings strong, persistent, or could be someone's first name.

The last two characters on the left are "半打" (ban4 da3), meaning half a dozen...

Sorry... couldn't figure out the one on the top...

[MaryLennon]

saiyo Thank you very much for your help, its very much appreciated.

Mary:)

[Zhoule]

Pretty interesting stuff.

I would say that the top left character is 华. So it says 坚 华半打.

Doesnt seem to make a whole lot of sense. 华 in this case probably means China. Maybe means something like the strong China six or something... just a guess.

I did find this wikipedia entry pretty interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Kent_(1901)

[kudra]

the link above to hms kent was missing a ")". Here is a correction.

[kudra]

Don't know if this is relevant, but a similar character with pronunciation jian although different tone, can mean navy or naval. If this was written between 1906-1913 when HMS Kent was in China, it could be that simplified forms for characters were not standardized at that time. For all I know this theory is nuts. Anyway, Here is the corresponding link to the character on the photo.

[MaryLennon]

Thank you Kudra and Zhoule

I suppose it could have been a jesting remark about the sailors, maybe they had no idea what the Chinese guys wrote

It would be early, apparently the hats the sailors wore were off the uniform list by 1921 and this link has similar photos and dates of where the HMS Kent was, so early 1900's is about right

half way down the page is the good stuff re Kent

http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/monmouth_class.htm#HMS%20Kent

Thank you again everyone for your help and suggestions