Does my tattoo mean 'relentless'?

[Chris8888]

This tattoo was my first tattoo, I just turned 18. Me and my father Brandon argument and he told me I was the most relentless motherfucker he had ever met. So I figured I would get a tattoo of the word relentless on my body but in Chinese. I looked up relentless in Chinese on Google, And use the first one I saw. Years and years go by and I want to be able to prove it, but I have not been able to find the same symbol/characters. Can anyone help me?

[mungouk]

无情    wú qíng    pitiless; ruthless; merciless; heartless
 

[杰.克]

MungoUk is right! I also like to read it as "without feeling" 

[xinoxanu]

Coming next:

 

[歐博思]

Chinese is a good language to study if you're relentless.

[杰.克]

That arm-hair looks relentless.

[xinoxanu]

It could also be the back of his head for all we know.

 

Either way, those are some beautiful kung-fu letters!

[Jim]

There's a good big gap between the characters so you could change it up if you're a bit of a different man now, have 无比情深 or 无边情怀 maybe.

[Tomsima]

毫无表情 if you're feeling particularly stoic these days...

[anonymoose]

In my (admittedly limited) understanding, 无情 is not a positive word. ruthless/merciless are not exactly positive either, but could be used to describe a ruthless warrior - someone who commands respect if nothing else. But 无情 sounds more like having a lack of compassion or care for others. Not something that one should be proud of having tattooed on their body.

[suMMit]

冷漠无情

lěng mò wú qíng

sternly cool and unmoved

 

有理无情

yǒulǐ-wúqíng

stick to the principle and disregard personal feelings

[abcdefg]

无情 -- Pretty sure I remember that descriptive term being applied to Wu Zetian 武则天 (the Tang Empress) when I studiend history. 残酷无情。

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Zetian

 

[StChris]

Wow, this is so funny, I experienced an eerily similar situation to the OP, only mine came from the opposite side:

 

I was on a long train journey in southern China a couple of years back. Unfortunately there weren't any sleepers left, so I had to take a seat. There were four of us squeezed around a tiny table, all strangers, but we got to know each other a little as the afternoon wore on. As night began to fall, one of the passengers, a lady in her early thirties, started to open up about her unhappy marriage: about her bad relationship with her mother-in-law, about how her husband had been seeing prostitutes and how she had just now found out that he was having an affair with a work colleague. The other two people around our table (a man and a woman, both in their thirties or thereabouts) took turns in giving her advice, while I tried my best to keep out of it.

 

At some point I fell asleep and was woken by the noise of the lady having a very animated discussion on the phone while standing in that little area of the train where the bathrooms are (our seats were very close to it). My guess is that she had been thinking about her marriage all night and couldn't wait until she got home before having it all out with her husband. I managed to get back to sleep for another hour or two, only to be woken up by her jabbing finger. She told me that she had decided to divorce and wanted my advice on a tattoo to commemorate the occasion. I think you can see what is coming next...

 

She had decided that 无情 was the best word to describe her current attitude (or aspiration, even), but just like the OP, felt her own language insufficient to express all the layers of  meaning that she wanted to convey. She had already found a translation on her phone, "no feelings", and wanted my opinion. Now, it was 3am, and normally I wouldn't be too happy about being woken up so late, especially in a situation in which I generally find it really hard to fall asleep in the first place. However, given the personal crisis she was obviously going through, I didn't have the heart to refuse.

 

As a native English speaker, "no feelings" just sounds a little awkward to me, a bit incomplete. On the other hand, all the other translations ("heartless", "merciless" etc), are not exactly positive descriptions, so I couldn't really recommend those either. I suppose "numb" would be an option, but I think that sounds much more passive than what she was aiming for. There ensued a long conversation about the various meanings and translations of 无情 (on a crowded train, rattling through southern China in the middle of the night), and I was trying my best to keep my voice down to avoid waking anyone else. Despite my misgivings, her heart did seem pretty set on her initial translation, "no feelings", so I guess that is what she went with in the end.

 

Seeing this thread randomly pop up all this time later, I can't help but think that Mr "无情" and Ms "No Feelings" have a kind of 缘分, and that maybe one day this story will have a happy ending!  

[abcdefg]

What a great story! I've logged lots of hours in those less-than-luxurious train compartments, where four or more of us were seated face to face across a narrow table. What usually happens to me is that we all start out strangers, then there is the "Where are you from" and before long the Chinese family is sharing their lunch and explaining where the fruit came from. Bits of thier life story and mine seem to alway come out over the table, enjoying meals or snacks.

 

And as if that's not enough, I often here part of the "hidden" history of what we are seeing out the window. "These hills used to have rich tin mines, before modern methods depleted them and water was diverted to make a lake, which... My grandfather worked there from the age of 15 until he was injured in an explosion." They explained that now the area is home to radicals who seem to thrive on an endless supply of dynamite, stockpiled many years ago.  

 

Once a Muslim family said afternoon prayers and pointed out a cluster mosques that were nearly out of sight way back in the hills. Turned out that an important center of religious learning was housed there and devout believers came from far away to study with learned Imams. This was in 红河州, SE Yunnan. Soon there was talk of Zheng He 郑和 (Ming mariner/diplomat) and other famous minority heroes. 

 

But I never was consulted about a tattoo! 

[StChris]

@abcdefg While you do often end up having interesting conversations, I still generally choose 硬卧上铺 for maximum antisocialness. I've tried 软卧 before, but they don't seem much different (plus they normally sell out faster). I've never tried the 高铁before. It might be interesting. I guess you meet different types of people depending on what class you travel in.

[Lu]

7 hours ago, StChris said:

 I've never tried the 高铁before.

The last few times I tried the 高铁 (Autumn last year) there was no social interaction whatsoever. The train was pretty quiet.

[StChris]

3 hours ago, Lu said:

The last few times I tried the 高铁 (Autumn last year) there was no social interaction whatsoever. The train was pretty quiet.

 

Are people more spread out? It's difficult not to have interaction in cattle class, as it would be awkward not to have any when you are that squeezed in together. I guess the 高铁 folks all have their noses in their laptops preparing their next PPT.

[mungouk]

Check out some pictures of the 高铁 here... It can be pretty peaceful if you don't end up close to a family with energetic kids. 

 

https://www.seat61.com/beijing-to-shanghai-by-train.htm#Train_times,_southbound

 

(btw for train travel world-wide this website is a fantastic resource.)

[Lu]

1 hour ago, StChris said:

Are people more spread out?

Yes. Like the picture on the website Mungouk links to. No four-seaters, just two or three people next to each other. I guess it doesn't really invite interaction. It felt just like a Dutch train, where people usually don't strike up conversations with strangers either.