I apologize in advance if it’s something dirty. Right here
And it could be just a random series of strokes by an artistic enough person to make it look real.
My Japanese-literate daughter says (with the caveat that she knows very little Chinese and has merely looked it up in the dictionary) that it is definitely simplified Chinese and that she thinks, from a Japanese reader’s perspective, that it means “teppan chicken”. She believes that the first two characters are “iron” and “board”, which (again, in Japanese) would translate to “teppan” and that the third is “chicken”.
She also says that it’s quite legible. And that any actual Chinese-speaker’s translation should supersede hers.
“Iron” “Pan” “Duck” or Fried Duck
Could be off of a menu.
assuming it’s spelled wrong - hot plate chicken. i’m guessing it’s translated from Japanese or Korean.
Thanks, all. The person who wrote it–decidedly non-Asian–said that it was ‘hibachi chicken.’ I guess that’s close enough to what has been rendered.
The English word “hibachi” translates to the Japanese word “teppan”, so it’s exactly right (except for being written in Chinese for whatever reason.)
I was hoping you were going to tell us that someone got it as a tattoo, believing it to mean “a warrior’s strength” or something like that.
Now that’s a tempting suggestion. . . .
My mother tongue is Mandarin.
I’m confirming the English translation as Hot Plate Chicken - yummy!
The literal translation is Iron Board Chicken.
My Taiwanese wife says than this style originated as Japanese cooking.
It’s not that common in Taiwan but may be more so in China.
“Hibachi” is a Japanese word (火鉢). In original context, it was a charcoal space heater. It got borrowed by English to mean a charcoal cooking grill (which is properly called “shichirin” (七輪)), and then casually mis-applied to what is properly called “teppan” (鉄板) in Japanese.