So what do jack's tattoos really mean? I'll give you a hint... it isn't "He walks among us, but he is not one of us." In fact this is nowhere near correct. Our friends at LostPedia.com settled that a LONG time ago:
A word by word explanation of the 4 Chinese characters on the tattoo:
- The first character(é¹°) means eagle.
- The second character(击) means strike, as a verb.
- The third one(é•·) means long.
- The final one(空) means "sky","space",void,"empty".
These characters are pronounced ying ji chang kong (in PinYin)
These four characters are taken from a famous poem written by Chairman Mao Tse-tung (MAO Zhedong). It can be roughly translated as "Eagles high, cleaving sky", or more simply, "the Eagles fly up on the sky". But the poem itself has a deeper meaning. In the end of the first stanza, the poet asks, "who masters fate's rise and descent?"
So there you have it. When Jack said "that isn't what it means" he wasn't kidding!
