Belt Auction

How to dechipher Chinese(?) Writing on antique water buffalo opium pipe?

While traveling in Laos I purchased from a street vendor an antique pipe made from the horn of a water buffalo. It is intricately carved and has what looks like Chinese writing on it. I believe that this was once used as an opium pipe. I have asked native Chinese freinds to translate, but they tell me that the characters are old and not known to them. Are there resources that can look at an image of the writing and translate it for me?

Public Comments

1. Take a photo of it and post it on the net. You Chinese and Cantonese use the simplified chinese alphabet. But usually markings are about seasons, plants, elements and horoscopes. Often they are calendars, almanacs and proverbs.
2. check the net like the other person said mahahahahahahaha no really try that
3. Take a photo of it and upload it to your computer. I actually read Chinese fluently, so if you want me to, I can translate for you if you send me an email with the picture attached. If your friends don't know what it says, it's probably an older version of Chinese that was used a couple hundred years ago, but the majority of Chinese-speakers can still read it. Either that or it isn't actually Chinese. Also, if you want to translate using the internet, there's a really good site called: http://www.zhongwen.com/zi.htm The way you use it is by looking at part of the character and then finding it in the list on your left. The majority of the time, the part of the character that the actual word is listed under is found to the top, the bottom, or the left of the character. If NONE of the characters have any parts that are listed on that site, I doubt that you are looking at Chinese. In that case, you might be looking at Japanese Kanji or something like that. A good site for Kanji translations is http://www.kanjisite.com/. Wow, that sure is A LOT of writing. I hope at least some of it is useful!