AuthentiKan

Our Black Belt Certification Package provides 11” x 17” certificates. However, since it is easier to purchase 11” x 14” frames, we often recommend 11” x 17” certificates with a perforation separating the paper into an 11” x 14” certificate and an 11” x 3” record tab.

Also, printing a large certificate from a computer requires a wide format printer that will take 11” x 17” paper.

Except for black belt certificates, we recommend you stick with the standard letter size (8.5” x 11”) certificate for these reasons:

• It is more economical
• It works with most desktop printers
• It is easy to carry and store
• It allows for more frame selections

A large certificate does not necessarily communicate more prestige than a small one. We suggest that school owners invest in nice, quality frames so their students will hang their certificates in a highly visible place instead of storing them in a drawer.

We will customize this Tenkoku style stamp with the translation of your name and title into ancient Chinese Seal Characters (also known as Tensho in Japan and Hanja in Korea.)

• Information about Japanese names: Choosing between Kanji and Katakana
• Information about Korean names: Choosing between Hanja and Hangul
• Authentication seal traditions: The great seals of the Republic of China, Japan, and Korea.

Although tattoos in China today are associated with gangsters and other lower-class people, a well known tattoo was sported by one of China’s ancient heroes. According to the story, the great general Yue Fei had the words “jing zhong bao guo” tattooed on his back. They were placed there by his mother before the young man entered the army in 1122. The characters mean “fully devoted to one’s country.”
 
Yue Fei lived true to the words on his back. He remained loyal to China even when corruption and treachery threatened his life. As a military leader, he defended his country against invading Jurchen armies. When success seemed within his grasp, corrupt advisors to the emperor made peace with the enemy and called Yue Fei home. There the traitor Qin Kuai had him arrested and accused him of betraying his country.
 
In response, Yue Fei tore off his clothing to reveal his tattoo. It spoke the truth: Yue Fei was fiercely loyal to China and its emperor. For a time, Qin Kuai could say nothing. He could give no reason to sentence the general to death. Qin Kuai’s wife, Lady Wang, convinced her husband that he did not need a reason to execute Yue Fei. So in 1142 the hero and his adopted-son, Yue Yun, were sentenced to death and executed. The charges against them were not proven but Qin Kuai insisted they “could be true.” The phrase “could be true” entered the Chinese language as an expression to refer to fabricated charges.

About 20 years after Yue Fei’s death, Emperor Xiaozong pardoned him and built a tomb and memorial to the hero. Statues of Qin Kuai, Lady Wang, and two of Qin Kuai’s subordinates—all in kneeling positions—were made and placed before Yue Fei’s tomb. For centuries, visitors to the memorial spat on these statues and urinated on them. Today the iron statues are protected as historical relics.

The story of Yue Fei and his tattoo is told to children in China. It teaches them not only the value of protecting and serving their country, but also of enduring pain and obeying their mothers.

Links:

• Yue Fei at Wikipedia
• Chinese Cloth Puppets Depict Yue Fei’s Mother Tattooing “Jing Zhong Bao Guo” on His Back (Chinese)
• Can the Spirit of Jing Zhong Unite the Two Chinas? (Chinese)
  An official at the Yue Fei Research Center in China was impressed with the respect the people of Taiwan have for Yue Fei. Many see him as a national hero, and some build temples to honor him as a god. Some Taiwanese “Yue” families have visited the place in China where Yue Fei was from. The official suggested that Yue Fei’s popularity in both countries and the “spirit of jing zhong” could be the links that bring the two Chinas together as one.
• Is There Historical Evidence of Yue Fei’s Tattoo? (Chinese)
  Did Yue Fei really has a tattoo in his back? Any historical source or evidence?
• Two Versions of “Jing Zhong Bao Guo” (Chinese)
  Two versions of the words legend says are tattooed on the back of Yue Fei, “Jing Zhong Bao Guo,” are similar but not exactly the same. Where did the two versions come from? Which one was on the back of the hero?
• Chinese postage stamp of Yue Fei (Chinese)
• Statue of Yue Fei’s mother tattooing on his back (Chinese)
• Statue of Yue Fei’s mother tattooing on his back (Chinese)
• A Word about Tattoos - Goodcharacters.com

Q: I would like to have a regular letter-size certificate and a special larger black belt certificate. Do I have to purchase two different certificate packages?

A: Yes. Even though your two certificates will have a consistent look to reinforce your visual branding, the differences in the length and width ratios mean that our designers cannot simply scale up or down. We can use the same design elements, but the two completely different sizes require two different designs.

Q: How about if I want to order five different ranking certificates and the only difference is the color of the border to represent the corresponding belt color?

A: Using different colors can be a good way to have multiple levels of certificates, especially for a large school that can use thousands of each in a few years. For this type of project, we offer 20% off after the first set.

Q: Should I save money by using stock certificate papers?

A: The price of having professionals design your martial arts certificates can seem quite high—about $1,000 for 500 copies, or an average of $2 per certificate. That’s quite a chunk of money up front. At first glance, using stock paper or printing the whole certificate with an inkjet printer appears less expensive.

But think about the difference between short-term price and long-term cost.

A cheaply made certificate saves you pennies but costs you thousands of dollars yearly. Why? Because a top quality certificate conveys the message that yours is a top quality school. You value your students and you want to give them the best. That top quality certificate will be proudly displayed and become your billboard at someone’s home or office for years or even a lifetime at no further cost to you.

Five hundred certificates sounds like a lot, unless you have a long-term view of 10 or 20 years. If you need only 20 certificates this year, do you think you can grow to 30 next year? The fact is, if you issue 20 ranking certificates the first year, 30 the next year, 40 the following year, and grow by only 10 more students per year, in 9 years you will issue a total of 540 certificates.

You can easily spend $1,000 in a couple months dining out, going to Starbucks, watching cable TV, and paying high credit card interest, none of which helps you build your career as a professional martial artist. What if you spent that $1,000 on five hundred concrete advertisements of your professionalism in the form of quality custom certificates? That’s a smart investment, the kind that will be very likely to bring you new students.

Shihan Real of Goshin Ryu Karate Kobudo Jiu-Jitsu Honbu asked: Can you translate my new Martial Art name in Japanese Kanji? What will it cost for both image file and digitized file for embroidery?

Our answer:

We have this service package:

1. Translate a martial arts name
2. Provide images (high and low resolution for web and print)
3. Provide digitized file (up to 10,000 stitches) for embroidery
4. Embroider on a sample t-shirt (Choose: XS, S, M, L, XL)

All the above for $75 + $9.95 shipping. Compare:

1. You will be able to use the images for website and printing (typical charge for images is $49.95)
2. You will be able to take your digitized file to your local embroidery shop without the setup fee (shops typically charge $50 to $75 for setup)
3. You get a free t-shirt (typically $20 or more with custom embroidery)

If you had purchased elsewhere, you would pay about $144.95. Our price is $75. You save $69.95.

We’ll also send you our 415-page apparel catalog with competitive pricing. If you need anything that your local embroidery shop doesn’t carry, you can order it from us as well.

Let us know if you are interested.

Designed specifically for martial arts professionals, this naming package ensures that your written Chinese (also known as Japanese kanji or Korean hanja) name has a positive meaning, sounds like your name in English, and is pleasing to the eye.

With this package you get both traditional and simplified characters in high resolution digital artwork files. They look great on paper, as a screen saver, as a desktop background, or on your Web site.

Receive a FREE 156-page workbook for creating martial arts certificates.

To receive the free workbook, click here to fill out your name and e-mail address. You will receive a confirmation e-mail within 2 minutes (check your Junk E-mail or Spam folder just in case it ends up there). Click the confirmation link inside the e-mail and the workbook will be sent to you.

We constantly make improvements to this workbook, so your workbook comes with a subscription to our templates updates. You will receive notification when a new version becomes available.

This is a FREE subscription. You can stop future notifications by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the e-mail.

If it is indeed true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we are truly flattered! We have seen items from our Web sites and our blogs all over the Internet! We realize that multiple people can come up with the same or similar ideas, but the expressions of those ideas—i.e., the words and images—are unique to the author/designer. We are proud to be a thought leader—creating just-right Chinese names, brands, and branding strategies; designing innovative products and processes; providing thoughtful analysis of and perspective on trends and events. So we are not surprised when people read and cite our postings. We are surprised, however, when we are not given credit for our words or work.

We at Good Characters are, first and foremost, good characters. Integrity is one of our core principles. When we get inspiration from another site, a news story, or whatever, we acknowledge our sources. It is the right thing to do. We ask the same respect from those who use our material. We love that what we do is helpful to others; we love that it gets to a wider audience. We would just like to see our name on our “stuff.”

And we don’t mind publicizing your name for your stuff! If your readers find some of our information helpful and you think our readers would like to know about you, we would be glad to link to you. You can be one of our Friends (see links below). But, please, don’t be one of our Copy Cats!

Links:

• Friends
• Copy Cats—Characters who copy without crediting. (We’re posting some of these so you won’t think we’re the ones who are copying!)

Sensei Roger Boggs of Goshin Karate & Judo Academy shared our blog post “Please Jie Ai: Restrain One’s Grief and Accept the Change” with his students and credited us with a link back to our site. Thank you, Mr. Boggs.

Artistic Chinese Creations copied our post about Gong Xi Fa Cai, the most common Chinese ways of saying “Happy New Year”. It was copied word for word. How do I know? Because I wrote it. We’re happy to share, but please give credit where credit is due. We’d be glad to link back to you as well.

We were the first to use the product names “Personal Name Stamp,” “Dojo Certificate Stamp,” “Master Stamp,” and “Security Stamp” together for martial arts schools. We began this in 2002. We were surprised to find Csymbol starting to use these names in 2006 and offering designs that look very much like ours. (Note: To compare with our 2002 site, go to http://web.archive.org. It’s a good place to see how a website looked years ago.)

I was shocked at first, and our team members were not happy. Some nicknamed the company “Copy Symbol,” but that’s just our insiders’ joke. I think CSymbol really stands for Chinese Symbol. The more I think about it, the more I am flattered that Dr. Jun Shan, a Ph.D. in Physics who worked as the Chinese Culture Guide of About.com for 9 years (1997-2006), selected our site as his model—for everything from product names to descriptions, look and feel, order form fields, and pricing.

We must be a thought leader and trend setter, because we have a follower!

Did you make a New Year’s resolution? Studies show that making your resolution public and having a supportive friend reminding you of it will increase your chance of keeping the resolution. This is your opportunity to do just that. Send us your New Year’s resolution and we will make it public for you. It will be a reminder and driving force to keep you motivated to get it done. All of our good characters are very supportive, and we might gently ask you about your progress from time to time. So come on, share yours with us!