As a funny modern example, check out Kenyon Martin, former NBA all-star, having Chinese character tattoos. I never really thought about this until social media apparently all told him to back off when he said current Brooklyn Nets point guard Jeremy Lin shouldn't have dreadlocks in his hair because that was a black culture thing, and then Lin (politely) pointed out that Martin had Chinese character tattoos. I imagine very similar.

And then on the flip side, I read an article a while back about how t-shirt manufacturers in China choose English slogans for making t-shirts based on how nice they think the letters look, not based on what the words mean. They have no idea what the words mean and will actually even change some of the letters to make the pattern look nicer if they think it helps.