FEATURE ARTICLE—September 2003
TATTOOING IN CHINA―WAITING FOR A RENAISSANCE
by John Monroe
With over a billion inhabitants, dozens of ethnic groups, 5,000 years of artistic heritage, and a really cool-looking alphabet, you'd expect that China would have an interesting tattoo culture. Don't bet on it! It turns out that the Chinese rarely get tattooed, and they look down upon those who do. If there are any professional tattoo artists about, they don't advertise. Clearly this giant country is ripe for a tattoo renaissance like the one sweeping Japan.
China is undergoing radical change, especially in the cities. The days of the blue Mao suit and the Little Red Book are long gone. With political and economic reform have come the acceptance of Western styles. Chinese shoppers in an urban mall wear Tommy Hilfiger and eat at McDonald's. Gangs of Chinese skate punks roam the streets of Shanghai after dark. So where are the tattoos?
Traditional conservatism still rules attitudes toward the ancient art of tattooing. "There is a saying from Confucius which means: 'Do not damage anything that your parents give to you.' That is partly why Chinese people do not have tattoos," says Ms. Li Wen Lian, an employee of a state-run Chinese travel agency. "But also, we think of tattoos as being for someone we call a Xiao hun-hun. That's a hooligan, one who does nothing but enjoy life and make trouble." Come to think of it, that does sound like most of the tattooed people I know!
The Shanghai telephone book doesn't contain a single listing for tattoo artists, although it is rumored that a couple of semi-legitimate shops have opened up in the back streets of Beijing; run by guys who learned the art in the U.S. A few crude hand-poked designs can be spotted on the arms of workmen in the city, but they are simply basic patterns of animals and stars. As a college student named Lin Jun said: "Country people have those (tattoos), also primitive tribes in the West. For us Han people (the dominant Chinese ethnic group), it is not acceptable. However, it is now becoming acceptable for some young people, who have learned it from American rock stars."
Far be it from me to criticize the country that invented gunpowder, printing and sweet-and-sour pork, but it sounds as though Chinese prejudices towards tattooed people are similar to those in America three or four decades ago. Considering the Chinese eagerness to modernize, and all those billions of square feet of available skin, China could be the scene of the greatest tattoo renaissance of the 21st Century.