School bored Zhuo Dan Ting, she hated reciting facts and figures. Evenings were better, she studied drawing skills with her father. Her skills quickly surpassed her friends, then her teachers. After graduating from high school, she accepted a place in Harbin Normal University to study Art.
Ting entered Normal University with passion. She obsessed over every picture, regularly going through more paper and materials than her parents could afford. She was always interested in different things to her classmates. She listened to western Heavy Metal while her peers listened to sickly sweet pop music. She wore loose, messy clothes while her class mates wore Hello Kitty tops.
Harbin had a thriving underground live music scene when she began to study. She met many friends there. Lot's were musicians, they played heavy metal and punk music with friends, and scratched out a living playing pop music at student bars and weddings. Many were tattooed, long haired, messly dressed 'deviants', bian tai. Music was not her thing, the next step was predictable.
Harbin, five years ago, had one or two tattoo studios. They took Ting under their wing and began to show her some of the techniques that they had picked up from artists in the bigger cities like Beijing and Guangzhou.
Two years into her student life, her situation began to become more and more tense. A constricting environment where faculty dictated what was acceptable in your personal as well as your academic life, was not something that Ting could stand anymore. She left university to study tattooing full time.
After a couple more years of study in Harbin and Guangzhou Ting opened Wen Yi Fu Xing, a small studio in Harbin. Her striking looks insured both local celebrity status and distain. Her name spread, people came from around Heilongjiang provence to get tattooed by the new queen of the block. She started an online forum to provide a place for the local ling lei to meet online and discuss what was important to them.
Her studio and forum thrived. But Ting wanted to develop, change was always on her mind, she needed to improve, push herself harder. Shanghai provides that challenge.