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Tattoos are still synonomous with criminals and outsiders in China. But it’s youth emancipates itself from this attitude. A visit to Shanghai’s most popular tattoo artist.
Piercings in her face and knee high leather boots, green mohawk hairstyle and tattoos all over her body: Zhou Danting, called Ting, doesn’t look like the typical Chinese girl. In Haerbin, her hometown, everyone knew her.
Even in super modern Shanghai the 26 year old appears like an exotic bird and is almost something of a figure head of the growing alternative scene. “No idea how that happened. It just did,” says Ting, “ but I love it.”
Ting is a tattoo artist who, after three years in Shanghai, has worked hard for her reputation. Together with her Irish partner Dylan, she moved her studio from Hearbin to Shanghai. Not without ignoring the many warnings of her friends.
“Many told her not to take this step,” remembers Dylan, who is kind of manager and “general gopher” at the tattoo studio. But her life partner, who was fed up with his work as an english teacher in haerbin and wanted to get a job again at a design agency in Shanghai, could convince her.
That was the plan at the beginning: “I’ll work in my old business and Ting has a small studio. But it turned out different.”
Tings business literally took of. From the beginning many foreign customers came, all of them left satisfied with their new tattoos from her studio. Ting’s talent in art worked out for her popularity as well as her apperance. Not to talk about the attention the media gave to the extraordinary Chinese girl. Ting has already been in the well known I-D magazine.
And then there was also her involment in the alternative scene of shanghai. Ting ran a Chinese internet forum with 7000 users, the topics went from tattoos to nightlife and music. But the forum was closed – maybe the only time the government felt disturbed by Ting. One user published a photo of a piercing on the website. On the picture there was shown a female nipple: that was the end of the forum.
Nowadays ting wouldn’t have time anyways to look after the site. Her rise to become Shanghai’s most popular tattoo artist is an example of “textbook” viral marketing. “We never really did advertising,” says manager Dylan. Their most important thing was always to take the studio out of the “dirty backstreets”. “Most of Shanghai’s studios are, unfortunately, like you would imagine them. But we always wanted to have a place, where people feel comfortable and liked to hang out. And where you can recognize, that hygiene is the most important.”
Tattoos are in china still a sign of criminals. Even on the streets of modern Shanghai they are still indecent. “For the common Chinese people with tattoos are “people who dont follow the line” and “ people who are a little disturbing”. But slowly the youth emancipates itself from this attitude – something that you can feel in Ting’s studio.
“When we started in Shanghai, 90 % of our customers were foreigners. nowadays foreigners are only about 60 %,” says Dylan. Recently Ting’s mobile phone is ringing more often than his. More and more young Chinese are making the decision to get a tattoo. “they come here, but then they want to have the tattoo at places where noone can see it.” Says Ting.
Also the tattoos are more conservative in style – totally according to their idols, Korean and Hong Kong popstars, as well as the athletes at the olympics, who often have small roses or tribals on their skin. No challenge for the talented artist. But anyways she is happy that more and more Chinese are getting tattoos and making the art more accepted.
On another tendency you can see, how much Chinese see tattoos as a sign of Western coolness. And they want to show their own modernity.
“There is a simple rule: most of the foreigners want Chinese characters and Chinese customers want quotes or words in English”, says Dylan.
Both is no problem in the bilingual studio – sometimes they even have to do corrections, as Dylan remembers. “Once a foreign girl came to our studio and wanted an additional tattoo. On her back there was already a Chinese one. She thought it meant “inner strength”. But Ting had to hide a laugh as she saw it. On the back of the woman was the name of a brand of beer.
Not only because of their language skills Ting and Dylan’s studio will grow. With the growing alternative scene the amount of potential customers grow as well. The couple just moved the studio to a new location. In the middle of a new area near the river, the “Cool Docks”. The studio is now in exclusive neighbourhood of a German top restaurant and many bars. In less than two years the amount of international customers will grow even more. The area of the expo 2010 is not far away.
