Ma Chao has a strange request for his customers: Are you sure you want to do this?To the horror of his parents, an auto factory worker and a retired street cleaner from Jilin province in northeastern China, Ma left school at the age of 14 to apprentice with a tattoo master.
Ma has won awards with his full body tattoos depicting swashbuckling outlaws and heroes from ancient Chinese literature, mythical creatures like dragons and phoenixes and auspicious symbols such as koi fish.But he still believes sprawling ink of legendary bandits and warriors is not suitable for the female body.
As the son of migrant workers, he was not eligible to go to a government high school in Beijing. He dropped out at 14 knowing his parents could not pay private school fees in the capital. While young, he was distracted in every class except art.He also continues to demonstrate unstinting respect and dedication to his tattoo “master,” who taught him the trade — and how to be a decent human being.
with tattoos and other depictions of “subculture” from appearing on television. A Chinese TV network expunged Albania’s Eurovision entry because of singer Eugent Bushpepa’s tattoos. In January, when China’s national soccer team competed in the Asian Cup in Abu Dhabi, some team players wore long-sleeves to cover tattoos despite sweltering temperatures.But that’s more than the Communist Party allowed when it came to power after World War II.
Middlebury College professor Carrie Wiebe, who teaches courses in pre-modern Chinese literature, has drawn on these ancient texts for anof early Chinese tattoos. Criminals, slaves and concubines were tattooed, and some ethnic groups tattooed themselves to ward off evil. Such tattoos were stigmatized “as impure, deviant and uncivilized,” she writes in one of the few academic papers on the subject. Han Chinese viewed remote ethnic groups with tattooing cultures as “barbarians.
Ma tattooed client Peter Liu’s entire back with a tattoo of one of the “Water Margin” gangsters, wild-eyed with a dagger in his teeth.Beijing tattooist Ma Chao draws inspiration from ancient Chinese literature and swashbuckling outlaw heroes, forming a rich tapestry for full body tattoos.
I thought about a tattoo one time? Then I realized, “Why put a bumper sticker on a Lamborghini!”
Moving in on Man Chau, chinaman?