Chinese Tattoos in the West

The west's fascination with Chinese tattoos has little to do with the history of Chinese tattoos and Chinese tattooing traditions, however. It is not an outgrowth of any strong Chinese tattooing tradition but is rather a testament to just how perfectly Chinese characters mesh with the art of tattoos. It is for the most part a recent phenomenon, but one that continues to grow.

If you are planning on getting a Chinese tattoo, or even multiple Chinese tattoos, you should make sure that your tattoo is what you think it is. Too often there are stories of people getting Chinese tattoos that say something completely different from what they thought it would say. There is the story of a young man in England who thought he was having the Mandarin characters for “Love, honor and obey” tattooed on his arm. He later found out from a Chinese woman that what he actually had tattooed on his arm said “At the end of the day, this is an ugly boy.”