Why China's youth is getting the needle

Although tattoos have long been fashionable in Western countries, Chinese society has always looked askance at an artform primarily associated with criminals and gang members. Now things are beginning to change, as Peng Yining reports.

Propelled forward by the people behind her, Chang Huan finally got onto the crammed 397 bus. The rear door slapped against her back as it closed, and there was no room to turn around because her backpack was pressed tight against the glass door.

It was 7 am outside Beijing's East Fifth Ring Road, about 20 km from the downtown area, and people were already lining up along the street, quietly filing past stands selling soy milk and dumplings.

Beijing's massive public transport system carries more than 17 million people from home to work every day, and on Chang's bus the commuters all wore the same expression: drowsy, indifferent and numb.

Dressed in a white shirt and loose-fitting sweater, Chang looked identical to the office workers around her until she stretched forward to take hold of the nearest hand grab and the sleeve of her sweater rode up to display three colorful tattoos - an owl, a stag and a goldfish - that cover her lower right arm from the elbow to the wrist.

"People always look at me with surprise when they see my tattoos, and that moment makes my day. I feel I am different. Different from the gloomy crowd on the bus," the 25-year-old graphic designer said.

Chang, a quiet woman with long straight black hair and a sweet smile, said her job mainly involves designing ad inserts for a clothing company, which "doesn't need much creativity. That company could replace me with just about anyone".

When she told her colleagues that she was going to get some tattoos, they said "No way!" and laughed. "One day, I walked into my office wearing a T-shirt, and showed them my tattoos," she said. "I saw their jaws drop and I never felt more alive."

Born and raised in Yueyang, a city in Hunan province, Chang came to Beijing in search of "a better future" in 2009. "I didn't know anyone in the city, so every time I saw a young person with tattoos, it was like finding one of my kind," she said.

Her first tattoo, a snow flake on her lower left arm, was quickly followed by a series of animals on her lower right arm. Now, she's planning to have a female profile and a tiger tattooed high on her right arm to represent her mother and father.

Chang, who is also a fledging tattoo artist, makes about 6,000 yuan ($961) a month, which she said isn't enough to buy an apartment or a future in the capital: "Getting a tattoo is painful, but it reminds me that I exist. If I died suddenly, people would know the body was mine when they saw my tattoos."