With people throughout the capital shedding layers in the sultry summer heat, it’s obvious to see BJ loves tattoos. From small butterflies to full sleeves, body art in Beijing today is as hip as an LV bag.

Just 10 years ago, though, ink was only visible on rock musicians imitating the tattoos of foreign music idols, or gangsters and other assorted huairen who sported images of dragons, buddhas or tigers to bring them luck. The seeds of the current tattoo industry, similar to the rock scene where much of it started, were sown in the late ‘80s, and grew steadily through the ‘90s, before exploding in the 2000s. Though tattoo art has truly taken off, it came from humble beginnings, from artists who worked hard to grow the scene, often improvising when necessary.

When Italian-trained tattooist Li Yang of New Tattoo Studio and Dong Dong of Mummy Tattoo started inking in the late ‘90s, there was a dearth of tattoo supplies in China. So they used machines intended to tattoo on eyebrows that they found in local beauty markets and relied on friends flying in from Europe and America to stock up on ink and other supplies. Though now they can buy tattoo machines made in China, they say, inks are still made abroad, though widely available in beauty markets and online.

Sitting somewhere between art and surgery, there are no government controls on tattooing apart from having a business licence to open a studio, says Yang Zhou, a tattooist so popular that he has close to 100,000 fans on Weibo. When he’s not continent-hopping, inking skin with his signature Asian style, Yang Zhou sees clients in a spacious Andingmen apartment. Many tattoo studios in fact register as “beauty shops” without mentioning that they’re actually tattooing, he says.

Dong Dong says he welcomes some government intervention, especially in terms of safety. He says that while most established studios in Beijing operate at the same standards as overseas studios, there’s still no safe way of disposing of used needles, something that really concerns him. He believes he’s one of the few tattooists who takes this kind of waste to bio-waste bins at a local hospital, and worries many other studios are just throwing used needles out with the rest of the trash.

But improvising is not just for studios and waste removal. “There’s still no official training for tattooists,” says Xiao Hui, one of the first female tattooists in Beijing. She says she sees more and more people with bad tattoos, done by tattooists who’ve opened studios to make money rather than art. Those who want proper training have to find a master to study under, she says. Xiao Hui was a painter when she first saw tattoos in American movies and decided she wanted to make the move from canvas to skin. She found a master, and seven years later she runs her own small studio out of her hutong home.

Others travel overseas for training and certification. On a busy Saturday in Long Xiu Tang tattoo studio in 798, owner Xiao Long’s master Diao An, a well-known tattooist from Taiwan, was visiting Beijing to do a full body piece for a local client, while Xiao Long was finishing off a portrait on the elbow of his own apprentice Meng Ce, who now has his own studio in Haidian. Though Xiao Long, who previously studied sculpting and founded Beijing’s first tattoo studio in Qianmen in 2001, learned to tattoo in China from a master, he chose to travel to New York for further study and a U.S. tattoo licence.

Though lacking a formal certifying body, tattoo artists in Beijing have an informal network that works as a referral system, and there is camaraderie between local artists. “We know who the good artists are,” Li Yang says. “We’re all friends.” He says he sends clients to the right artist for, say, Japanese-style designs, while other artists will send those wanting old school or traditional style tattoos to him.

Due to the influx of overseas media and the access to foreign sites over the internet, many people want copies of tattoos they see on the rich and famous. Li Yang says the most popular requests he gets are for tattoos worn by Angelina Jolie or David Beckham. But no one is copying Chinese stars, he says, who aren’t allowed to have visible ink. There’s an unwritten rule that if you have them, you won’t get work, he says.

This increased access to worldwide media is also improving the industry itself, says Yang Zhou. “[It’s] getting better and better.” Artists can see tattoos in overseas films and magazines, and can check out tattoo art and contact artists in other countries online to share information. Many Chinese tattooists now travel abroad to attend tattoo conventions and show their work.

While tattoos may be taboo for Chinese stars and not yet officially regulated, public attitudes have changed a lot over the past decade. Just 10 years ago, older people would often be too scared to talk to people with tattoos, says Yang Zhou. Now, he says, they’re more a curiosity. When he goes swimming, he says, people often ask him what his tattoos mean and whether they hurt. And while previously the mark of rockers and huairen, most of Yang Zhou’s clients are ordinary people with normal jobs, he says. “But not government workers,” he laughs. “Or maybe they are, they just don’t say so!”

Address:Long Xiu Tang Tattoos, Jiu Xian Qiao Road, Chaoyang District, 798 Art District, Simon Hongyuan Apartment 2105, Tower A ,

酒仙桥路大山子798艺术区西门宏源公寓A座2105

Contact: 134-3944-9171, longxiutang@hotmail.com