Chinese tattoos nowadays have become a fashion for tattoo enthusiasts in the Western world. From Chinese tattoos, you will see beautiful characters, vivid animal and people images and even Chinese paintings, which also embed meaningful ideas between lines and characters.

Tattoo has been known in China for thousands of years. Chinese tattoo is called Ci Shen (or Wen Shen), a term that means literally "puncture the body". Although the art has been known in China for ages, it has for the most part been an uncommon practice. Throughout Chinese history tattoo has been seen as a defamation of the body, something undesirable.

Water Margin (水浒传), one of the four classical novels in Chinese literature, does refer to tattooing. Water Margin tells the stories of bandits of Mount Liang area of China during the early 12th century. The novel talks about the 108 companions of the historical bandit Song Jiang. Three of these characters are referenced as having tattoos covering their entire bodies.

The most famous tattoo in Chinese history comes from the legend of the Chinese general Yueh Fei. Yueh Fei served the Southern Song Dynasty. During battle with northern enemies the Field Marshall under whom Yueh Fei served the Southern Song. In protest Yueh Fei resigned and returned home. His mother grew angry with him, telling him that his duty was first and foremost to his country, despite everything. To remind him of this fact, she tattooed four characters on his back with her sewing needle. These characters are 精忠報國 (jin zhong bao guo) which mean something like "serve the country with ultimate loyalty".

During a few dynasties, tattoos were also used to mark criminals. Such ugly tattoos were usually printed on their face, showing that they are criminals. This frequently happened in the Qing Kingdom and Dynasty.

However, in today’s China, tattoos are often seen on men’s body, especially those who are involved with punks and other bad guys. Of course, this is not always true.