Hong Kong women tattoo artists who draw on traditional Chinese culture to ink differently

Tattooing emerged in Hong Kong in the mid-20th century as a service catering to Western soldiers and sailors passing through the then British colony. The demand gave rise to East-meets-West tattoo parlours where customers could choose to be inked with “mystical and exotic” symbols of the East, such as Chinese dragons and phoenixes, or stick with traditional Western motifs like crosses, skulls and daggers. Later, tattoos in Hong Kong became associated with the criminal underworld, as triad members got full-back tattoos featuring fierce-looking dragons, tigers and other traditional Chinese machismo symbols. The decline in popularity of tattoos among gang members has coincided with the increasing acceptance of tattoos by mainstream society and their popularity among the young. A new generation of practitioners – many of whom are women – are paying homage to traditional Chinese culture in their own ways. In doing so, they have created a tattoo genre that is essentially the antithesis of triad-style ink. Kwan Hiu-ping is in her mid-thirties and wears her dyed red hair tied in a bun, especially when she is working in her studio in Kwun Tong, an industrial neighbourhood in Hong Kong. Her arms are adorned with many tattoos, but she has a calm and gentle demeanour. She picked up the tattoo gun for the first time seven years ago when she was in her twenties. She had appreciated the craft since she was a teenager, and her interest in traditional Chinese culture started young. “I began practising traditional Chinese painting at age four or five. As I got a bit older, when my classmates read Taiwanese romance novels that were more modern and sentimental, I was way more into Chinese classics like The Peony Pavilion and Dream of the Red Chamber.” As an apprentice, Kwan learned how to execute the Western- and Japanese-style tattoos popular in Hong Kong, but later came back to her traditional Chinese art roots. She cites danqing ink wash paintings and the Lingnan School art movement in the early 20th century, which sought to modernise Chinese painting through borrowing from other artistic traditions, as inspirations. “I really enjoy the subtle and poetic expression of traditional Chinese art, even though [the art form as a tattoo style] is still niche in Hong Kong,” Kwan says. She adds that most of her clients are Chinese, either local or diasporic, and that they tend to ask for natural motifs such as birds and flowers, as well as mythical ones such as dragons and hulu (calabash gourd), an ancient Chinese symbol for health. Kwan’s dragons are unlike the aggressive-looking ones created with bold line work that used to be common in Hong Kong. Instead, they are more fluid and channel the layered aesthetic of Chinese ink painting. Elyse Yip Nga-fong is a tattoo artist who works out of a studio in Hong Kong’s Central neighbourhood. She takes a similar approach to Kwan, though her style is heavy in line work, less referential and leans more into spirituality. After majoring in painting for her bachelor’s degree in fine arts, Yip spent time dabbling in other creative disciplines before becoming a tattooing apprentice in 2020. “I find tattoos to be very different from other artistic mediums. You’re putting your work onto real human beings, not canvases,” she says. “I started tattooing around the same time I got into spirituality, so I really wanted to infuse ideas about the universe, mindfulness and positive energy into my work and plant those seeds onto people’s skin.” Yip’s preference for more abstract aesthetics is shown in her Chinese characters, which are inspired by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, tribal totems and natural motifs that flow softly along the body. “Some people may think it looks like random doodlings, and educated designers may think my fonts don’t make sense since I didn’t study design, but it doesn’t matter to me,” she says. A few years ago, Yip began diving deeper into Buddhism, which has in turn influenced her work. Some of the most common requests from her clients now include the characters for nim, meaning “idea”, “thought” or “belief”; sum, meaning “heart”; and gwong, meaning “light”. “In recent years, there have been more mothers of different ages [who come to me]. Some of them had been through much hardship and decided that, ‘I’m at the age where I have to do something for myself,’” she says. “The commonality is that, instead of getting tattoos because they were going through something difficult, they had already got through it and wanted to document their awakening or transformation.” Unlike Kwan and Yip, Bella Yuen Yui-man – a resident artist at Mei Wah Tattoo in Hong Kong’s Mong Kok neighbourhood – did not study art formally. She studied journalism at university to appease her traditional family, and began a tattoo apprenticeship while she was studying. As a child, Yuen went to temples with her Buddhist mother, studied the mantras and briefly learned Chinese calligraphy. But when she started tattooing around eight years ago, she focused on more modern aesthetics, such as the new-school tattoo style characterised by bold lines, vibrant colours and exaggerated features. Her breakthrough project came in 2022, when a client in Berlin, Germany, asked for a design referencing the Buddhist concept of the “three poisons”: ignorance, attachment and aversion. Yuen decided that using Chinese art styles would align better with the theme and executed the tattoo accordingly. “I had learned Chinese painting for maybe two years when I was a kid. At the time, I was too young to appreciate it. But I think it foreshadowed my interest,” she says. “Now, instead of the traditional ink and xuan paper, I use watercolours, which are one of the most accessible materials in most tattoo parlours, to practise.” And watercolours are easy to take on the road. Yuen was a touring tattoo artist for most of 2025, visiting European cities including Groningen in the Netherlands, Lyon in France, and London. She says that in both Europe and East Asia, there are clients of all ethnicities who go into consultations with ample knowledge of Buddhist philosophies. “Sometimes, people would come in telling me, ‘I read this book, this ideology, this theory,’ and send me detailed explanations of what they want. But there are also those, in both places, who would be very honest in simply appreciating the aesthetics,” she says.

Hong Kong women tattoo artists who draw on traditional Chinese culture to ink differently

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}These artists channel elements of Chinese painting, calligraphy and Buddhism through their needles in a new form of ‘poetic expression’

These artists channel elements of Chinese painting, calligraphy and Buddhism through their needles in a new form of ‘poetic expression’