Wen Shen: The Vanishing Art of Chinese Tribal Culture
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Wen Shen: The Vanishing Art of Chinese Tribal Culture

Article © 2009 Lars Krutak

A Tattoo Journey Through China

Throughout the four-thousand-year journey into what is China's indelible past, tattooing has traveled and evolved in myriad forms to convey highly spiritual, personal, and cultural information across time. Tattooing reflected concepts of ancestry, identity, and religion and was central to the cosmologies and life ways of the peoples who practiced it.

But for the Chinese chroniclers and leaders who opposed it, tattoo represented threatening Otherness and was part of a negative vocabulary that symbolized how far from civilization the tattooed tribespeople of China had actually fallen off the evolutionary ladder.

Sadly, once these ancient indelible practices vanish from worldview, so too will one of China's greatest and most unrecognized forms of indigenous art. An art form that not only speaks volumes about the country's cultural diversity and rich artistic heritage, but one that is also deserving of the title "National Treasure".

The nomadic Pazyryk people ruled the Siberian steppes just 120 miles north of the Caucasian homelands from the sixth through the second centuries B.C. A 2500-year-old mummy of a tribal chieftain sported elaborate zoomorphic tattoos that are believed to be imbued with power. He also wore medicinal tattoos on his spine and ankle that were probably applied to cure rheumatism. Archaeological evidence supports that the Pazyryk employed methods of skin-stitching and pricking to create their beautiful tattoos. Because Chinese silk has been found in several Pazyryk burials, direct or indirect contact occurred between the two cultures over two-thousand years ago.

Chinese chronicles from the 9th century A.D. also indicate that the ancient Kyrgyz practiced tattooing: "Males tattoo the hands as a mark of valor and women tattoo the nape of the neck as a sign of marital status." Today, the Kyrgyz inhabit Kyrgyzstan but their original ancestors, the Jiankun, were documented as early as 100 B.C. in Chinese texts. They were said to have red hair, fair faces, and green irises, as do many Kyrgyz today. But the question remains: Were the Jiankun descendents of the ancient tattooed Caucasians or northwest China? Interestingly, 63% of modern Kyrgyz men share the same genetic marker as the Caucasian mummies of China.

Literature

Gros, S. (2005). La part manquante: échanges et pouvoirs aux confins du Yunnan (Chine). Ethnologie des Drung dans leurs relations ā leur voisins. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Paris - Nanterre.

Krutak, L. (2007). The Tattooing Arts of Tribal Women. London: Bennett & Bloom.

Laukien, M. (2007). "Letter from Drung." Skin and Ink Magazine (7): 23-24. July.

Liu, H. (1939). "Hainan: The Island and the People." The China Journal 29(5-6): 236-246; 302-314.

McCabe, M. [and Q.Y. Wang] (2008). "Tattooed Women of Yunnan, China." Skin and Ink Magazine (11): 64-74.

Pringle, H. (2001). "The Curse of the Red-Headed Mummy." Saturday Night 116(18): 32-39. May 12.

Reed, C.E. (2000). "Early Chinese Tattoo." Sino-Platonic Papers 103: 1-52. June.

Stϋbel, H. (1937). Die Li Stämme der Insel Hainan: Ein Betrag zur Volkskunde Sϋdchinas. Berlin: Klinkhardt & Bierman.
 

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Other tattoo articles by Lars Krutak

Tattoos of Sub-Saharan Africa
Tattooing in North Africa, The Middle East and Balkans

Embodied Symbols of the South Seas: Eastern Oceania
Tattoos of Indochina: Supernatural Mysteries of the Flesh
India: Land of Eternal Ink
Wen Shen: The Vanishing Art of Chinese Tribal Culture
The Kalinga Batok (Tattoo) Festival
The Art of Magical Tattoos
Tattoos of the early hunter-gatherers of the Arctic
Piercing and Penetration in the Arctic
The Last Tattoos of St. Lawrence Island
North America's Tattooed Indian Kings
Tribal tattoos of Papua New Guinea
Sacred skin - tattoos of Easter Island
Kosovo: Tattoo Art Amid the Ruins
Four Tattoo Artists in Havana, Cuba
At The Tail of the Dragon: The Vanishing Tattoos of China's Li People
Tribal Tattoos of Mozambique's Makonde
The Oldest Tattoo Shop in Greece
Return of the Headhunters: The Philippine Tattoo Revival
Torches for the Afterlife: Women Tattoo Artists of Northern Borneo
Vladimir Smith - Dermografo Skin Artist) de Tepic, Mexico
The Mundurucú: Tattooed Warriors of the Amazon Jungle
Tattooing Among Japan's Ainu People
Tattooing in the Gran Chaco of South America
Many Stitches for Life: The Antiquity of Thread and Needle Tattooing

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