Chinese Tattoos

The secluded and unconscious of ancient Chinese culture tattooing traditions  

Confucius once said: "The hair and skin of the body are received from the parents, do not dare to destroy, the son's piety to the beginning." Tattoos in the central plains were once considered a serious disregard for one's parental heritage and a great act of inhuman behavior. Despite the expression of this revered and respected Chinese thinker, the art of tattooing has been known in China for thousands of years. Tattooing in China is called Ci Shen (or Wen Shen), which literally means “piercing the body”. Although this art has been known in China for a long time, it has mostly been an unusual and unpopular practice. 

Tattooing does not have a strong tradition among the Chinese, there are minority groups who peculiarly adapted tattoos. Among them are the Dulong and Dai tribes, as well as the Li people of Hainan Island.

Because of their unusual cosmopolitan style, they were buried in boats, wearing leather and wool clothing and even cheese necklaces. They wore western style felt clothing and kept agricultural produce. Of course, some of the mummies have tattoos on their skin, which is the purpose of our trip and certainly not typical of Chinese culture. Further, everything in order :) 

Thanks to the dry and salty environment, the mummy was well preserved. This woman was named Loulan Beauty because of her beautiful face and hair. The most controversial aspect of the Tarima mummies is their genetic heritage. Recent DNA sequencing data has proven that the mummies are of western origin, as opposed to the original eastern origin claimed by Chinese authorities. As a result, most of the mummies are currently located (Wenying Li, Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology) and their further genealogical research to foreign experts and institutes hs been denied. 

"There were three main hypotheses," Variner said. "They each suggested that it was a group from far to the West—hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers to the West, after all — that had migrated quickly or slowly into the region." But their results did not indicate descent from any of the proposed western groups. Instead, the findings suggest that they were direct descendants of an Ice Age population that was part of northern Eurasia 9,000 years ago.

Centuries replace each other and burial places stratify according to time. Mutual interaction among the nations was particularly common during the heyday of the Silk Road, when camel caravans carried goods which flowed from the Mediterranean. "It has historically been a place where cultures have mixed," said Yidilisi Abuduresula, a 58-year-old Uighur archaeologist from Xinjiang who works at mummies. It seems that the mummies of Tarim indicate that the first people to settle in the area came from the west, from the steppes of Central Asia and even further afield, rather than from the fertile plains and river valleys of inland China. The oldest, like Loulan Beauty, is 3,800 years old. 

The mummies, known as "Cherchen Man and Family" (three women and a baby), who were members of the ancient Caledonii tribe in central Scotland, were discovered in a burial site thousands of miles east of where the Celts in France established their largest European and the British Island settlements. They were found in the Taklamakan desert in Xinjiang region of western China, in whose language the word "Taklamakan" means "you enter and never come out." The mummies are currently housed in glass cases in a new museum in the provincial capital of Urumqi. 

The yellow and purple spirals and sun patterns on the mummy's face have been misidentified in some sources as faded tattoos; they actually are in ocher color. 

The Charchan man wore a red twill tunic and tartan leggings. Textile expert Elizabeth Velland Barber, who examined the tartan-style fabric, claims that it can be traced back to Anatolia, the Caucasus and the steppe area north of the Black Sea. The textiles found with the mummies are an early type of European textiles and fabric and are similar to textiles found on salt mine bodies in Austria around 1300 BC. This population was suggested by Victor Mair's team, to have arrived in the region across the Pamir Mountains about 5,000 years ago. 

China has a rich culture and history that is not directly related to the indigenous people. As an amusing example in conclusion :) A seated Buddha statue that went from a temple in China to an auction house in the Netherlands revealed an unusual secret - a 1000-year-old mummified monk. The mummy was discovered inside the statue's cavity after a private buyer brought it to an expert for restoration, CNN reports. It is not clear when the statue was taken out of China. A team of researchers and scientists performed a CT scan of the statue and found the mummy. They noted that the mummy's organs were gone. Researchers also discovered that the mummy was found sitting on a bundle of cloth covered with Chinese writing. They learned that the name of the mummy was a Buddhist monk named Liuquan. But how he became a mummy is something of a mystery. 

 He may have experienced the practice of self-mummification in Japan, China, and Thailand over 1,000 years ago. And the remains may have spoiled and were later placed inside the statue. 

Of course, the Chinese authorities had tried to understand and reconstruct this unusual mummification process :) 

P.S. 

Amazing, but when I started this digital journey, my belief about the origins of tattooing traditions would definitely lean in favor of Asia, maybe Oceania, but every evidence points to European origins...... 

Chinese tattoos are popular among enthusiasts in the Western world. Chinese tattoos offer beautiful images with an exotic feel and often a much deeper meaning than what lies on the surface.