The Women Behind My Tattoo-- a personal story
Before I left Buffalo, NY to start grad school at NYU in 2010, I started a half-sleeve arm tattoo. Now, people often ask me about the meaning of it and I find it really hard to sum up all of its meaning in a 30 second explanation -- so I decided to write it up and put it on my blog.
Meeting the Artist
I’d never thought about getting a large tattoo until I was at a birthday party and my friend Amy showed me this large tattoo of Dali’s Giraffe on the side of her body. I’d never seen such amazing detail and color on a tattoo. I expressed-- half jokingly, that if I ever got a large tattoo, I’d go to her tattoo artist. A guy next to me smiled and said “thank you, here’s my card.” That’s how I met my tattoo artist Chris Pchelka.
The Inspiration
I knew that I wanted something related to literature, my culture, and my roots.
I had just read Wild Swans by Jung Chang and that book changed how I looked at my family. Chinese families are very private. Misfortunes and grievances are often hidden from younger siblings and children. It wasn’t until I read Wild Swans and asked my mom about some of the specific things in the book that she told me about some of the hardships for our family and the women in her generation. I found out that like the author’s father in the book, my grandfather gave his life to the government and did everything to protect his family. At the end of his life, someone spread rumors that he was not loyal to our communist government and he died in his bed because no hospital would take him in and no doctor dared to pay him a visit.
My mom never talked about her resentment for the way her father was treated and everything that the government put her family through. She kept her head down and worked hard. Back then, grades were important but to get great job and school placement, it was important to have a mentor in “the party”. Despite how much it would have helped her career, my mom never officially joined the communist party. She proved herself to be the best while she was in school and then in the pharmaceutical job she eventually landed.
When I was 3, she left Beijing for Shanghai to learn English for 6 months. It was really hard for her to leave me and my dad but she knew that it’d pay off. When I was 5, she was offered a rare opportunity to do an apprenticeship at the University of Buffalo in the United States. I’d eventually join her when I finished 4th grade but after she left Beijing, my grandmother and my extended family raised me.
My grandmothers on both sides were total matriarchs. After my grandparents on my dad’s side passed way, my oldest aunt ran the family. That same aunt was reprimanded during the Cultural Revolution because her name was originally An Na Li and that sounded too British. I knew that she changed her name to overcome the gossip, and she eventually became a successful lawyer but my family never talks about the other punishments she had to endure. When her husband died in the late ‘90s from being tossed out of a car after it rolled off a mountain road, she put her son through law school in London and continued to care for our extended family. There is no doubt that she’s the glue on my father’s side of the family. To her, her role in the family is ‘the way it is’ she’s never treated it like a burden or a sacrifice.
Growing up, I remember my 3 aunts cooking all day together on Sundays and arguing over who’s dumpling recipe was the best in the family. They’d dismiss each other’s food logic, they’d bicker and make fun of the others’ method for squeezing together the dumpling wrappers but at the end of the day, we’d all sit together at a large round table and happily bury our faces in dumplings. They’d always sneak me a few dumplings out of the first batch and tell me to not to let my cousins--their own sons and daughters, see me eat the secret dumplings.
I am the youngest in my family and I was also really small for my age. I always wanted to hang out with my cooler cousins, and that led me to some unfortunate situations. I remember jumping a fence to an abandoned tile factory with my cousins, and then being abandoned because I couldn’t get back over the fence. My aunts came and got me. They also defended me against bullies and my cousins’ innate need to play tricks on me before I was old enough to do it myself.
Parts of the Tattoo
For my tattoo, there was nothing more perfect than a scene out of Journey to the West. It had always been my favorite series growing up. The condensed version of the story is that a monkey gets special powers, and he became more human than monkey. He became really full of himself and defied the gods and tried to fight them. The monkey was in some deep trouble until Kwan Yin (sometimes spelled Guan Yin), a bodhisattva who represents compassion, gave him a way out by making a deal with him that he can redeem himself if he accompanied a monk on his pilgrimage.
At first, the monkey tried to run away but Kwan Yin put a crown on his head that tightens when a certain prayer is said. After a few stops with the monk, the monkey realizes that the monk is truly helpless without him and he willingly accompanies him to the end. The monkey’s intelligence, stubbornness, short temper, ego and impulsiveness gets him in trouble, and Kwan Yin had to help them along the way. Their journey are full of evil people who try to derail them, and each story of the book is a new adventure.
My family always compared me to the Monkey King when I was little -- I never listened to my elders, I’d always insist on inventing a new way of getting something done. I got a lot of timeouts in kindergarten because I’d get bored with the class activities, and I’d distract people around me by telling them funny stories that I had read in more advanced books.
When I was young, I was always monkeying around, and I never backed down from an argument or a fight. My mom told me that once when I was little, my dad tried to scare me by spanking me and instead of crying I looked him straight in the eye and basically told him to ‘bring it.’ Luckily, I’ve calmed down since then and I’ve grown from my mistakes like the Monkey King did.
Kwan Yin never stop believing in the Monkey King’s potential to learn from his mistakes and she believed that he can learn to control his impulsiveness and complete the trip a changed monkey. The women in my family have always encouraged me, and they were amazing role models.
I decided to get a Fu Dog on the inside of my arm because I always felt safe and protected by my grandmother, my mom, and my aunts. My grandma and I took long walks every weekend, and there are a lot of pictures of me climbing all over Fu Dog statues as a kid, and I used one of those pictures as a reference for the tattoo.
The Reveal
I wanted this tattoo to honor all the women in my family but getting a giant tattoo is not a very traditional way to honor your Chinese family. Like the stubborn Monkey King, I had to do it anyway. When I told my mom, she told me not to do it. A month later, she was sitting with me in Chris’s tattoo room and making funny faces at me when the tattoo gun touched my skin.
When I went back to China in 2007, I had just finished the Kwan Yin part of my tattoo. I was really scared to show my family because tattoos were not looked at as an art form in the slightest. It really worried me that my grandmother would hated it because she’s never been to America and she hardly ever watched any western entertainment. Her understanding of tattoos is from portrayal of gangsters in Chinese and Japanese movies. I wore a shawl for the first 2 hours of arriving in Beijing, but the humid, summer heat of Beijing got me just before we sat down for dinner.
When my grandmother saw it she got quiet, and I remember holding my breath as she studied it carefully. When she finally talked, she frowned and said, “It worries me that it hurt you, but it’s so beautiful.” My grandma kicks ass.
In my personal journey, I’ve learned the importance of patience and acceptance. I now love getting advice from others, and when I’m feeling rebellious, I use that energy to innovate and rebel against “the way it’s always been done.”
After dinner on that humid July evening, my cool uncle, and I stuck off for a secret cigarette on the balcony. “I don’t like it,” He gestured towards my tattoo with the cigarette he was handing me, “but your mom and gramma did.” He lit my cigarette and said, “I’m trying to quit. Don’t tell your aunt.”
