Background on the Tao Tattoo

Part of The Tao Tattoo Series

1. The Meaning
2. The Experience
3. The Background
4. Tattwo

Asian char­ac­ter tat­toos have become some­what of a cliché, but not doing some­thing because it’s trendy is as bad as doing it because it’s trendy. I chose to get a tat­too for myself, which is why I it’s on the inside of my wrist, fac­ing me when I see it. Unfortunately, for­eign lan­guage tat­toos are often wrong and hilar­i­ously bad as well, as if a child had drawn them.

So I did my research, and found as many draw­ings of the Tao char­ac­ter as pos­si­ble. At one point I went as far as track­ing down peo­ple who had pur­chased a cer­tain paint­ing with Tao in the title, and call­ing them to ask if they would take a pic­ture and send it to me¹. I’m a per­fec­tion­ist in my every­day life, so I was going to be sure about some­thing that would last for the rest of my life.

My ini­tial dilemma was that I wanted some­thing clear and clean — as is my style — but per­sonal and expres­sive — as is my taste — at the same time, and these two things seem to con­tra­dict each other when it comes to Chinese cal­lig­ra­phy. While the for­mer (reg­u­lar script) is a lit­tle too rigid to fit with the spon­ta­neous nature of Taoism, the lat­ter (cur­sive script) is barely recognizable.

The human can­vas is some­thing to con­sider as well. Embossed tat­toos look fake to me, and dry brush strokes, while accept­able in Chinese paint­ing, look like marker on skin.

Through my exten­sive search­ing, I’ve come to under­stand that Chinese cal­lig­ra­phy is an art. Each stroke is made with expres­sion and intent. There are basic brush tech­niques, pro­por­tional struc­ture, as well as per­son­al­ity that make up a character.

At first I tried draw­ing it myself, but quickly learned how much prac­tice it takes to write well.

There are also many Chinese fonts out there, but they’re fonts. I didn’t want some­thing that was com­puter gen­er­ated, but had the per­sonal feel of being hand-drawn and included brush imperfections.

After going through dozens of ver­sions and inter­pre­ta­tions, includ­ing sev­eral famous Chinese cal­li­graphic mas­ters, I set­tled on an engrav­ing by Yan Zhenqing.

His artis­tic accom­plish­ment in Chinese cal­lig­ra­phy par­al­lels the great­est mas­ter cal­lig­ra­phers through­out the his­tory, and his cal­lig­ra­phy style, Yan, is the textbook-style that every cal­lig­ra­phy lover has to imi­tate today.

My Uncle Joe was a great help in the mat­ter. He has a strong under­stand­ing of cul­tures, and com­pared the free-willed draw­ing of Gia-Fu Feng to an impres­sion­ist paint­ing with “essence and spirit”, whereas the more strongly defined draw­ing is that of a Realist, cap­tur­ing the “beauty of the form”.

This inter­pre­ta­tion by Yan is for­mal, mas­cu­line, and a bit of a con­tra­dic­tion to the care­free (and fem­i­nine) nature of Taoism, but I think it’s the right bal­ance. From a design point-of-view, the very nature of the Tao char­ac­ter is rather blocky, and the last (bot­tom) stroke defines a strong border.

I’m happy to have a bit of his­tory, or my cul­ture, on my body. I feel like I have right to wear such a thing, instead of the poseurs who don’t even know the true mean­ing of what they have.

Paintings are nice, but don’t fol­low you around. Pendants and the like don’t carry the same mean­ing as a tat­too. I felt like a tat­too was the right medium to express myself.

This is the first and only thing I would ever want etched on my body, as a per­ma­nent reminder for me to fol­low The Way. Until now, I’ve never had the desire to get a tat­too. My fickle nature has always made it hard to stick with any­thing, but when I dis­cov­ered Taoism, I knew it was going to stay.

Instead of get­ting a rea­son for a tat­too, I got a tat­too for a reason.

1. I felt ter­ri­ble when one guy said that the paint­ing was with his ex-girlfriend [↑]