City orders taxi drivers to remove their tattoos

HONG KONG >> Taxi drivers in a northwestern Chinese city recently received an unusually blunt government directive: Get rid of your tattoos.

The order came in August as transportation officials in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, rolled out a campaign to spruce up the image of local cabdrivers. Ostensibly, the notattoo rule was meant to keep some passengers from feeling uncomfortable.

It also coincided with nationwide efforts to dampen the growing popularity of tattoos among younger generations, who are increasingly embracing the oncestigmatized body art.

But one driver in Lanzhou wanted to keep the ink and took to an online government forum to deliver a polite, but pointed, rebuttal to the city’s order.

“When applying for our driver permit, we submit documents showing that we have no criminal records,” wrote the driver, who was not identified in the post and could not be reached for comment. “Our tattoos don’t turn us into bad guys and criminals.”

The driver noted that removing tattoos was painful and expensive, requiring repeat visits to scrub traces of permanent ink from the skin through laser technology. The process can also leave scars and faded patches of color.

The government’s order was simply discriminatory, the driver said.

But in a public response Sept. 7, Lanzhou’s transportation committee did not budge. Without offering evidence, it said that “large tattoos on drivers may cause distress to passengers who are women and children.”

The committee also insisted that “drivers who already have tattoos should remove them through surgical procedures to the greatest extent possible.”

It was unclear how the tattoo removal would be enforced or who would pay for it. When reached by telephone Tuesday, representatives of the Lanzhou government declined to comment. The committee’s response to the driver was widely reported across China, reviving an age-old debate in a country where tattoos are being increasingly embraced by younger Chinese but are still shunned by those who consider them a mark of criminality.