Learning where to draw the line

First Person | Cao Chen

Cao Chen, 26, a tattooist who runs a parlor in Beijing

The most common tattooing faux pas is to ink in the name of your current boyfriend or girlfriend. What will you do if you break up? Anniversaries and images of your lover are also bad ideas. I usually suggest that people avoid these things, but if they insist, I recommend they use pinyin (the system of Romanization for Chinese characters) abbreviations, which are easier to change, cover or remove, rather than a person's full name.