Updated: 2007-09-17 09:09

You can still see women with tattooed faces in the Dulong River Valley. But after the area became administered by the People's Republic of China in 1956 the custom fell out of fashion. Today there are less than 60 tattooed women in the valley. In July 2003, Shen Xingshi, a photographer from E Anhui Province , recorded their lives on camera.

Dong Chunlian

Born in 1953, Dong Chunlian is the youngest woman with facial tattoos. Unlike others who are locked in the valley, she moved to the outside world to show more people about Dulong. She attended the Ethnic Expo held in Taiwan in 2000, and once visited Japan.

A close look at her facial tattoo shows that her cheeks look like the wings of a butterfly, her nose its body, and her forehead its antenna.

Nashe

This is Nashe, born in 1913. Her mother-in-law forced her to have her face tattooed when she was 12, and the tattooist was paid with a basket of taros and a knife.

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