There had been a few different types of tattoos in imperial and pre-imperial China.

Originally, tattoos were associated with non-Han "barbarians". For example, in Book of Rites (礼记), it has been noted that a group of non-Han people in the east wear their hair down their backs and have tattoos on their bodies.

Since the Zhou Dynasty, some criminals would have characters tattooed on their faces as a punishment to indicate that they've committed a major crime. The idea is that they'd be carrying their prison record on their face wherever they go. The specific crimes associated with this type of punishment and its implementation vary depending on the time period. This practice lasted throughout China's imperial history and was finally abolished in the Qing Dynasty.

Towards the end of the Tang Dynasty, some military governors were known to tattoo their conscripted soldiers to make it easier to catch deserters. By the time of the Southern Song dynasty, some military units used tattoos (facial or otherwise) as a symbol of bravery.

During the late Yuan Dynasty, Shi Nai'an wrote Water Margin, a novel about bandits in the Song Dynasty. In this novel, three characters are known to be extensively tattooed for aesthetic reasons: Lu Zhishen, Yan Qing (modern interpretation), and Shi Jin. This implies that by the mid 1300s, when the novel was written, tattoo as body art was not unheard of.