A Talk With Don Jay, Hong Kong's First Filipino-Owned Tattoo Parlor

Don Jay is a businessman and an artist with a colonial ancestry in Hong Kong, but with Filipino roots. He is a second-generation Hong Kong-born Filipino, with his family landing in the city when a British flag was flown in the 1940s.

His parents, former bartender and clerk, sought a lucrative career in marketing for him; his grandfather, a former musician who came to Hong Kong in the colonial 1960s, attempted to introduce “Jay” to the guitar, but to no avail.

After bartending work in Hong Kong post-high school and studying a college degree in business marketing management in the Philippines, Jay’s passion for needle work and tattooing sprouted.

Today, Jay runs a successful tattoo studio, Hong Kong’s only Filipino-owned tattoo parlor.

Jay’s journey as the city’s sole owner of a Filipino tattoo studio stretches deep into his ancestry and his mania about skin art.

Jay first discovered his natural skill and penchant for needling artistry in college at San Beda College in Alabang, Metro Manila. He ventured to his local tattoo mall store where he presented a drawing of a small tattoo he wanted on his chest, his first tattoo.

At first, the tattoo artist was at a disbelief that Jay was able to draw so delicately and detailed. They presumed he ripped off someone else's design, redrew it, and found a cheaper place to go. After being instructed to redraw the design, Jay dazzled the artists with his artistic skill.

Impressing his local tattoo artists, Jay instantly realized his ability to produce detailed and artistic free-hand designs. A love for body art and a skill in drawing, tattooing “was a no-brainer.”

During the second year of college, Jay enlisted the help of Alex Cuyugan, a veteran tattooist who is operating his chain Borados Tattoo in Laguna Province, Philippines, in a mentorship scheme covering the basics of staffing a tattoo parlor - hygiene, sanitation, marketing - all the way to the tattoo artistry - designing, sketching, and shading.

After his mentorship spanning two years, Alex granted Jay a certificate in written proof of his fine artistic and management skills. With only a HK$250 business license required to operate a business in Hong Kong, Jay’s dream of operating an independent tattoo studio was nearly realized.

Today, Jay’s designs and inspirations come from his journey tattooing in Asia and Europe. His ancestral history has tempted him to perfect the elaborate art of coloured Filipino tattoos and Japanese yakuza tattoos.

During our tour of his Sheung Wan studio, located on Queen’s Road West, Jay showed us his previous designs, flicking through a picture book of fusion Hong Kong and Filipino tattoos he’s drawn onto clients, each unique and elaborate.

One of the designs Jay showed The Beat Asia was a forearm tattoo he did for a client’s former dog, who passed away. After cremation, Jay used the dog’s cremated ashes, upon his permission and request, to blend with the tattoo ink to permanently etch out his client’s lost pet love.

Over the years, his picture book of elaborate tattoos has filled up with Hong Kong-inspired designs: a red and brown traditional junk boat floating on the crashing, blue waves on a customer's shoulder, a black and red Bauhinia flower strewn along a shoulder, and small 加油 (gaa1 jau2 / add oil) tattoos in black, representing an “add oil” attitude to life.

His client base is split between first-time customers looking for their first tattoo, a symbolic design of their childhood or heritage, and repeat -clients wanting to get an addition to their already chock-full canvas space on their upper body.

Jay says his favourite pieces to tattoo are portraits of people, as he flicks through his picture book, showing us the face tattoos that he painstakingly needles for clients’ lost loves or close family members.

“When [my customers] come in, I sit down with them and they tell me a story about why they want to have this [tattoo]. We connect through their stories and the permanency of having something their journey, story created on their skin.”

“Any tattoo, big or small, is forever, so I want [tattoo] each one perfectly.”

“The love for tattooing is always there, however, I was scared to leave stable position working in marketing in Hong Kong,” Jay recounts, speaking about his transition from a corporate career to a risky artistic venture.

When Jay arrived back in Hong Kong after five years of study in the Philippines, he ventured into the marketing field and set himself a goal of working for one or two years before deciding whether the creative field of tattooing was a safe career path.

In the Philippines, during his mentorship in Alabang, south of Manila, the tattoo industry operates in small circles and are established within old tattoo studios. In Hong Kong, tattoo studios compete for clientele, are aggressive in their marketing, and edge out neighboring competition.

He flavoured his passion for tattooing in part-time shifts alongside his marketing work in 2015, taking night and weekend shifts to practice at Hong Kong-run studios.

In early 2016, Jay decided to follow his creative path and began renting out a small studio in Sai Ying Pun to start tattoo work for friends. The move was a risk , financially, yet calculated, after he and his wife had just eloped and had their first child.

“[In] the first three months of work I didn’t have many customers,” Jay recalls, noting how he used his marketing skills learnt throughout college to attract clients. “Business picked up in late 2017 through simply word of mouth. I began in circles [tattooing my friends] and then friends of friends. That’s how it grew.”

His current client-base is made up of ethnic Hong Kongers and English speakers, ranging from close Filipino friends, Nepali bartenders, and Indian Hong Kongers, to American bankers and British English teachers.

In mid-2019, Jay relocated to his Sheung Wan store, where he currently works out of, after getting chased out in competition with “two Hong Kong and one Thai[-run] tattoo studios in Sai Ying Pun.”

Reflecting on the events of being forced out of Sai Ying Pun’s neighbourhood tattoo field, Jay is vehemently anti-competition in respects to other studios around west Hong Kong.

“I wanted to keep it like [it is in] the Philippines. The community and bonds of the Filipino tattoo studios are strong. I want it to be that way [in Hong Kong]. It is not for me the competition of the business, that I get more clients [and beat out other studios]. It’s about the passion, that’s all.”

We toured his cozy and black Sheung Wan studio, as Jay pointed us to old sketches, award certificates, art work hung up proudly on the wall, both a symbol of his decorated journey as a Filipino tattoo artist and a testimony to his skills.

“You see this poster,” Jay told The Beat Asia during a video interview, “this poster contains the letters of the Baybayin alphabet, the old alphabet of Tagalog before Spanish colonial rule in the 16th century.”

Prior to Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines in the 16th century, Tagalog speakers used the syllabic alphabet of Baybayin to document their thoughts. Historians have judged the use of the language as a patriotic way to read and write in the country.

After the mass destruction of native literature, including many historical scripts written in the ancient alphabet, was ordered by Spanish authorities under the rule of King Philip II || in 1571, Baybayin was forgotten in the lexicon of Filipinos.

As Hong Kong’s “Filipino tattooist,” Jay wants to introduce the Filipino tattoo and culture to overseas Filipinos in Hong Kong. He has done elaborate body tattoos of Baybayin letters on his clientele and has experimented in the traditional indigenous art of batok tattoos, ink pressed into the skin using a sharp bamboo needle.

Besides traditional influences on his tattoo work, Jay particularly enjoys drawing the surreal and mythical black-and-white designs he did during his mentorship in Alabang. Small sketches and previous stencil work done for clients in Hong Kong, the Philippines, the U.K., and Tokyo are stuck on his studio windows, illuminating the detailed shading work.

Jay's feature in the first edition of Pangyao Magazine in October, Hong Kong’s newest bimonthly migrant magazine, has elevated his image and studio within the tattoo field.

“Hong Kong is a small island; everyone seems to know everyone somehow. Why not spread the word of a great business?”

He is conscious about his image and position running the city’s first Filipino-owned tattoo parlour; however, it does not matter to him as much as his space for working on his passion.

“At first, I didn’t think much of it. A lot of my local friends kept on telling me, “You’re the first one!”. They tag me [on Instagram] and post about how I am the first Filipino-owned tattoo shop. I do market myself as the first but I love what I do [regardless] so this is not as important as following my dream.”

Jay is, ostensibly, a Hong Konger by heart, born and bred in the city. “I can’t relate to the culture back in the Philippines.” His future is in Hong Kong and with his local Hong Kong wife and six-year-old daughter.

The future for Jay and Don.Jay Tattoo is to expand into a bigger parlour in the Sheung Wan and Sai Ying Pun area. Serving the same clientele and friendship circles and growing as a business.

The effects of three business shutdowns in Hong Kong due to the COVID-19 pandemic have made Jay weary about future business in the city, with a back-up plan to emigrate to the Philippines to connect with his roots.

“Before 2020, every working weekday and weekend was fully booked with up to six or seven tattoo sessions daily. Now, my capacity is run down to just 60% or 70% of what it was; I only work on two or three sessions a day now,” Jay told The Beat Asia.

But similar to his career switch from a corporate career to a “gamble” working on his passion, Jay is resilient and dedicated to his work as a tattoo artist.

You can find Don.Jay Tattoo Studio on Instagram or at their studio in Unit 504, 5th Floor, Hollywood Centre, No. 77-91, Queen's Rd W, Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong.