The rule can be more onerous for some players than for others. Take the heavily inked central defender Zhang Linpeng. Most of his body, including the entirety of both arms, is heavily tattooed. He has been playing with a compression shirt underneath his national team jersey at the Asian Cup, though he has avoided covering the markings on his right leg and his neck.

Other players have less work to do; a tattooed back or calf is often covered by a player’s uniform, while a smaller bit of artwork can be hidden under athletic tape. (Zhang and others have managed to get some respite: Covering tattoos isn’t mandatory for training sessions.)

The Chinese soccer federation and tournament organizers clearly do not want to talk about the issue, however. At a news conference before a game with South Korea this week that will decide top spot in Group C, a tournament official tried to shut down a question about the tattoos before the Chinese national team coach, Marcello Lippi of Italy, could answer it.

After it was rephrased, Lippi gave a short, diplomatic response, saying he was not unduly concerned by the edict. The team’s captain, Zheng Zhi, sitting to Lippi’s right, stifled a laugh but declined to comment on the issue.

“This is only a detail; I don’t really want to talk about this,” Lippi said through a translator.

A few months before the ink ban was imposed on Chinese soccer players, television stars faced similar restrictions as part of government efforts to control what viewers were being exposed to in the media. The soccer rules were brought in so quickly, though, that some clubs simply chose to heavily bandage their players before they took the field.