What do the following have in common – foot binding, prostitution, the silk industry, concubines? They all have to deal with the reality of women in Shanghai and they are all omitted from the current exhibit at the Asian. Shanghai, The Art of the City, presents such a cleaned up and ready for its close-up image that you would never guess that it was a byword for decadence, corruption and violence.
The exhibit would have gained immeasurably if there had been an open acknowledgment of the status of women during the 150 years covered by the show. Women were regarded as inferior and expendable. An ancient maxim decreed “Eight saintly daughters are not equal to a boy with a limp.” It's something that the Chinese Communist government fought against but their "one family, one child" policy resulted in more male births with girls being either aborted or abandoned (and China is not alone in this attitude). This policy resulted in a disparate ratio of 114 males for every 100 females among babies from birth through children four years of age. Normally, 105 males are naturally born for every 100 females.
If women make up 50% of the population, why are we, why is the museum in 2010 promoting such an inaccurate and sanitized picture of their lives? The Shanghai exhibit at the Asian is a survey show. Parts of the exhibit suffer from taking such a wide-angle view of a city with such tumultuous past. Yet, it would not have taken much to include a few items such as an opium pipe, a pair of bound slippers, a portrait of of a real prostitute or the Chinese part of the city circa 1920 or 1930 to have made the show more accurate, without sacrificing its broad appeal. Monday is International Woman's Day and we are still fighting to have our authentic experience and history told.
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