Day 95: To Communist China!

Today a Dutch friend and I embarked on an adventure to Communist China. We were able to do this thanks to the friendly people at the local Art Gallery, the Kunsthal. The Kunsthal had an exhibition on Chinese propaganda posters from the 1920s on to the present day. What did we learn? The Chinese are happy, really really happy. So happy in fact their smiles almost seem like grimaces sometimes. So happy I felt I just had to visit China to find out their secret. Is it a worker's paradise? Is it the opium? Too much plastic surgery? They're smiling 99% of the time. They smile when they work, when they go to the market, when they go to school, when they're telling their Taiwanese friends to join them and especially when they get to wave their Red Books around. When are they not smiling? Well, usually when their is some capitalistic traitor, or invader often portrayed as a sickly green westerner, with expensive watches and dollar signs on his clothes. This is not something to smile about... There was lots of colour in the posters, especially red. Initially, in the early years, the Chinese were dressed in plain, sometimes traditional clothes, but eventually, especially in the 90s western clothing was adopted. One poster showed Chinese and Taiwanese woman frolicking in their bikinis. If only Mao could have seen the future... he would have wept.
Here's Mao and Stalin having a grand old time: (also Canadian guy and dutch girl reflected in the glass... can you see us?)

After the Chinese propagandist posters, we checked out some of the other exhibitions. There was one with pictures of local football hooligans, some others with dutch factory workers from the early part of the century and some of Swiss children taken during the war. Also some interesting modern art: 30 sculptures modelled after the sculptor in different poses and another 30 or so concrete thingies which have the body space of 30 different people from Malmo, Sweden inside them.

The staircase inside the Kunsthal(which was designed by the famous dutch architect Rem Koolhaas):Not a bad day for a bad day weatherwise. That makes two museum/art gallery from Rotterdam down... how many more to go?