China’s ‘war’ over the human body rages on
- By Andrew Lam
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, July 31, 2014
In ancient Rome and Greece, the naked body was sculpted to perfection and generally glorified. During the Renaissance, the human form was rendered not only anatomically correct but profound in refined drawings and paintings.
In China, however, the body was kept hidden until the dawn of the 20th century.
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An old poster of a Chinese beauty in cheongsam produced in Shanghai in 1930s. [File photo] |
To be sure, there were erotic images in ancient China, but they were created during the Taoist-dominated eras as manuals to educate young married couples. Far more typical were the paintings that depict upper-class men and women perched on carved wooden chairs, their hands hidden in the sleeves of beautiful brocades, their faces stoic, inexpressive, like peg dolls. To project a cold, outward face was akin to moral rectitude.
“The human body in traditional China was not seen as having its own intrinsic physical glory,” says China scholar Mark Elvin, author of “Changing Stories in the Chinese World.” Beauty was not dependent on sexual characteristics and attributes, he says, but on artifice and ornamentation — a painted face, silk brocade, the jade bracelet that dangles from the wrist — or alteration such as the painful and crippling binding of feet.
Contacts with the West changed all that. The presence of the pale-skinned, blue-eyed gweilo, or “foreign devil” in Cantonese, forced a new kind of self-awareness on the East.
Take the beautiful cheongsam, a body-hugging piece worn by Chinese women. Developed in cosmopolitan Shanghai around 1900, it originated from its opposite, the qipao — a baggy and loose-fitting dress once meant to de-emphasize and conceal the wearer’s figure. It was transformed in the final years of China’s last dynasty to reveal curves, waist, bosom, and a lot more skin.
Under Mao, the body was once more inducted to represent the nation. In posters that have become collectors’ items, workers are depicted as strong and square-jawed; athletes are lithe and agile. Sports became synonymous with modernity.
A strong body was reflective of national strength and was seen as necessary for unity. The self was in service to a larger cause, and everyone moved together wearing Mao jackets — a sea of blue and gray.
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