Status Updates From Out of China: Chinese Natio...

National Museum of China’s perma display. ‘The aesthetic in first galleries is darkness. Art illustrate narrative of China’s humiliated weakness from 1840. But then comes the light, the later galleries show triumphs since 1949.’ Ends with space programme and modernity. ‘A release from the shame of the past. The promise at the end of the black tunnel of history is a smartphone.’ - I want to go see this :)

‘Rain poured down and tears were shed for all the reasons that tears might be shed: sadness, joy, fear, confusion or relief… The governor sailed away on the Britannia after midnight, the Union Jack was pulled down and the five star’s of China raised… In Beijing there were fireworks in Tiananmen Square… A century of humiliation had been washed away as the rain fell in Hong Kong.’

‘One symbol of Guangzhou’s smooth modern cosmopolitanism has been the chic Western clothes and hairstyles… but now this was seen as an obvious sign of communist affiliation, and the Chinese revolution that had secured its great, stirring triumph in 1927 concluded the year by executing scores of its bobbed-haired youth in the streets of one of its greatest metropolises.’

‘Lloyd George, advanced a position that would be familiar to his compatriots in China, ‘Chinese stagnation justifies a great part of what foreigners have done there. The Chinese are like the Arabs, a very talented race, but at a stage that does not allow them to progress further… It must be acknowledged that China isn’t in the same situation as the great powers in this conference.’’ - here we go…