shanghai girls, more than a movement of art

Shanghai girls is the art movement that opens the advertising era of China. The basic enforcement of the movement, I think, is the open to the foreign countries, which results in sudden and various goods arriving, which also explains the content and the form of the advertisements.

This printing ad, in the first place, is a formation of new year poster or calendar, which is a tradition in China. The arriving of the plenty of goods take the advantage of this popular posters to sell their products. As a result, we can find the biggest difference of the modern advertisements is that the product shows up as an attachment instead of the figure.

As to the content, it astonishes people both from home country and aboard that some of them so nudity and full of sex overtone, totally different from the tradition of China. I think it is a result of two facts. The first is that with accompany of the foreign goods comes the open thoughts about sex and other things. The other one is that sex is the instinct of human. Chinese people have shut up for thousands of years. When they get oppotunity to open the mouth, things are easy to be overdone. The scenes described in the poster are activities quite popular or modern at that time, like bicyling and the girls showing up are all beatuties with the most modern dress. Judging from that, talking about sex may not a big deal either, or even a modern thing I guess.

What I want to especailly point out is that the social system of China before is quite different with the one we do today and in the future. There is no judge of right or wrong towrds social systems. But it take steps and time to transfer from one to another, during which period things may overdo or get wrong, but it's quite normal. Things always progess in zigzag, isn't it?