The Copenhagen Report

Big, golden, kitsch and fake - the perfect welcome to a contemporary China exhibition.

Having lived for a little over a year in China, in Shanghai from late 2005 to late 2006, I was more then a little keen to check out the Made in China exhibition at the always fantastic Louisiania to see how it stood alongside my memories of the place.

If you want to know more about this experience, check outFor more on the experience of living in China, take a look at The Shanghai Shakedown, my Shanghai (and elsewhere around China) blog from last year. If you want my take on the political situation in China, always a popular issue, you could read this article about Democracy in China.

In my view, Denmark and China are actually an amusing study in contrasts, as the aspects of business and industry that drive Danish society - design, organisation, trustworthiness and innovation - are the sort of buzzwords that I would never ever ever use to describe China. Which means Danish companies have skill very useful to Chinese ones (and indeed plenty of them in Denmark are realising this and taking advantage of it).

To the images.



Here we have one of the classic images of China - the Yellow Mountains located near Huanshan, found on many a cheap Chinese restaurant wall the world over...and an image certainly mercifully not found anywhere in Louisiana's Made in China exhibition.

This one below was, however. Yes, look closely and you will realise that these indeed are real live (hairy) photographed asses from China...and, of course, not the Yellow Mountains.



Shanghai in a suitcase I found rather amusing and clever - from the Jin Mao tower to the Hangpu River and the Pearl Tower. Of course, even contemporary art can't keep pace with the frantic pace of change in China - the new Shanghai World Financial Centre, which has now surpassed the Jin Mao tower as the tallest building in Shanghai (and one of the tallest buildings in the world) does not appear.



Below - the symbol for 'demolision' - found on many a soon to be demolished areas around Beijing, Shanghai and countless other cities around China.







This pooch probably ate some of that Chinese dog food full of grade F meat...