Go China?: For decoration only and (not) for consumption

On the 1st of May I went to see this exhibition that is travelling around Europe. Admittedly I only went to the Drents Museum in Assen (North Holland) where the archaeological part of the collection is shown; so no contemporary Chinese arts, ‘cos that’s in the Groninger Museum. Admittedly is also not a great idea to go on a holiday day when all families, older people and the 50% of the Dutch population is out for a day-trip. In fact, you risk having a heart attach seeing the enormous queue waiting outside the entrance of the museum for a hundred meters or more, to get the tickets. More importantly you risk getting’ stuck in the corridor of the museum with hundreds of people rambling around, flocks of 70-80 years old people staying still in the middle of the rooms chatting, twin-buggies occupying the whole space in front of like 5 display-windows where you are supposed to see tiny objects, and you need at least 20 minutes to reach a toilet.

Okay, point taken, not a very clever day to go there. But we had the tickets already (long live the internet) so at least no queue for us.

Anyway, the collection was interesting, the Terracotta Army impressive, other statues and various objects beautiful. The general installation of the exhibition was good, interesting set up, cleverly made cloth walls and elevated bridges to observe the real life-size Terracotta statues. The written explanation was total crap. 30 lines in total of text giving nothing else but dates, names and numbers (how many statues, how old, how deep in the ground, etc..), nothing at all about why? who? how? under which circumstances?

But what stroke me the most was the museum shop:

The exhibition is called “Go China!”. Possible subtitles could be: “China goes pop for western dummies: ready for consumption” or “Go China, do the 2008 Olympic games*, expand your market in Europe, we are ready, we don’t understand anything of Chinese culture and traditions but we like your cute statues and handsome soldiers”.

Please notice that the ‘original’ statue of the soldier kneeling looks pretty much like this.
[From the cover of the museum guide]
And please notice how in the colourful ‘pocket’ versions he becomes more slim, his face longer, his facial traits more ‘western’, all in all, like some kind of cute actor in “The three Musketeers” with just a bit of a pleasant oriental look.

[The pictures here were taken in the shop].

China goes Dutch:
China goes cow (?):
Yes, there are also statures of women. A lot less in fact.
I leave to you the analysis of those statues..
Noteworthy is that almost ALL the shops in Assen used the subtle marketing strategy of putting random Chinese or oriental looking objects to decorate their windows, this is one out of hundreds of examples:
Finally, the 30th of April is Queen's Day in Holland, so this is what the streets of Assen looked like the day after:
Notice that also the compulsory orange items that you have to wear on Queen's day went Chinese for the occasion:
Orange 'Chinese' hat!
[Holland is soooo multicultural!]

- fine -

* From the website of the Groninger Museum: “In het Olympisch jaar 2008 staan het Drents Museum en het Groninger Museum geheel in het teken van China.”