/ARTS WEEKLY/CHINA: Valentine’s Yes, but not ‘Vagina Monologues’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Feb 17 2004 (IPS) - Once puritanically critical of all occasions that paraded love, communist China has embraced the celebrations of Valentine’s Day – ”the imported Western festival” – as a succession of consumer opportunities coated in romance.

Valentine’s Day in China these days means vogue. It means red roses and heart-shaped chocolates, fat Cupids and a commercial victory for fashion brand names, whose signature bags hang proudly on the arms of many couples.

Valentine’s Day means anything but vagina. Even after acquiescing to blatant public displays of sentiments of love on Feb. 14, a day which in Chinese is dubbed ‘Lovers Day’, China continues to shun the word ‘vagina’.

A pioneering performance of the internationally-acclaimed play ‘The Vagina Monologues’ was banned in Beijing on Valentine’s Day – a week after its staging was cancelled in Shanghai, China’s most avant-garde and trend-setting city.

In Beijing, the drama was banned ostensibly for ”loopholes in the approval procedures”, according to Beijing arts officials. ”We were told we haven’t obtained permission from the cultural authorities,” says Angel An, one of the curators of the private Today Art Gallery, which was to host the show.

But for everybody even vaguely familiar with the modus operandi of Chinese censors of taste, it is clear that pedantic applications of the ”examination and approval process” are ordered only when there is a problem with the cultural product.

”If all plays and performances had to go through the approval process from A to Z when being staged, then we wouldn’t get to see very much,” grumbled a woman touring the displays at the gallery on Valentine’s Day.

The producers of Eve Ensler’s controversial play have tried to minimise the sensation caused by its debut in China by pledging all profits from the show to a Chinese group that works with domestic violence. Yet the commendable goal has not spared the play the axe.

After having sold most of the 500 tickets for this single show in the capital, producers had to call it off. Proceeds of up to 250,000 yuan (30,000 U.S. dollars) were lost for the organisers and chief among the losers is the Network for Combating Domestic Violence of the China Law Society.

”I’m not surprised by the ban,” says Hong Ying, a female writer whose own novels have raised controversy in the past. ”It is the name of the play that counts. ‘Vagina Monologues’ sounds so scary to Chinese officials. What could a vagina say, they think, and fear that a name like this would attract far too much attention. Attention means discussions, means gatherings, in one word it means trouble.”

Vagina in Chinese translates as the ”road to Yin” where ‘Yin’ symbolises the feminine side of nature as opposed to Yang, the masculine side. While the juxtaposition of Yin and Yang is one of the essential principles of Chinese philosophy, the dissection and flaunting of female sexuality is still regarded as a cultural phenomenon imported from the West.

In Shanghai, the play was cancelled because ”the authorities said it doesn’t suit China’s national situation”, Reuters news agency quoted an employee at the Shanghai Drama Centre as saying.

However, the play has already generated a lot of buzz in the Internet chatrooms – testimony to quite the opposite: the presence of interest and divergent opinions on the subject of openly discussing female sexuality.

Eve Ensler’s play created a wave of cultural shocks when first in 1996, it tried to examine publicly touchy subjects like orgasm, menopause, sexual abuse, rape and lesbian experiences. Based on interviews with 200 women from different walks of life – including prostitutes and women raped in war – the play has grown into an international movement used to fight violence against women and given birth to a ‘V-day’.

The play has been translated into 25 languages and staged in over 40 countries, including the Chinese-speaking Singapore and Hong Kong.

In China however, V-day appears more easily associated with Valentine’s romantic appeal and commercial boom rather than with fight against domestic violence. Declaring public passion for each other by spending money has now become the trademark of celebrating Valentine’s Day in China.

A survey conducted by Horizon Research in 2002 found that people in China’s three big cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou – spend the most on Valentine’s Day. On average, they spent 192 yuan (23 dollars) per person to celebrate Lovers Day, only slightly less that people in the United States who spent 25 dollars per person on average.

Yet behind the commercial spree in China, there is also a sheer hunger for romance that a nation, once denied the whims of fancy and fun by communist austerity, is now trying to make up for.

Had Chinese cultural gurus declared that ‘The Vagina Monologues’ is too loaded with gruesome stories of war rapes and unsuitable for a romantic festival as Valentine’s Day, the cancellation of the show would have hardly generated such fervent anticipation.

But by banning the play because of national sensitivities, they seem to have made the show all the more sexy and appealing to audiences.

”I hear that the Shanghai organisers of the show are moving to try and stage it in Nanjing,” says one of the Beijing producers.

In the capital, the ban has already driven the play underground. Amateur actors are preparing to stage the show in cameo performances and DVDs of the play are said to be expected on the market shortly.