Around the World in 330 Days: Brian's Fulbright Journey in China and Elsewhere: Day 273: Shanghai Pride--Art Gallery

Today, Sunday, we went to our first Shanghai Pride event, an art gallery that showed the history of Shanghai Pride. It was in the M50 Creative Center of Shanghai. We had never been there. Outside the building, there was a lot of amazing graffiti and inside we saw several cool art galleries. A pretty eclectic area, overall. The name of the gallery was called the Polar Bear Art Gallery. When we walked in, we met a woman named Charlotte who was one of the founders of Shanghai Pride. She's from Malaysia. She walked us through the photo exhibit, which displayed the 10-year history of Shanghai Pride. It began as a small gathering of friends and now, this year, is expanding to Chengdu, Wuhan, and Guangzhou: a "pride on the road" event called CM Pride.

Secrecy and government intervention was, and still is, a part of Shanghai Pride history. She spoke of splitting up the groups for the first "Fun Run" so they wouldn't be recognized by the police. Also, she mentioned that, even today, there are problems with public display (on the website) of some of the venues at which the GLBT films are being shown. It is worthy to note that "Shanghai Pride" is not in one place; it is a series of events in a 10-day period. There are usually two or three events per day, in different places in Shanghai. There's not one big celebration or parade in a park, as with Minneapolis. Shanghai Pride has a film festival, a brunch, a BBQ, the art gallery show, the "Fun Run," a bike ride, and discussion groups (such as one on queer disabilities, one for PFLAG), but they are all on different days and times. I get the sense that they still have to be careful; Charlotte even lowered her voice when speaking sometimes. Wow.

After leaving the venue, we took some pics of the graffiti, which was quite remarkable--some of the best art I've seen in Shanghai. Then Kerry and I went on a rather long walk to Shanghai Railway Station to go to Line 3 to Hongkou Plaza, where we had dinner at Pizza Hut: pepperoni pizza with stuffed crust and milk tea (bing de!). Afterwards, we went to Carrefour. I bought some fruit and cookies for my students for Wednesday. When we got home, I noticed that a lot of the fruit was not in the best shape. So I ended up throwing out almost half the fruit: disappointing.

I noticed that our phone bill from AT&T was about $600 for all the international charges, which is absurd. It's probably mostly my fault; I use Facebook too much without wi-fi. Part of the problem is, though, is that EVERYONE I KNOW USES FACEBOOK; they don't text. If I had texted instead of sending Facebook IMs, I probably wouldn't be in this dilemma. So I spent a good part of the evening trying to figure out other options: we can't be paying that kind of bill each month!

Pride day photos: