why do we do the things we do? 

i had a friend, an artist named chen hanfeng, commission a work for the upcoming 2018 chinese new year on one of our buildings in shanghai. i particularly love this artist wit and ideas, i find most of what he does inspirational and fun, but also interesting. the above characters are a classic chinese new years phrase hung throughout the city and featured on countless new years cards and posters. 

fu lu shou fa

inside these traditional symbols, he plays with the idea of what wealth is in modern china. and if you have visited lately, the current status symbol of power and prosperity are global brands along with flashy cars and all the things too much money buys new wealth.  we were going to take the art and paste them, at around 6-feet tall, along the outside of a few of our windows and on the street. i thought it would be fun, light and interesting. 

this was one of the buildings we were going to pasted it onto. 

the problem was as we were going to print, i decided to show it to some of my colleagues and a few did not like it, they did not say why (for fear i might be offended i guess) and i noticed that one was actually asking me not to put on the outside of their office. later on, i asked my wife, who is chinese and she agreed, telling me that what i was putting up would not be enjoyed by the greater audience and that my joke, as she called it, would fall on deaf ears and that even worse, i would upset my government partners if word got back and someone took a photo and got offended. i did not understand at all, until i started looking harder into the artwork and trying to see the other side. what i found, although not disturbing, did seem like it might be somewhat offensive to others. 

the main issue i had was i had asked the artist to create the project. i dont think he really cared either way but after bugging him a while, he went about laying it out and getting the project ready. he spent time and energy and now i was in a bit of a bind. it was either self censor, or go forward and risk offending someone and disobeying my colleagues and wife. stuck with this problem, i gave the art to one of my partners and asked if they would have a problem with it.

at first, there was no issue, but when i pointed out the symbols inside, she asked me not to put it up. ok, i thought…I have a legitimate, although somewhat contrived excuse to stop. i felt defeated, but in a way, also relieved i had caught the problem before it might have offended someone. it is a strange feeling, both shameful of my decision to quit the works i set out to do and time spent doing it, but happy that i had avoided what might have been a problem in someones eyes other then my own. 

i still feel bad though, a bit of an unknown and awkward feeling of not having the balls to just move the piece forward. if not for the countless times my wife has turned out to be right in our arguments i probably would have.

 i just got off the phone with my friend and told him that we were not going forward with it. he asked why and i told him the story of our government partner, of my colleagues and that we were asked not to move forward. he did not reply for a while, and finally said, probably self-censorship. 

i had a hard time denying it.