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A little over a year ago in Wuhan, China, the Hubei Provincial Museum put on display an exhibit entitled “This is Africa”. The goal of the exhibit, as stated by photographer Yu Huiping, was to “explore connections between nature and man". To do such ‘exploring’ the photographer, in the section titled “one’s heart makes one's appearance”, juxtaposed two sets of photos, a native African animal and a native person of Africa making a similar facial expression. The exhibit was based on a Chinese proverb which translates to “outward appearance follows inner reality”. Over 100,000 Chinese tourists visited the popular installation, taking numerous photos of themselves but most were unaware of any disrespect the exhibit brought out. Despite the museum having good intentions to promote harmony and balance between humans and animals, their exhibit came off as tone deaf, which they recognized after western media outlets highlighted the issue.

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The backlash initially began when an exchange student from Nigeria shared the exhibit via Instagram. He tagged several major news outlets but went viral after a popular English-language website, Shanghaiist, featured it on their page. The story quickly gained attention with numerous foreign exchange students, who were studying in China at the time, reporting the controversy to their institutions demanding action.

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The exhibit’s planner, Wang Yuejun, noted that in China, many of its proverbs reference how “animals are used for admiration and compliment and that comparisons between people and animals are often considered positive in the country.” He pointed to how Chinese have worshiped animal totems as well as in the Chinese zodiac system, one’s birth year is associated with a specific animal. The museum did pull the photographs from the controversial section of the exhibit “to show our goodwill and sincerity to our African friends”. Wang also added, in his defense of the photographer, that this exhibit is an attempt to “remind people that we shouldn’t forget where we come from”. Despite the museum realizing that this type of exhibit is offensive, the issue of “casual racism” is a common occurrence in China, often unbeknownst to its citizens.

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China is rife with other examples of being tone-deaf in regards to racism and racist actions. One such recent example is China’s most popular chat app, WeChat, used English translate software that translated a Chinese phrase meaning “black foreigner” to the N-word. Another example was a laundry detergent ad depicting a black man covered in paint going into a washing machine but coming out as fresh, clean Asian man. China’s tone-deafness even extends to their news programs such as when Xinhua, the State-run Chinese news agency, ran a video about border clashes between China and India and depicted an Indian man with a thick accent, a turban, and fake hair in an attempt to represent a Sikh man.

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While the museum is responsible for what they put on display, their exhibit is a product of Chinese cultural attitudes towards foreigners, albeit a naive one. Being such a mono-culture country, China is fighting an uphill battle when it comes to tolerance of outside cultures. Racism is not viewed as taboo like it is in Western cultures, nor does the government frame it as an issue. This is in part because China’s minority populations are so small, they often go unnoticed by the masses making it easy to ignore. Additionally, the government of China has taken little to no action to dissuade issues of domestic racism, which only furthers the beliefs held by of its citizens, many of whom do not even realize these exhibits or advertisements are offensive. This by no means excuses the museum's actions but demonstrates how China overall has a long road ahead to make diversity and inclusion a part of its institutions as well as how to change the attitudes and beliefs of its massive population.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-racist-museum-exhibit.html

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/racist-images-comparing-black-people-and-animals-yanked-from-chinese-museum-1115972

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/14/chinese-museum-accused-of-racism-over-photos-pairing-africans-with-animals

https://qz.com/africa/1101699/africans-in-china-are-infuriated-over-a-museum-exhibit-comparing-africans-to-animals/

http://shanghaiist.com/2017/10/12/racist-african-exhibit/