The recently opened Tushanwan Museum features a contrast that is pure Shanghai: a 1930s advertising poster of a sultry, qipao-clad siren next to an austere painting of Jesus. Both are legacies of the city's Jesuit Tushanwan Orphanage and its attached arts and crafts academy, which helped to introduce Western art into China.
Link (here) to the full article at the Wall Street Journal.
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So what happened to Tushanwan? In 1953, the 200 remaining orphans – and the orphanage – were taken from the Shanghai Diocese, and brought under the control of (Communist) Shanghai’s Civil Affairs Bureau . In 1956, as the country’s various industries were nationalized, Tushanwan’s workshops were broken off and given to various state industrial groups. According to Zikawei in History: “The Tushanwan Orphanage finally finished its history in about 1960.”
Photo is of the Tushanwan Orphanage wood shop (here) at Shanghai Scrap
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