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They have been calling it Poon- on the arms of every chair in photo- Tang corner (Williams 107). Ever since graphs of official Communist summit Hong Kong impresario David Tang set meetings. Chinese revolutionary - up shop on Madison Avenue right anthems, intermingled with 1930s across from Barney's, which is con- Shanghai lounge-pop, blare from trolled colorful: by fellow Hong Kong mogul lime green, acid purple, candy speakers throughout the store. - apple Dickson Poon fashion watchers have red, fuchsia, Day-glo orange. An David Tang claims as his main been quick to make colorful remarks, enormous bat design, representing objective the introduction to the world good luck, curls its undoubtedly inspired by Tang's own lemon yellow way of China's first recognizable brand the elevator brash style. David Tang is a profane, along cab that pierces the (Elegant 62). Tang wants to establish tri-level space. - cocky Hong Kong socialite with an Chinese antiques China on the global market, not as a uppercrust colonial upbringing. cherry wood tables and matching stiff- manufacturer of electronics or auto- backed chairs, Owner of the China Club, a super- herbalist cabinets, old mobiles or the like, but as a leader in mirrors, - exclusive hub for the monied, famous, and calligraphy brush stands the elite and glamorous fashion indus- and well-heeled in are scattered amid louder versions Hong Kong and of try. The question is whether he can Beijing, Orientalia, like he also founded the new retail bulbous red lanterns initiate a new Chinese style (Alexander store, Shanghai Tang, a hip, upwardly and gold-tinted folding screens. On B30) without risking the old tendency mobile emporium that sells Chinese the racks hang traditional Chinese qi towards Orientalism. In the West, haute couture, gifts, and products for pao's in the same vibrant shades of the images of China are driven by colonial the home. Shanghai Tang opened its store. constructs, opium-steeped fantasies of doors to Hong Kong in 1994 and then The dresses are hand-tailored and Oriental mystique and submission. unveiled its York come in the conventional silk New location in or bro- Traditionally, it is this vision of the

November of 1997, just in time for the cade, as well as any number of furry, East that sells on Madison Avenue - post-Thanksgiving rush. fuzzy, scratchy, shiny, shimmery, or home of the etablishment consumer. Shanghai Tang sells Chinoiserie- squeaky synthetic fabrics. For men, So how can Shanghai Tang escape the gone-chic and revolution-turned- there are Mao suits in quilted leather cultural associations which customers camp. The store irreverently appropri- or green velvet. To match the suits, are bound to carry with them into the ates from a dizzying mix of eras and Shanghai Tang sells Red Guard caps, store?

forms: icons from Communist revolu- reminiscent of the 'good old days' of The question raises a more theo- tionary propaganda, fashions from the Cultural Revolution. In the display retical concern regarding the project of colonial 1930s Shanghai, ancient cases sit watches with hand-waving postmodernism as an agent for social dynastic designs, Tibetan color images of Deng Xiao Ping, fluorescent change. Critics of postmodernism sus-

schemes, Buddhist imagery, Chinese Mao mugs, napkins depicting happy tain little faith that the postmodern superstitious coolie laborers, symbols, etc. The new furry Manchu hats, form is anything more than a pastiche Madison Avenue store is blindingly and the white crocheted doilies seen of styles juxtaposed without integrity

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o difference for its own sake. But per- that preoccupation with image is haps the postmodern aesthetic of sty- empty of political import. On the con- 0) a listic multiphcity can serve a political trary, postmodernism uses image pre- CD E purpose. Perhaps one should consider cisely to enact political change for the the possibility that David Tang's ironic traditionally marginalized; those who send-up of Orientalia, his hipped-out have been constructed by their mien Mao and electrified Confucius, actually ity for emergent voices, minority voic- now look to masks to reconstruct. works to subvert orientalism. This es previously buried by the predomi- Critics contend that postmod- postmodern pastiche would serve to nance of Euro-American authority. Of ernism exercises pastiche and not par- overturn traditional ideas of China in course, the field of postcolonialism ody. While parody conveys an ulterior

favor of d>Tiamic and contemporary presents one forum for these new voic- motive, pastiche is pure imitation,

ones. es, and since Shanghai Tang haUs relieved of the satiric impulse. directly from the recently decolonized Sometimes, though, postmodernists Parody: Surface with Depth territory of Hong Kong, its presence choose specific quotes toward specific Skeptics claim that postmod- almost inherently invokes postcolonial ends. Sometimes, though, parodic ernism's preoccupation with appear- discourse. In his bid for Chinese fash- quoting presents the most effective, if

ance and its perhaps irresponsible dis- ion. Tang, a former colonial subject not the only, way to express resistance. missal of history reduce forms to mere and self-admitted Anglophile, carefully A re-working of surfaces can be the simulacra. By this argument, post- maneuvers between two dominant most clever method of re-working modern art reproduces without creat- powers - a postmodern-style postion hegemonic perspectives. Shanghai

ing, and is in that respect the end of made comprehensible only through Tang, as a Hong Kong-based company the distinctive individual brush stroke the context of Hong Kong's postcolo- poised at the beginning of Hong (Jameson 15). Empty of any unique nial moment. Kong's new phase under mainland

style, postmodernism has no ego. The postmodern aesthetic, relying Chinese rule, employs postmodern

Without an ego, a subject who feels, on notions of 'aspect' and 'simulacra', parody as a form of quiet political cri-

there is no emotional content or pull. provides an ideal forum for minority tique. In her essay on the documentary (15) While Shanghai Tang undoubted- empowerment. As Dorinne Kondo, in Paris is Burning, Judith Butler discusses

ly indulges in pretty pictures and her book, About Face: Performing Race parodys subversive effect:

imaginative histories, this effect need in Fashion and Tlieater, argues, gender, where the uniformity of the subject not imply that the store lacks an ego. sexuality, and race may condition the is expected, where the behavioral Postmodernism is not simply ran- degree to which we are conscious of conformity of the subject is com- dom difference. Ideally, it is driven by the ways we perform ourselves in manded, there might be produced the theory that the master narrative of everyday life (16). Kondo argues that the refusal of the law in the form of the parodic inhabiting of conformity- history is an illusion. There is no linear minority communities implicitly rec- that subtly calls into question the ognize identity as performance. Only a progression or advancement of society legitimacy- of the command, a repeti- (a belief upon which imperialism was white heterosexual patriarchy can sus- tion of the law- into h\-perbole, a founded), only synchronic repetition tain the belief that surface and depth, rearticulation of the law against the authority of the one who delivers it. and reiteration. There are no essential appearance and reality, are separate: (Bodies That Matter 122) (White) truths, only multiple perspec- After all, who can afford to be uncon-

tives. these ideas portray cerned about his/her appearance? Who While seem- Butler's use of the term law here is a is allowed to ignore it with impunity? ingly bleak prospects, postmodern Lacanian reference to the system of thought actually opens up the possibil- (15). Kondo attacks the moral stance

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utterance by which a subject becomes ed, simultaneously admiring yet bitter, socially constituted. Ideally, that sub- proud yet fearful. ject can refuse the law which names her through hyperbolic imitation. By Mimicry: over-aping law, performing it perhaps Global Capitalism with a too well, she reveals its constructed- Difference ness, its superficiality, and thereby Modernist hold-outs might still to be passionately Chinese (Bogert 48), resignifies its power over her. If it is argue that such underhanded, mincing though at the same time exuding rab- constructed, it can be deconstructed. criticism avoids any real political brav- idly Angiophiliac (Yaeger 14) tastes. The crucial characteristic of paro- ery. The kind of parody identifiable in And so the Mao caps are faithful dy, the thing that separates it from postmodernism only obscures the copies, except that they come in blue pastiche and gives it critical import, is truth that postmodernism does not velvet. The Deng Xiao Ping watches hyperbole. Shanghai Tang attacks really represent Utopian transforma- both honor China's deceased leader Orientalism with excess. The qi pao's, tion. Despite the theoretical pretense and make him a laughing stock. The dresses traditionally associated with that it will overturn hegemonic narra- filigreed silver glass holders are identi- dragon ladies, Suzie Wong, Shanghai tives, postmodernism is actually the cal to those used for official fiinctions Lil, Miss Saigon, any Asian whore, cultural manifestation of capitalism's in communist-socialist led China, only come in glow-in-the-dark hues and third phase: late, or multinational, cap- Shanghai Tang sells them at competi- out-of-this-world fabrics. They are italism. Bizarrely, this claim is also per- tive market prices. As Butler writes in stranger than the fiction of the charac- fectly exemplified by Shanghai Tang. another essay, parody exists in a sort of ters they usually imply. As a result, the David Tang is an unabashed salesman. indecisive space between attraction dresses reveal these characters as fic- He is out to make money by turning and repulsion: tions, fantasies wrapped in colonial Shanghai Tang into a world brand, a desire. Extreme materiality reveals the Parody requires a certain ability to Chinese Nike (Williams 40). His proj- truth of the always already construct- identity, approximate, and draw near; ect to establish a Chinese label signifies ed. it engages an intimacy witti ttie posi- not only a demand for Not one to stop at Orientalism, tion it appropriates that troubles the cultural respect, mere reparations for voice, the bearing, the performativity David Tang also resists the mass prop- of the subject such that the audience the history of Orientalism, but, more aganda of communism. After the tran- or the reader does not quite ioiow importantly, a bid for economic power. sition of Hong Kong back to mainland where it is you stand, whether you Thus David Tang's venture is the quin- Chinese rule, Shanghai Tang speaks to have gone to the other side, whether tessential you remain on your side, whether example of the globalization the ambivalence felt by many Hong you can rehearse that other position of capital. Shanghai Tang proves capi-

Kongers in regard to the handover. without falHng prey to it in the midst talism's influence beyond its origins in While they are proud to be Chinese, of the performance. the West. Capitalism is a victor the and relieved to unstrap the yoke of (Merely Cultural 3) world over. colonialism, they also fear the censor- Of course, it is possible that what ship that China may potentially exer- Thus, parody represents a method for truly generates postmodernism's cise. expressing Hong Kong's ambivalence heterogeneous materiality, all its pro- Through parody, Shanghai Tang towards both Western colonialism and fessed room for choice, is not some subtly snubs Chinese revolutionary Chinese communism. It serves the per- kind of libertarian dissemination of rhetoric without rejecting Chinese fect role for a territory whose loyalties power and agency, but something to Britain are conflict- patriotism. After all. Tang does claim both and China

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0) in 0}c Marx identified long ago: commodity "McDonald's . . . Coca-Cola . . . But !£ whats Chinese? There is no Chinese o fetishism. Appropriately enough, the brand. It just seems to me to be culture of the simulacrum comes to crazy."

life in a culture where exchange value develop; this ultimately homogenizes (Williams 45). has been so generalized that the actual everything by evacuating individual use value of an object is effaced. It is a meaning and narrative. Perhaps post- Tang's sly appropriation of Western in become society which "the image has modernism multiplies perspective only capitalist values in the service of reification" the final form of commodity to strengthen the capitalist imperative. jostling the Western cultural hegemony (Guy Debord, The Society of the echoes Homi Bhabha's notion of mim-

Spectacle, 18). Shanghai Tang really icry. in is the And yet, global capitalism need Mimicry, Bhabha's terms, commodifies China, or perhaps only not be read as simply the unquestion- desire for a reformed and recognizable guise of re-Orientalizes China, under a ing adoption of Western values by the Other, as a subject of a difference that whimsy and kitsch. In the end, the non-West. As various multinational is almost, but not quite, the same. In store still sells exotica over imbued corporations move from their bases in other words, the discourse of mimicry velvet caps with desire. The blue Mao Europe and America to establish opera- is constructed around an ambivalence; are beautiful, but they sumptuous and tions in developing countries, Shanghai to be effective, mimicry must continu- occlude the history of oppression and ally its slippage, its e.xcess, Tang is one example of the transit of produce famine their originals. which produced capital in the opposite direction. its difference. (86) Village Voice style editor articulates The Capital becomes truly global when this irony best: colo- profits move not only from East to In mimicking their colonizers, West, but also from West to East, North nials validate the power of those rulers. Is there really a market in 1997 for rulers narcissism by pre- to South, etc. Global capitalism, when They feed the napkins embroidered with tiny coolie senting themselves in the images of the laborers? Will no one feel slightly it spreads wealth in multiple directions, uncomfortable with the hawking of cooperates with the postmodern proj- civilized, conforming Other. But perk)' star-embellished Mao caps, reveals its slip- ect of widely distributing cultural, because mimicry always now turned out in crimson and for- it strategy for dis- political, and economic power - if not page, can also be a est green? Is anyone just a wee bit avowing authority. Mimicry is never a queasy at the sight of two huge por- democratically, at least geographically. traits of Mr. Tang hanging next to a This may not be a victory worth cele- perfect replication. The space of differ- vintage print of a Red Army re-edu- it creates is the space of subver- brating. Still, Shanghai Tang may help ence cation session? Is not a single citizen sion in which the colonized subject revolted to learn that Tang plans to shift the control of capitalism from the colonizer. open a restaurant above the store and the West to some hands in the East. rejects domination by the

call it the Long March bar? Shanghai Tang's move to Madison

Avenue proves that commodification is Pleasure and Threat, There is something outrageous about not solely enacted upon the non-West Joy and Capitalism

selling items with a history of mass by Western powers, but is also taken up Fashion writers describe Tang's

poverty and brainwashing behind by the non-West itself in order to serve venture with words like "colonizes" them. Postmodernism is ruthless in its non-Western ends. David Tang (Yaeger 14) and "invades" (Bogert 48) irreverent cannibalization (18) of the embraces capitalism with enthusiasm, - terms which seem either to forget or

in the service It is past of the market. but he embraces it so that he can belie Hong Kong's history of colonial- true that in its self-proclaimed hetero- reorder power relations: ism under the British. Article titles geneity postmodernism risks conceal- include The Coming of the Tang ing the historical route by which things "What's American?" asks Tang.

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Dynasty (Williams 40) and Under the Spell of China (Fiori 161). Implied in

such descriptions is an American pub-

lic under siege. "Get ready, America - Hong Kong impresario and tastemaker works cited

David Tang has his sights on you" Alexander, Ian. "The Next Emperor". Money. I

(Alexander B24). If Shanghai Tang Oct. 1997: B24-B30. Bhabha. Homi. "Of Mimicry and Man: The demonstrates a wholehearted adoption Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse". The Location strategies, there is of American market of Culture. New York and London: Routledge, something about this new store that admit, what persists for now is capital- 1994. 85- 92.

Ruder, ludith. "Gender is Burning: Questions of smugly defies the model of Western ism. It would be delusional to posit a Appropriation and Subversion". Bodies That capitalism, or at least the forces of place outside of market influences; Matter: On the Diseursive Limits of Sex. New desire that undergird it. Like the crass even joy now occurs fully within a York and London: Roudedge, 1993. 121-140. unpubhshed title depicting Shanghai Tang's location commodity capitalist regime (Kondo BuUer, ludith. "Merely Cultural", manuscript. Cheng, Allen T. Mr. Self- romotion. across from Dickson Poon's depart- 13). And what is so wrong about that? Asia. Inc. Online. July 1996. ment store, David Tang's presence on Shanghai Tang, for all its seduction or Edelson, Sharon. "The Tang Dynasty". W. Oct. - Madison Avenue is both alluring and insidiousness or empowering effects 1997: 201-2. discomforting - especially paired with whichever - ultimately sells beautiful Elegant, Simon. "It Takes One to Tango". Far Eastern Economic Review. 29 Feb. 1997; 62. Poon's recent takeover of Barney's. things. Elliott, Dorinda, et. al. "David Tang's China Chic". Shanghai Tang seems to challenge the In analyzing postmodernism's Neu'sweek. 22 Sept. 1997: 48. very ideas upon which the avenue political effect we need to account for, Gargan, Edward A. "China: Profit ... or Principle?" The New York Times. 18 Feb. 1996, sec. thrives, even as it embraces those ideas. and concede, our own desire to revel in 6:46. spectacle, in beauty, in humor. Can lameson, Fredric. Tile Cultural Logic of Late design with It is Tang's blend of you wear lipstick and still think? Can Capitalism. Postmodernism or. Vie Cultural Logic

mockery that enables it to simultane- you care about design, color, texture, of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University ously take up the profit motive, that cut, draping, drafting techniques, dis- Press, 1991. 1-54. Kondo, Dorinne. About Face: Performing Race in critics see as undergirding postmod- play - that is, about clothes - and still Fashion and Tfieater. New York and London: ernism, while simultaneously effecting political? (Kondo 15). In order to be Routledge, 1997. the radical disruption which advocates understand the power of image, the Louie. Elaine. "The Great Mall of China". The New ascribe to the postmodern project. depth behind the surface, we must York Times. 20 Nov. 1997, sec. F: 1+. Loving 8i Weintraub. "Shanghai Tang: A Chinese Through the slippery techniques of confront our own complicity in the Store for the 21st Century." Press release. Oct. parody and mimicry, forms which pleasure that images provide. Image is 1997.

both perpetuate and undermine hege- not trivial. It is not depthless. Beauty Marx, Karl. "Commodity Fetishism". Capital, vol.

1 . New York: Vintage Books, 1977: 163. monic narratives, Shanghai Tang strad- provides joy, even if it is a joy unavoid- Medford, Sarah. China Wear Town & Country. dles the uneasy border between beat- ably imbricated in consumer desire. November 1997: 164-7. ing the dominance of Western capital Thus we must accept beauty's place in VVice, Nathaniel and Steven Daly. ah. culture: an a-

guide to the 90s - underground, online, and and joining it. Realistically, this is as the capitalist market in order to appre- to-z ove-the-counter. New York: Harper Perennial, much as anyone can expect. hend it, to contend with it, even to 1995. Subversion, after all, is not the indulge in it. Williams, Alex. "The Coming of the Tang same as liberation. Critics of postmod- Dynasty". New York. 3 Nov. 1997: 40-45-^. "China Syndrome". The Village Voice. ernism may hold out for a transforma- Yaeger, Lynn. 9 Dec. 1997: 14. tive Utopia, but as they might also

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