By the end of Qing dinasty and early Republican times, a series of prints known as "modern girls" was produced in Mianzhu. This one is a contemporary copy of the most extraordinary of those prints. For the oddity of both the bicycle and the girl: The bicycle has no pedals or chain and the girl has the traditional "lotus flower" (bounded) feet but wears a qipao with long trousers and a "First Class Mandarin" cap. The artist probably had never seen the "real thing", neither the bike nor such a modern girl, but this melting of contradictory elements draws a perfect mental image of the "crazy twenties" in faraway Shanghai.
42 x 33 cm