Sex shop ‘taints’ late artist’s home

Shanghai authorities said Thursday that they plan to look into whether a tiny sex shop should be allowed to open next-door to a cultural heritage site, after public complaints surfaced about it settling right beside the former residence of a famous Chinese painter.

An artist renowned for his sceneries and female portraits, Lin Fengmian (1900-1991) is remembered today by his old home that sits at 53 Nanchang Road, where a number of small shops and cafés have sprung up in recent years.

But in November of last year, a sex shop moved in next to the residence - relocating the then 2-year-old Happy Night not far down the street to 51 Nanchang Road - angering a growing number of people.

A local photographer and admirer of Lin's work, Lu Yang was the first to launch a series of online complaints about the sex shop last month, when he last visited Lin's residence.

"How could the old residence of Master Lin Fengmian be treated this way? Artists should not be treated this way - they should be taken seriously," Lu, who said that he chose to live on the street because Lin and one of the artist's former students, Mu Xin, left their marks there, wrote Sunday on his Sina microblog, a post that was commented on by some 50 supporters this week.

Local industry and commerce officers were seen inside the 10-square-meter shop Thursday, but no details from their visit were released.

The director of Luwan district's cultural heritage protection department, which runs under the city's cultural bureau and oversees the jurisdiction, however, said that officers were sent to check out the situation - as Chinese law prohibits infrastructure or activities that risk harm to the environment of cultural sites.

"The officers are taking the case from there," the director, who asked only to be identified by his surname, Zhang, told the Global Times Thursday.

The sex shop's manager, a man surnamed Li, said Thursday that he decided to move his shop next to Lin's only for practical reasons.

"I never even thought there would have been an issue in the first place," he told the Global Times Thursday. "The space opened up, so I thought that I would simply take over it from the previous tenant, who ran a clothing shop there."

Hailed as a pioneer of Chinese contemporary art by British scholar Michael Sullivan, Lin lived on the street for 23 years prior to leaving the city for Hong Kong in the 1970s, some twenty years before his residence was recognized as a cultural heritage site.

But, having a sex shop right next to the residence is hardly appropriate, said local art critic Sun Mengjin.

"While the sex shop doesn't physically damage the building, it doesn't fit in with the area socially," he told the Global Times Thursday. "It shouldn't be tolerated as many families visit the residence that preserves a piece of the city's culture."