08 May 12: Taboo

‘During the war, Chinese feminists continued their struggle on two fronts. In 1938, Mao Liying founded the Chinese Career Women's Club in Shanghai, which addressed both their society's gender assumptions and the Japanese occupation.

In Shanghai, where public baths were closed to women, members of the club held ‘bathing parties,’ during which they rented a hotel room, and in which they sang, danced and ate, as they took turns taking baths. Club members also bicycled around Shanghai in groups, breaking another cultural taboo.’

Source: ‘Shanghai in 1942’