The producers of a new ballet based on the novel Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase) must have thought they had one guaranteed market for a cutting-edge dance version of the erotic classic written during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).

But if the Beijing Contemporary Dance Theater imagined Shanghai would be a dead cert for a production described as "racy," they were in for a shock. Every single theater in the city that was approached has declined to host the production, despite the fact it has played to rave reviews and sell-out audiences in Hong Kong.  

Director Wang Yuanyuan (known as one of the three "dance queens" of China) is even considering an invitation from the world-famous Sadler's Wells Theater to stage the ground-breaking ballet in London.

Lin Hongming from the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, however, is unimpressed. "After having seen the clips of Jin Ping Mei, we found that the aesthetic differs from what we want to provide our audiences with," he told local media. Wang has defended the production from charges of gratuitous sexualization. "There's no nudity, nothing that adults can't or shouldn't see," she commented.

So, it appears that the "Whore of the Orient" is becoming a little prim and proper in her advanced years, and today is more undeserving of this epithet than ever, a fact many of us have long suspected. Shanghai likes to present itself as the ultimate symbol of China's progressive and open-minded development, a world-class city set to rival the metropolises of the old world in the 21st century. And on first arriving here, the thrusting skyscrapers, daring fashions and pulsating nightlife convince most of us this must be true. But appearances, as we all know, can be deceptive.

Instead, jaded foreigners have long joked that Shanghai is as "deep as a suntan." But I think few of us realize how deep this cultural malaise, exacerbated by a hard-wired strain of conservatism, actually runs - although the clues have always been there.  

Back in 2004, China's very first sex museum finally shut its doors in Shanghai after a farcical four-year tenure that was obstructed at every turn by prudish city leaders. To start with, officials forbade the use of the word "sex" in any of the signs or billboards of a venue whose purpose was to explore "5,000 years of human sexual behavior." They then refused to grant the museum "scenic location" status that would have allowed travel agents to list it in brochures. After several years of unsurprisingly dismal ticket sales, the museum staff admitted defeat and decamped to Tongli in Jiangsu Province, a place only too happy to welcome the attraction, and with a sweetener of 3 million yuan to boot.

When the leaders of a village on the outskirts of a second-tier city prove to be more enlightened than their counterparts in Shanghai (the world's eighth largest city), you know something is seriously amiss.

Even more ironically, it's just been announced that Jin Ping Mei will now be staged in a number of Shanghai's so-called "provincial" neighbors such as Chengdu, Nanchang and Wuhan. This latest development will have come as something of a pleasant surprise even to Wang, who back in April told the Daily Telegraph she saw little hope of the ballet ever being staged on the Chinese mainland. It's difficult to see who exactly will benefit from denying Shanghai audiences the chance to see this innovative and acclaimed production. Except perhaps the catholic missionary who famously opined: "If God allows Shanghai to endure, he will owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology." That man's prayers, at least, seem to have been answered.

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