In a lather
A woman from suburban Beijing is holding an exhibition of her collection of the daily item from different countries, Deng Zhangyu reports.
Soap collector exhibits bars from around the world
For many travelers, a new destination means finding delicious food and visiting landmark buildings or popular sites. For soap collector Chen Jing, visiting a new place means looking for everything related to soap — special ingredients and unusual crafts used in soap production or interesting bath culture.
Chen has collected more than 2,000 bars of soap over the past 13 years. Her collection covers two walls of the living room in her home in Beijing. Now, she is holding an exhibition at Ideal Gas space located in the city’s 798 Art Zone.
Chen has selected 256 soaps she gathered from 31 countries and regions to tell stories of the little things that are used in daily life. The show has sections that provide information on the history of making soap, various ingredients used in soap, soap art and some of her interesting journeys to find soap. The show is on through Sunday.
“Soap can be made by everything. You can see the world from a special angle through the tiny thing,” says the 41-year-old.
Soaps on display are made by adding various ingredients, such as Japanese sake, coffee beans, volcanic ashes and even cow dung.
The designs and packing materials are also attractive. The bars of soap from Thailand are exquisitely sculpted in the shape of lotus flowers. A set looks like mahjong tiles played in China. Some soaps are wrapped in wool, bark or coconut shell.
“One can know the local culture by buying a soap produced locally,” says Chen, adding that many producers put local landmarks, art and wellknown historical figures and events on the package design of soaps.
Before the pandemic, Chen spent months traveling every year to find soap. It could be soap-related history, a special ingredient, a funny design or an art museum selling soap.
She recalls her tough journey to a Marseille soap factory, which produces the oldest hygienic cube soap in France. Chen searched for the soap in Marseille for two days and happened to meet a man who promised to guide her to visit the soap factory. However, when she arrived at the factory in a suburb and waited for hours, the man never appeared. Fortunately, she met a worker there and finally saw the whole producing process of Marseille soap.
Although she had traveled to many places, she has not yet visited Aleppo in Syria — where the earliest soap in the world was produced — due to conflict there. Chen displays a small soap sculpture of a destroyed house in Syria made by herself, hoping that she will visit
Aleppo when there’s peace in the city.
“As long as there is an interesting thing about soap, I will go,” Chen says.
When most visitors gathered to view Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Chen went directly to see The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, which features Marat, a leader of the French Revolution of 1789, dead in his bathtub. Or, when tourists in Rome thronged the Colosseum, she visited the Baths of Caracalla to find out the bath culture, which fascinates her as much as soap.
Different countries have different bath cultures. In ancient Rome, people regarded the thermae (bathing houses) as a social place, where they could read books and go shopping. In ancient China, bath was a private thing. “In ancient Chinese residences, there’s seldom a bathroom,” says Chen.
Traveling to so many places to gather soaps costs Chen a lot. She
says she has invested millions of yuan on collecting soap. The traveling itself accounts for much of her expenses.
“My soap collection has opened a new world for me. It’s like a new chapter of my life,” says Chen, who does part-time soap-crafting by hand.
In 2008, Chen was troubled by a skin problem caused by pimples, which made her feel “inferior”. A soap sent by her sister happened to solve her skin problem. From then on she began buying soaps in large quantity and kept buying for more than a decade.
She did many jobs before, including as a modeling agent, advertiser and book editor. In 2015, she decided to devote all her time to soap collection and making.
Chen says it took her one year to make the decision. Her husband once asked her what she would want to be in 20 years. She answered that she would like to be an old lady making soap happily. It was then that she
finally decided what she would want to do for the rest of her life.
After collecting so many soaps, she rented a house with a garden in a Beijing suburb to start making soap on her own.
“It’s like a lab experience. I try various materials and enjoy the whole process,” says Chen.
One ingredient she is proud to make soap with is huadiao, a highgrade rice wine produced in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province. She makes “love soaps” for her friends. She also makes different soaps themed on traditional Chinese festivals. In return, her friends buy soaps when they travel abroad. Even some strangers have contributed bars of soap to her collection after hearing her story.
Chen says soaps allow her to meet lots of interesting people and make new friends, and it has become her lifestyle.