The long march to bed
Shanghai's pyjama controversy
Benjamin Morgan, Agence France-Presse
Photos by Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images
Shanghai's pyjama controversy
By Benjamin Morgan
In China's most modern and trendy city, Shanghai, innocent but intimate pyjamas are at the centre of a simmering public controversy that won't be put to bed.
The dispute revolves around wearing pyjamas in public. On any given day on the commercial hub's crowded streets, locals in their nighties can be seen jostling for space with the latest mini-skirt fashion or the primly pressed work suit and tie.
Daytime pyjama-wearers can be spotted anywhere in this city of 17 million, donning bedroom attire as naturally as a T-shirt on a hot summer day.
They cruise by on bicycles. They sip tea in quiet teahouses in the park. They saunter -- toothbrush and towel in hand -- through leafy lanes graced with the grand French concession homes of a bygone era to the public bathhouse.
In a recent survey on Shanghai's most fashionably unfashionable attire, 16% of respondents said they or family members often wear pyjamas in public, and 25% sometimes did.
It was also considered one of the most irritating features of life in Shanghai, along with domestic pets defecating in public, according to the study conducted by Shanghai Academy of Social Science sociologist Yang Xiong.
It is difficult to pinpoint just when pyjamas became embroiled in one of Shanghai's fiercest etiquette wars in recent memory.
Many people deride the habit, which in China is peculiar to Shanghai, as uncivilized; smacking of an unforgivable lack of taste and poor pedigree in this class-conscious city.
"People who wear the pyjamas are degrading themselves because it shows their shallow taste and weak personal qualities," says Hu Shoujun, a sociologist at Shanghai's Fudan University.
"It's disrespectful to the others and, last but not least, it's not clean."
But for retired resident Sun Mei, wearing jammies is a perfectly acceptable comfort.
"Nobody has ever said to me it's inappropriate, and I don't feel it is either," Sun says as she pulls up to a local supermarket on her moped wearing a two-piece version decorated with cartoon figures.
Like many other residents, she argues that she just wears them "around the neighbourhood" -- a practical choice given most old homes in Shanghai have inadequate plumbing and locals often share public bathrooms.
There are other complexities surrounding the phenomenon.
One is the philosophical uncertainty in China's fashion circles over whether pyjamas deserve their own place in the public wardrobe.
"If we were to take pyjamas as the pursuit of comfort, freedom and relaxation, it could be a trend," says Chen Hong, an editor with Elle magazine's Web site.
"But it's hard to say how one can wear pajamas in a fashionable way."
Others point to the implied socio-economic message that wearing pyjamas in public announces to others a certain life of leisure.
Another reason, according to Mou Lin, deputy fashion director with Elle magazine, is that pyjamas are similar to the traditional Chinese suit of tunic and matching baggy trousers worn in ancient times.
But likely the main reason is the ongoing clash between people and the changing physical nature of Shanghainese society, says Yang, who conducted the survey.
A decade ago it was natural to wear pyjamas in Shanghai's small lanes, where overcrowding meant forced communal living, but that has changed as more people have moved into the privacy of high-rise homes, he said.
"As Shanghai has become a metropolis the difference between private and public space has become more pronounced, and that is how pyjamas have become a problem."
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