[Being shirtless and taking off shoes to air the feet is the worst crime, according to the Jinan local government, which has called on city departments, the news media and grass roots organizations to play a role in ensuring decorum is not breached.]
By Anna Fifield
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Chinese man drives a tricycle after he swam in Houhai lake during a hot weather
day in
Beijing, June 20, 2019. (Wu Hong/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
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BEIJING
— Chinese authorities have tried over the
years to ban all sorts of behaviors on the grounds that they are “uncivilized.”
They’ve attempted to stop public spitting. They’ve tried to stop people from
slurping their soup too loudly. They’ve had a go at prohibiting people from
jaywalking and cutting in line.
Now,
another staple of Chinese life is facing an existential crisis: The sartorial
practice known — not always affectionately — as the “Beijing bikini,” although
it is certainly not confined to the capital.
It is a sure sign that summer has arrived in
China when men start rolling up their shirts, ideally resting them on the
natural ledge of their beer belly.
The theory, based in traditional Chinese
medicine, is that exposing one’s midriff helps air out the warm “chi” energy
around the internal organs. So in parks and on street corners, on motorbikes
and at open restaurants, men think nothing of pulling up their shirts and
letting it all hang out.
But now authorities in cities around the
country have declared that the broader practice of exposing body parts that
should be covered — including chests, bellies and feet — is unseemly.
Jinan, a city between Beijing and Shanghai,
is the latest municipality to try to crack down on “casual exposure,”
particularly among “bang ye,” or “exposing grandfathers.”
People there now face punishment if they are
“not dressed properly in public, especially in parks, squares, communities,
buses, scenic spots, commercial blocks and other areas that are densely
populated.”
Being shirtless and taking off shoes to air
the feet is the worst crime, according to the Jinan local government, which has
called on city departments, the news media and grass roots organizations to
play a role in ensuring decorum is not breached.
One reporter for the Jinan Daily took the
order to heart and found many men who were “shirtless or exposing their
bellies” in parks and squares. “They may feel it’s not a problem being
shirtless to enjoy some cool, but they don’t know it’s disrespectful,” the
report concluded. “In public, don’t lose your civilized image.”
Those caught exposing their midsections will
be given a verbal warning.
“Penalties are not the ultimate purpose,” a
Jinan official said, according to the Beijing Youth daily. “We just want people
to pay more attention to these kinds of antisocial behaviors.”
But Tianjin, a port city outside Beijing, is
imposing fines of up to $30 on offenders. The northeastern city of Shenyang has
also imposed similar regulations.
Many commenters on Weibo, China’s answer to
Twitter, supported the various governments’ efforts. The most popular response
was the one that recommended promoting this effort nationwide.
Another supporter said: “I can’t stand it.
They make public places their own home. It’s as if they are taking the sky as
their quilt and the earth their bed.”
But others decried the efforts as irrelevant
or discriminatory. “There’s nothing wrong with being shirtless. Our ancestors
from generations back did this,” said one. “The government should pay more
attention to improving people’s well-being.”
The
People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, has started
posting about the efforts to make people cover up. One post noted that many
places are taking measures to curb this casual exposure, showing shirtless men
and a woman in a park who had taken her stockinged feet
out of her shoes.
A second Weibo post asked people what
uncivilized public behavior they hate the most. The most common complaints
included smoking and spitting in public places.
In the capital, some practitioners of the
letting-the-warm-energy-escape theory scoffed at the idea of banning Beijing
bikinis.
“It’s not a big deal. It’s just our habit. We
have to do this when it’s hot,” said a man who gave only his surname, Fu. He
was sitting in a deck chair outside his building supplies store in a Beijing
alley as the mercury hit 100 degrees, his blue shirt entirely open.
“We are shirtless because we need to cool
down,” he said, while his wife yelled from inside the store: “It’s not
civilized.”
As a man came down the alley with his T-shirt
slung over his shoulder, Fu yelled out: “Put your clothes on!” as if to protect
him from inquisitive reporters.
Across the road, a group of men were gathered
on a shady street corner, one of them sitting on an overturned bike, playing
cards and listening to a radio. Some were fully dressed. Some had their
trousers rolled up. But the majority were sporting Beijing bikinis.
“I’m not shirtless. I’m even wearing shoes,”
said one man happily airing out a belly that had consumed many bottles of beer
and bowls of noodles. Another pointed to his navel and said to peals of
laughter: “The warm air can go out through the hole.”
When a woman in a midriff-baring singlet top
and cutoff shorts walked by, the men complained that any new rules should apply
to everyone equally. The reporters duly took up the men’s dare and asked the
woman about covering up.
“I support this very much because they should
respect other people,” Lily Huang, a dancing instructor, said after reading the
reports from Jinan, noting that it applied not just to midriffs but to all
unseemly nakedness.
“In an outdoor environment, they should not
be naked on top and walking around in public,” she said, making a strong
distinction between her level of exposure and theirs.
The men were not to be swayed. “It’s a
personal style,” said one. “If women reveal their belly it’s beautiful, but
when we do it, it’s ugly?”
Liu Yang contributed to this report.
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