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国防的睡衣

Actually, the Shanghai government has adopted a "civilized" approach to the "problem", different to the late 1970s when fashion police armed with scissors forcibly cut the long hair or bell-bottom trousers of passersby. This time, kids have been deployed to shame pajama wearers into submission, with lines like these: "Auntie, your dress looks great, but don't you think wearing something else would make you look better, not to say make our city so much more palatable to international taste?"

Fashion is part of culture. Right now it is Western-centric. What is fitting in one culture may be outrageous in another. An elderly African-American, a neighbor of mine when I was in California, would put on a suit and a tie to go to the front porch to pick up the morning paper. In his mind, anything less would be inappropriate.

To a Chinese old-timer, Western-style evening gowns and the dresses worn for Latin dancing induce embarrassment. But they've come to accept it and other perceived breaches of modesty because they have become used to it through ads, watching TV and so on.

If you shift your position and view it as a cultural quirk, you'll be more amused than disturbed. Maybe pajamas on the streets do not fit with your notion of propriety, but you don't really want China's fashions to replicate, say, Paris, do you? You expect something different, and the difference is culture.

Filmmaker Jiang Wen once told me how shocked he was when, as a child, he stumbled upon a village where grownup women bared their breasts in public. They did not feel awkward, he did. Now the scene is part of a fond memory, devoid of any sexual or negative innuendo.