I just find this hilarious. Perhaos if I were in a worse mood I;d get all offended, but . . .
BEIJING (AP) - Every summer, day and night, it’s the same story: young men, old men, skinny men, fat men, all walking the streets of the Chinese capital with bellies bared for the masses to see. In Beijing, they’re known by their nickname - “bare-chested masters.” Some roll undershirts up to their nipples to air out the gut. Others shed tops entirely, exposing various levels of girth to helpless passers-by. Now, after years of watching men across Beijing lose their shirts when the sweaty weather comes, one local newspaper has had enough.
The Beijing Youth Daily, vexed at what it calls a “little bad habit” unworthy of a modern Olympic metropolis, has put its eyes where its city’s stomachs are, running random photos of Beijing’s topless men to shame them into putting their shirts back on. For three weeks, a standing feature on the back page of the newspaper’s front section - dubbed, in inimitable Chinese style, “Grandpa Shoulder” - has captured attention with pictures of publicly shirtless men engaged in various activities.
There’s “Grandpa Shoulder Rests His Feet,” a shot of a shirtless man kicking back, and the self-explanatory “Grandpa Shoulder Does Morning Exercises.” “Grandpa Shoulder Steers a Cart” is a rear view of a bicycle-cart driver whose pants, fortunately, aren’t sagging. Most unsettling is a sweaty man emptying a wok at a streetside food stall. “Grandpa Shoulder Stir-Fries,” it enthuses. “We kindly remind Grandpa Shoulder: Before you go out, put that shirt on!” the newspaper urged one particularly jelly-torsoed specimen.
“They really should wear shirts,” said Zhang Yaling, a young saleswoman with a vested interest. She runs a T-shirt kiosk. “All these bulging bellies sticking out, it makes us look silly. It will damage our reputation as a city.” In China, shame is a time-tested tool, honed during the ugly dunce-cap-criticism days of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. And the Beijing Youth Daily has devised a more palatable analogue for a media-savvy generation.