Don't Wear Pajamas Before Shanghai Convene World Expo.

"Pajamas can't go out." This is the request of the city government to the residents before Shanghai convened World Expo in 2010. This has caused widespread controversy.
On the one hand, wearing pajamas does not conform to international etiquette, but voices also believe that if the government manages even pajamas, the degree of freedom of society will be reduced.

Since late July, the work of Shen Guofang, the director of the neighborhood committee, has added one more thing: persuading the residents of this district not to go out in pajamas and pyjamas.

Shen is the "alley Prime Minister" in Qi eight district of Pudong New Area Changli Road, Shanghai. At this stage, his work is divided into two parts, one is the daily business of the District, and the two is "welcome to the Expo". "Pajamas pajamas do not go out and become a civilized person in Expo" activities is one of the contents of the latter work.

Anyone who has had experience in Shanghai knows that Shanghai people are accustomed to wearing pajamas to the streets. In the lane, the vegetable market, the supermarkets, the roads, and even the famous commercial streets on Nanjing road are also common. The woman in the pajamas wearing a pair of exquisite leather shoes, runs to the alleys to buy a packet of salty salt, or rolls out the garbage with full hair. This is seen as a typical picture of Shanghai's marketplace culture. However, when bulldozers overthrow one lane, people cherish the memory of the old way of life. The remaining pajamas habit suddenly becomes the enemy of "civilization".

In 2010, Shanghai will be held in World Expo. In this grand gathering of modern civilization, the "bad habits" of the citizens can no longer be tolerated. The eight district, which is only two or three stops away from the Expo site, is just like all the Expo districts under the jurisdiction of Pudong.

The citizens of Shanghai must stand the attention of this international look.

"This is the face of the state." Shen Guofang said.

For the World Expo, pajamas and pyjamas do not go out.

The civilized dress persuasion team in Qi eight has two activities a week, one to two hours each time. Shen Guofang said, to participate in the persuasion team's "volunteers", the members of the 10 members who remain unmoved, wearing red ribbons every time, dressed neatly in the doorway of the community, and seeing that the residents in pajamas are going out of the community, the volunteers will come forward to dissuade.

"The volunteers we choose are residents who are more conscious, more loving to the community, and more concerned about the Expo." Shen Guofang said.

"In a short span of more than one hour, there were hundreds of people who had been persuaded by the propaganda team, and the activities received very good social effects." Qi eight district's online log records the results of the first day of activity.

The activity has been going on for more than two months. "The effect is good. People wearing pajamas are obviously reduced." Director Shen is very satisfied.

As for the residents who saw the persuading team turn their heads back, Shen said, "avoiding evading" also shows progress. At least there is a sense of civilization.

At the same time, the streets and neighborhood committees near the Pudong New Area World Expo site were not idle. They responded positively to the call and requirements of the Shanghai women's Federation and the Sanlin Expo functional management committee, and did a good job of civilized dress. Shang Gang community, Chuen Xin community and Bei Cai town are all competing for similar activities.

Su Mei Chi is a member of the eight District civilized dress persuasion team. She is in charge of women's and family planning work in neighborhood committees.

Before engaging in persuasion work, Su Mei Chi said that he also wore pajamas (the habit of going out). But after the training of the persuasion team, she "pay more attention to her dress", and "give priority" to advise the family not to wear pajamas and pyjamas to go out.

The staff of the neighborhood committee changed their concepts and then advocated more people to accept advanced ideas. But years of habits are not easy to shake. For this reason, Shen Guofang also moved a lot of brains and came up with many persuasive moves.

One of the moves is to recruit young children to join the volunteer team.

"They took uncle Auntie's hand and said," Auntie (uncle), you can't wear pyjamas to the road. The adults listened very much, and felt that the children were speaking. It was not very good.

The two of the moves is to emphasize the serious significance of the Expo so as to achieve the effect of deterrence.

"In World Expo, when foreigners visit the park after coming out of the park, they take a camera and go to the district to make a random trip. It is very likely that they will come to our district." "We are the masters". "Small things are important events on the table". We can't afford to disgrace Shanghai.

The three of the moves is to make use of acquaintance and pay attention to the way of speaking.

"If you are too serious to talk to people, you can't accept it sometimes." Shen Guofang said. In this regard, his method is to "break up" + "joke."

For example, when an old acquaintance wearing a pajamas comes forward, Shen Guofang will come up and say, "Oh, where are you going?" "How about buying vegetables?" "Why, how did you get out of this dress?" "You can't wear it later. This dress is not nice. Go back and change it." After a circle, he came back to discourage the problem of pajamas.

Su Mei Zhi will make the work beyond the prescribed time. For some of the first time to persuade the invalid residents, she will repeatedly tell people in private, the great truth to say in a small sense; of course, the tone is very gentle, with a smile on her face.

"International metropolis, at the very least, dress must be done well. It is not for you to wear famous brand, but to be decent, to distinguish clearly between inside and outside, so as to show the quality of a metropolitan citizen. Su Meizhi said.

It's not pajamas, it's freedom.

"Guan Nong" question! What is your concern? "

"Nong is a big drum! You have too much control. "

Asked about the "pajamas pajamas not to go out" requirement, some Shanghai aunts still need to jump.

Although the neighborhood committee is positive about the work at this stage, they do not shy away from admitting that some residents still find it difficult to reverse their habits.

"This kind of thing does not need to be so exaggerated. What's so interesting about opening up every country in World Expo? " Aunt Chang, a resident of building 37, was complaining about the four residential quarters separated from the eight residential quarters. Her voice was mixed with anger and impatience. In the evening, she dressed in a bear pajamas, stepped on a pair of leather belts and sandals, and went out to buy some bread. On the Changli East Road, which is sandwiched between Chang four district and Qi eight district, small supermarkets, banks, clothing stores, West Point shops, restaurants, food shops, drugstores, stationery shops, and vegetable farms are all available. Residents can buy various items only if they walk a few steps.

Many people in Shanghai don't understand why they should buy some clothes at home, so they must bother to change their pajamas. In those days, in the movie "sleepless city", wearing a pajamas was a price. Imagine: the young lady just came out to buy a lottery ticket, so it was difficult to change into a dress for work. The guy who worked in the office of the state-owned enterprise just wanted to buy a "everyone" from the office to catch up with him. Unfortunately, the newsstand was sold out at the gate. He forgot to wear his pajamas and ran through two small streets to find newspapers. The middle-aged lady with a hairpin was just buying noodles for a person who was too lazy to cook and went to the vegetable market to buy some noodles.

There are all kinds of claims. Let Shanghai people take off their pajamas, that is to say, take off the Shanghai style. The reason why they go out in pajamas seems reasonable: they do not go far away from attending formal occasions, but do not stay outside for too long. The close combination of community and surrounding facilities also makes these reasons impossible to refute. "If someone is dressed up to the supermarket, they will be looked at differently." In their view, the life of laziness is permeate with the charm of Shanghai style.

When the habit of wearing pajamas is long and strong, it is a cultural label. In the old society, pajamas usually belonged to two groups, one was rich, showing leisurely leisure, the other was entertainment, such as dancing girls, showing their charm. After the founding of the people's Republic of China, pajamas gradually became popular. In 70s, the streets of Shanghai pajamas were once the urban landscape and the trend of catching up with fashion. "Pajamas are beautiful" and "pajamas show that I live comfortably" is the prevailing idea of those who follow the trend in that era.

After the fashionable wave has been photographed, more remaining is the inertia of clothing, coupled with the narrow traditional living space, the "pajamas" characteristics of "map convenience" have been followed. The most traditional residential buildings in Shanghai are Shikumen and lane houses. The residents crowded in the alley, as described by the 72 tenants, "rooms are like pigeons cages, and tenants are like cages." If you do not know every household, you will have to pull out a curtain to encircling your own site. There is no way to separate public space from private space. This is the scene of Stephen Chow's movie "the pig cage village" in the king of Kungfu. When the Charter woman appeared on Yuan Qiu's debut, he put on a perm with a head full of hair, and his fat body was wrapped under a large pajamas.

Yes, this is the most common dressing in the impression of aunt lane.

The Shanghai hotline (www.online.sh.cn) is titled "Shanghai people love to wear pajamas to the streets. What do you think?" The survey (launched in July 20, 2009) shows that up to now, it is considered to be "low quality and uncivilized", but only 42.03%. It is considered that "normal is not uncivilized, only a convenience" accounts for 33.95%, while the choice of "Shanghai people wearing pajamas on the street is very normal, and they do not like to see it" is also 24.02%. That is to say, the number of people wearing pajamas is no more than half.

As a native of Shanghai, Li Kaiyan is one of the non dissenters. Living in the alleyway for nearly 14 years, although Li Kaiyan also felt that his aunt's mother wore a nightgown out of the way a bit indecent, but that "market affinity" still gave her a natural sense of goodwill. For Li Kaiyan, such as Qi eight residential clothing persuasion activities, such a teasport is "a bit silly", "what else do you need to wear to manage?" Besides, "it's a bit of a test for the Expo."

As for the humiliating and disgraceful question, the Shanghai native 80 later said: "as long as we Shanghai people do not feel ashamed, we can not lose our face." It is estimated that the experts and officials who put forward this opinion are not from Shanghai.

Some netizens also objected to the civilized dress persuasion activities carried out by various communities. In the discussion paper about the Shanghai pajamas Gang, netizens said that they had seen the news video of persuasion activities. "A lot of Granny looks like they are not wearing pajamas, they are loose fitting clothes. No reason. "

It seems that the modern civilization of Shanghai Expo has to face this most powerful opponent: Dress freedom.

"Compulsion to shape civic character"?

The Shanghai seesaw war on clothing has been around for several years.

Qi eight district, an old residence with a surname, clearly remembers that mayor Yu Zhengsheng told reporters in Hongkong that Sally Wu has three plans to prepare for World Expo. Compared with two aspects of the improvement of the city appearance and the service quality of the window service units, Shanghai has made slow progress in changing the civilized state of the citizens. Of course, wearing pajamas is one of the bad habits of Mayor Yu.

Yang Xiong, director of the Institute of social development of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, once hosted the "survey of family civilization in Shanghai" in 2006. 16.5% of people said they or their families often went out in pajamas, and 25% said they would sometimes. The seriousness of the problem in pajamas is repeatedly mentioned.

After the report was released, it was widely quoted by domestic and foreign media. Let Yang Xiong truly feel that the international image of Shanghai will be damaged because of the problem of pajamas. A foreign student in Shanghai came to tell him that his mother had seen Yang Xiong's investigation report in Britain. He was very surprised: "Shanghai is still out of pajamas," and showed the newspaper to children in Shanghai.

"Foreigners think it's a big news. They care very much." Yang Xiong said.

As for another kind of "harm" of pajamas on the street, Zhang Nian, a cultural criticism Research Institute of Tongji University, holds that "civic rationality is to maintain a concern for the existence of others, and this concern is reflected in a relatively indifferent sense of distance. But pajamas are a kind of signal that cancels this sense of public rationality, which makes strangers feel uncomfortable.

In recent years, with the improvement of living standards, dress problems have gradually become cultural problems in cities. The propaganda of the Shanghai media and governments at all levels has not ceased, but the persuasion work driven by the Expo is much greater than before, and the controversy is even more prosperous.

Although the members of the neighborhood committees are careful in their work, they are "not as strict as a policeman who runs a red light." But in the eyes of some scholars, the grass-roots government's organized persuasion activities are still mandatory.

In Yang Xiong's view, wearing pajamas on the street does not conform to international etiquette and should be changed. But this can not be said to be a moral issue, nor even to the civilized literacy of Shanghai people. Sometimes we magnify it. "

Hu Shoujun, a sociology professor at Fudan University, thinks that the neighborhood committees can advocate wearing streets without pajamas, but they have no right to prohibit or disguise them. Although he himself strongly disapproves of going out in pajamas, he also opposes compulsory or semi mandatory prohibition of residents wearing pajamas on the streets: "for example, when going up to the mountains and going to the countryside, it is not mandatory. I advise you to go down, give you a study class, learn chairman Mao's works, and study hard for you. If I follow this, I don't feel good. "

Zhang believes that traditional liberalism has two boundaries for personal freedom, one is voluntary and the other two does not constitute harm to others. The "others" here emphasize more on publicity. From these two points of view, the danger of wearing pajamas is not large. "As for government institutions, it should be a demonstration of public character rather than a concrete citizen's public character."

"The ideal state of World Expo is to improve the efficiency of the government and the level of being in power according to law. On the other hand, it improves the residents' sense of autonomy and subjectivity. It should not be that the government is too meticulous and too dead to take everything, so that the sense of autonomy of the community and residents will shrink. We should give full play to the enthusiasm of every resident and take pride in participating in the Expo. Hu Shoujun said.

At the end of the last year, at the end of last year, when the countdown to Shanghai World Expo was 500 days away from the Expo area, about one or two hours away from the Expo area, Hongkou District took the initiative to propose activities to discourage residents from wearing pajamas. To this day, the head of the neighborhood committee has been reluctant to talk about this: "our main work is not this. Every countdown has 100 days of action every 100 days. We follow the master plan. Now it's time to go to the street and discourage the red light.

And "pajamas do not go out, become a civilized Expo" brand is still standing at the gate of the eight community. The staff of the security room said, "this has to be hung until winter. When will there be no pajamas and when will it be removed?"