No Pajamas in Shanghai

ByMeg Weaver
May 25, 2010
3 min read

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Shanghai’s World Expo is in full swing; since its May 1st

fanfare-filled opening, over five million people have stopped by. Event organizers expect another 65 million people to visit before the expo’s Halloween closing. Curiously, those 70 million won’t likely see pajama-clad Shanghainese about town, as NPR’s Morning Edition

reported last week.

The city has deployed a volunteer police force to chastise those who take their pajamas from bedroom to the boulevard, part of Shanghai’s culture since pajamas were first introduced to the city in the 1970s. City officials fear that public pajama wearing makes the city look backward and its denizens “uncivilized” to visiting foreigners.

Taipei-based American photographer Justin Guariglia, a frequent Traveler contributor, disagrees and contends that pajamas add character to the city. Travel writer John Krich who authored the words that accompany Justin’s pictures in the 2008 book of everyday life, Planet Shanghai, says the “sleepwear phenomenon” is a “direct outgrowth of a lack of personal space in the long tang [li long] neighborhoods.”

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Whether public pajama wearing comes out of a blurring of the public and private, Shanghai’s sticky summers, a 100-year throw-back to the Qing dynasty’s loose-fitting clothing styles, or laziness writ large, it’s a quirky piece of Chinese culture. You can see more of Justin’s clever photos of PJ wearers here at Neatorama.

Can’t get enough of Shanghai fashion? Check out a Traveler photo gallery from Gary Krist’s March 2009 feature on shopping in the city, a gallery of Fritz Hoffman’s shots connected to the March 2010 story, “Shanghai Dreams,” in NGM, and yet another dazzling gallery, “Shanghai Style.”

Photos by Justin Guariglia, Planet Shanghai.

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