Monday, May 23, 2005
Bananas in pyjamas
The first time you see someone wearing striped cotton pyjamas in a crowded street in the middle of the afternoon, it is hard not to do a double-take, especially when that person is pedalling a bicycle. Is this a daring fashion statement by an eccentric individual who refuses to buy into the modern Shanghai work ethic? But as you sit in a bustling restaurant where every 10th person wandering by is in their comfies, you realise that stepping out in nightclothes is one of the most enviably relaxed customs of the city. It is also part of a way of life that is disappearing fast as Shanghai races towards business-suited modernity, and the big-family atmosphere of old neighbourhoods is replaced by the anonymity of apartment-block living.
Nowhere is the pyjama culture more evident than in Fangbin Road, one of the few remaining districts in central Shanghai to have escaped the developers' wrecking balls. At night the narrow street teems with life as curious visitors mix with the pyjama-clad residents who emerge from ramshackle low-rise buildings. The locals say they treat the entire neighbourhood as an extension of their homes - natural enough, considering they share public baths and toilets.
- report from the Guardian November 2004
You don't just have to go to Shanghai to see this. Try Dublin! As the article said, it has something to do with claiming your neighbourhood, almost as if you were walking around your own house. It's a statement to passers-by, "You're in my world now!"
The trend has been emerging more commonly in working-class areas and areas of high unemployment, where kids who have seen their parents spend the day walking around in only their pyjamas, due to lack of work, are picking up on the example, to possibly face the same future themselves.
Although it is a bold and and increasingly regular occurence, the trend has yet to hit the Hight Street....until Posh and Becks hear of it, anyway!!
Nowhere is the pyjama culture more evident than in Fangbin Road, one of the few remaining districts in central Shanghai to have escaped the developers' wrecking balls. At night the narrow street teems with life as curious visitors mix with the pyjama-clad residents who emerge from ramshackle low-rise buildings. The locals say they treat the entire neighbourhood as an extension of their homes - natural enough, considering they share public baths and toilets.
- report from the Guardian November 2004
You don't just have to go to Shanghai to see this. Try Dublin! As the article said, it has something to do with claiming your neighbourhood, almost as if you were walking around your own house. It's a statement to passers-by, "You're in my world now!"
The trend has been emerging more commonly in working-class areas and areas of high unemployment, where kids who have seen their parents spend the day walking around in only their pyjamas, due to lack of work, are picking up on the example, to possibly face the same future themselves.
Although it is a bold and and increasingly regular occurence, the trend has yet to hit the Hight Street....until Posh and Becks hear of it, anyway!!
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