January 22, 2001 VOL. 157 NO. 3

Detour
By ARTHUR JONES

TRAVEL WATCH Bear Necessities in Ancient, Spicy Chengdu Twenty-four hundred years ago Shu kingdom Emperor Kaiming IX established his capital in a sleepy eastern market town he named Chengdu, meaning "becoming a metropolis" Detour A renaissance of naughtiness is rocking conservative Shanghai Short Cuts While border-control officers elsewhere tend to focus on drugs and weapons, the Customs and Excise squad at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta seems to be on sex alert Travel Watch Archive Browse hundreds of Asian travel tips

A renaissance of naughtiness is rocking conservative Shanghai. Formerly the archetypal city of sin, the "Paris of the East" is again, after a long communist-imposed drought, making a cheeky statement. For a glimpse of the city's rediscovered style, visit A Cha, a new fetish fashion store just off downtown Huai Hai Road. At the opening last month, scores of locals crowded the shop front to gawk at models dancing in skimpy police uniforms.

When you enter A Cha, it's tough to decide whether to stare at the Japan- inspired lacy, racy outfits or the shocked Shanghaiers checking them out. On the racks, kinky nurses' uniforms hang alongside cowgirl boots and Stetsons. Whenever business slows in the heavily pink, two-story shop, assistants break into provocative dance moves to draw customers in. To round out the atmosphere, there are jars of free candy and a set of imported laughing mannequins from Japan.

Call it progress: China has been slow to develop a fetish-wear industry. Despite the growing popularity of Japanese pop culture, Hello Kitty has been the height of raciness—up to now. "A lot of the design ideas are borrowed from manga (Japanese comic books)," says A Cha owner Wang Meizhong, a Shanghai-born Japanophile who studied design in Tokyo. But are Shanghai's youngsters ready for fetish fashion? Even Wang isn't sure. "It's the Japanese living in Shanghai who are leading the way," he says. "Yesterday we had a Japanese guy in trying on the women's clothes. The locals aren't quite there yet." In other words, A Cha is cutting edge, but don't expect to see cadres in corsets just yet.

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