CHINA:Men had better beware in a town dedicated to women power, writes Clifford Coonanin Beijing
Red-blooded males had better watch their step in this town in southwestern China. If they don't obey their wives or girlfriends, and satisfy their every whim, they can expect no mercy.
The city of Chongqing - the biggest city in the world by some estimates with 32 million people - is planning to build a town dedicated to women in its Shuangqiao District.
The town's motto is "Women are never wrong" and the project will be modelled on a town run by women as depicted in one of China's most famous literary masterpieces, The Monkey King. Municipal authorities hope it will bring in tourists keen for a bit of role reversal.
At the gate leading into the village, men will be greeted with a slogan that says: "Women are never wrong; men can never refuse their needs." Any male foolish enough to debate this point can be punished by kneeling on a hard board or being forced to do the washing up in a local restaurant.
There will be special courts set up, with judges who can order male tourists to be whipped if they fail to meet their partner's wishes for chocolate, or perfume, or anything at all. This whip is no cat o' nine tails, though - it is specially made and "soft" so it won't hurt the transgressors too much.
Shuangqiao suffers from having little to recommend it as a tourist hot spot, except for the local custom where men work in the coal mine and hand over all their wages, tend farms and perform household chores while the women "maintain complete control over their husbands", according to local media.
Some bright spark in local government thought this way of life could be a way of attracting tourists. City fathers, and presumably city mothers, put their heads together and came up with the idea of a modern-day matriarchy. The local government has approved the project and the town is expected to be fully built in two years.
Tong Jiuying, a member of the local government, will be appointed head of the town, though it is not clear whether that authorises her to wield the whip against errant males.
Many visitors come to visit the Dazhu stone carvings, a World Cultural Heritage site not far from Shuangqiao, and Tong said she hoped to lure tourists to "Women's Town" where they can enjoy "feminine games".
Local tourism official Li Ji insisted that Women's Town was being built "only for recreational purposes" and was not intended to have anything to do with feminism.
However, the delighted reaction to news of the town's construction in the Chinese media shows there is a serious point to be made here about how Chinese women, who make up one-eighth of the world's population, are treated.
Women have made great advances under the communists since 1949, and Mao Zedong once famously said: "Women hold up half the sky."
In ancient China, women were routinely discriminated against in a male-dominated society, denied education and had no say in whom they married. Under the communists, the binding of feet has been outlawed, women do most of the same jobs as men and are equal in the eyes of the law.
However, the government acknowledges that a gender imbalance still exists in terms of wealth and status and women account for a disproportionate percentage of the country's rural poor. Beijing recently issued a white paper on gender inequality.
The traditional preference for boys has led to an alarming rise in the gender imbalance, with 118 boys born for every 100 girls. In Guangdong and Hainan provinces in southern China, the ratio is as high as 130 boys to 100 girls, as wider use of ultrasound tests and easy availability of abortion compound the problem. And although female infanticide is not as widely practised as in days gone by, there are still horror stories of girl babies killed at birth, of sick girls being allowed to die or abandoned in train stations.
So the return of women's power is to be applauded, even if it is only on the tourist trail for now. The Chinese are fascinated by the matriarchal Mosuo people in Yunnan province, who practise "walk-in marriages" where male partners are chosen by the women for procreation and the men do not live with their wives - they merely spend the night and have to leave in the morning. The whip-bearing judges of Shuangqiao would approve.