Residents hit streets, sheets in their pajamas

? Zhan Chunyong likes nothing better after work than to slip into her pajamas and head out to do grocery shopping.

On a recent afternoon, the 42-year-old security guard strolled through a crowded street market in central Shanghai wearing neatly pressed white pajamas with blue pinstripes.

Women dressed in pajamas cross a street recently in Shanghai. It's a common sight in China's most prosperous city: men and women on the street dressed as if in the comfort of their own homes.

Other shoppers wearing pajamas or nightgowns haggled with fishmongers or looked over the goods at the stalls of vegetable peddlers.

It’s a common sight in China’s biggest, most prosperous city: men and women in public dressed as if in the intimacy of their bedrooms.

You can see them in their nightclothes on busy sidewalks, walking amid the business suits as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

At supermarkets, they shuffle in slippers behind shopping carts. Some zip by on motor scooters, plaid flannels flapping in the wind.

Shanghainese say they’ve been wearing pajamas in public for at least 10 years, since the economy took off and they could afford to add sleep wear to wardrobes that consisted of little more than drab gray and blue Mao suits.

Far from being embarrassed, they say pajamas are more comfortable than regular clothes especially in Shanghai’s notoriously hot, sticky summers and easier to wash. They’re a luxury and a way to flaunt new wealth.

“Only people in cities can afford clothes like this. In farming villages, they still have to wear old work clothes to bed,” Zhan said.

Residents seem to look on it as a charming local quirk. So do officials in charge of keeping Shanghai looking smart.

“Some say it’s not civilized, but it’s just a harmless habit of the residents,” said Zhang Limin, a spokesman for the City Environment Supervision Office.

Many in the city of 17 million are surprised to hear people elsewhere don’t parade in public in their pajamas.

“Pajamas look good and feel good. Everyone wears them outside. No one would laugh,” said Wang Hui, a 17-year-old high school student in a pink nightgown decorated with a smiling kitten face.

She and a friend, who was dressed in light green pajamas, were stepping out of a convenience store with canned tea and bags of potato chips.

Wang said she changes out of her school uniform as soon as she gets home. Her mother and father also put on pajamas. Then they head out again.

“I have three more summer gowns like this one. I wear a different one every day,” she said.

Li Xiaoling , who owns a shop in central Shanghai that sells nothing but pajamas, said she could tell people’s social status with a glance at their sleepwear.

A member of the new professional class might splurge on a $12 pair, with high-quality material and a stylish cut. But most Shanghainese still favor pajamas costing $2 to $3.50.

Patterns and styles go in and out of fashion, just like other clothing.