Beijing newspaper tackles summer problem - topless men

BEIJING -- Every summer, day and night, it's the same story: young men, old men, skinny men, fat men, all walking the streets of the Chinese capital with bellies bared for the masses to see. In Beijing, they're known by their nickname -- "bare-chested masters."

Some roll undershirts up to their nipples to air out the gut. Others shed tops entirely, exposing various levels of girth to helpless passers-by. Now, after years of watching men across Beijing lose their shirts when the sweaty weather comes, one local newspaper has had enough.

The Beijing Youth Daily, vexed at what it calls a "little bad habit" unworthy of a modern Olympic metropolis, has put its eyes where its city's stomachs are, running random photos of Beijing's topless men to shame them into putting their shirts back on.

"It's been percolating with us for a while. Then summer came again, and men started taking off their shirts. So we thought we'd do something," the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Yang Tao, said in an interview Tuesday.

For three weeks, a standing feature on the back page of the newspaper's front section -- dubbed, in inimitable Chinese style, "Grandpa Shoulder" -- has captured attention with pictures of publicly shirtless men engaged in various activities.

Most unsettling is a sweaty man emptying a wok at a streetside food stall. "Grandpa Shoulder Stir-Fries," it enthuses.

Nearly 30 photos have been published so far. The first came from China's official Xinhua News Agency, Yang said; the second was taken by a Beijing Youth Daily photographer.

Since then, readers have been deluging the paper with photos -- more than 500 so far.

"They really should wear shirts," said Zhang Yaling, a young saleswoman with a vested interest. She runs a T-shirt kiosk. "All these bulging bellies sticking out, it makes us look silly."