KEY POINTS:
BEIJING - Men had better watch their step in the southwestern Chinese town of Chongqing. If they don't obey their wife or girlfriends' orders and satisfy their every whim, they can expect to hear the crack of the whip as punishment without mercy is meted out.
Chongqing plans to build a village dedicated to women in Shuangqiao district which will have the motto: "Women are never wrong."
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 saying "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 with judges who can order male tourists to be whipped if they fail to meet their partner's wishes for chocolate, perfume - anything at all. The whip, however, is specially made and described as being "soft".
Shuangqiao suffers from having little to recommend it as a tourist hot-spot, apart for the local custom where men work in the coal mine and hand over all their wages to their wives, who tend farms, perform household chores and "maintain complete control over their husbands", according to local media.
Some bright spark at the 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 matriarchy. The village is expected to be completed in two years.
Government official Tong Jiuying will be appointed the head of the village, though it was not clear whether that gives her the authority to wield the whip against errant males.
She said the Dazhu stone carvings, a World Cultural Heritage site near Shuangqiao, attracted many tourists and she hoped they would also visit also "Women's Town" and enjoy what she called "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 about how Chinese women, who make up one eighth of the world's population, are treated.
The Government acknowledges a gender imbalance still exists so the return of women's power is to be applauded, even if it's only on the tourist trail.
- INDEPENDENT
