Women will rule OK in Chinese tourist town

Men had better watch their step in Chongqing. If they don't obey their wives' or girlfriends' orders, and satisfy their every whim, they can expect to hear the crack of the whip and must cower as punishment without mercy is meted out.

The city of Chongqing in south-west China - the world's biggest city by some estimates with 32 million people - is planning to build a town dedicated to women in its Shuangqiao district.

The municipal motto is "Women are never wrong" and the project will be modelled on a town depicted in one of China's most famous literary masterpieces, The Monkey King. Authorities hope it will bring in tourists keen for a bit of role reversal.

At the gate leading into the town, 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 set up, with judges who can order male tourists to be whipped if they fail to fulfil their partner's wishes for chocolate, or perfume, or anything at all. No cat-of-nine-tails this whip, however - it is specially made and described as being "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 to 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-day matriarchy. The local government has approved the project and the town is expected to be fully built in two years.

Tong Jiuying, who is currently a member of the local government, 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.

Many visitors come to visit the Dazhu Stone Carvings, a World Cultural Heritage site not far from Shuangqiao, and she said she hoped to lure the tourists to come to "Women's Town" and enjoy what she called "feminine games". Li Ji, a local tourism official, 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 tend to do most of the same jobs as men and are equal in the eyes of the law. However, 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 abortions compounds the problem.

So the return of women's power is to be applauded, even if it's only on the tourist trail. The Chinese are fascinated by the matriarchal Mosuo people in Yunnan province, who practise "walk-in marriages", where male partners are chosen for procreation, and do not live with their wives. (The men merely spend the night and have to leave in the morning. ) The whip-wielding judges of Shuangqiao would approve.