Park offers discount to women in short skirts

An amusement park in the tourist city of Guilin is offering discounted tickets to women who wear short skirts, attracting more visitors as well as criticism.

Many women who are 18 and older buy the discounted tickets during the summer - the peak season for the park, according to Huang Min, a publicity staff member of the Guilin Merryland Resort in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

The normal price of admission is 110 yuan ($17). Women who wear skirts that are shorter than 38 centimeters can get a 50 percent discount.

"We have offered the discount since 2007 for the months of July and August, when more girls like to wear skirts to show off their beauty, so we thought it would be a good idea to attract that group," Huang said on Monday.

"The numerals of the length, 3 and 8, are the date of Women's Day (which falls on March 8 every year). Besides, it's a suitable length that makes women comfortable, not too long to be inconvenient to play in nor too short to fear the exposure of underwear," she said.

Female staff members from the resort will measure the length of women's skirts.

"Some female tourists support our policy, and they especially loved the extremely low ticket price when we set it at 10 yuan. The number of women in short skirts reached 10,000 one day last year during the big promotion," she said.

Women wearing short skirts will be able to buy a ticket for 10 yuan this weekend when the park holds a big promotion, Huang added.

Li Jiangyu, 20, went to the theme park last year and said she has no objection to the discount. Li said she plans to go again this year with friends when the discounted tickets are offered.

"For girls who don't want to play with short skirts, they can change to longer ones after entering the park. Some of my friends changed skirts in the washroom. It's totally OK," she said.

More than 27,000 women wearing short skirts visited the park in July and August last year, Huang said.

But many people say the policy is inappropriate.

"I'll never allow my wife or sister to wear such short skirts for cheaper tickets," said Zhang Quan, 33, of Guilin. "It sounds bad to me, maybe because I'm a bit of conservative."

"The discount requirement is optional for female tourists, and it doesn't violate any laws in China. Maybe some people think it's inappropriate in China, but we cannot ban it just because of their opinions," Gu Jun, Shanghai University sociology professor, said.

"If they feel uncomfortable with the policy, they should look at models at auto shows in China. They wear less," he said.

Contact the writers at zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn and huangfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn