Shanghai police chase mysterious nocturnal streaker
Chinese police launch investigation into unidentified woman who has appeared posing nude at Shanghai landmarks in a series of online photographs
The mystery lady has been stripping off at a number of Shanghai landmarks
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai
7:49PM BST 11 Oct 2013
Chinese police are hunting a mysterious female streaker who has ruffled feathers in Shanghai by using the cover of darkness to pose nude at some of the city’s best-known tourist spots.
Online photographs of the unrobed and so far unidentified woman have been circulating since at least last week, sparking a mix of disgust and frivolity among Chinese internet users.
City officials appear to be unimpressed, however. On Friday the state-run Global Times announced that police had launched an official investigation into the nocturnal antics of a woman it dubbed the “Bum on the Bund”.
“Though the woman’s face and privates have been pixilated, it appears to be the same woman in all the photographs,” the newspaper noted.
The streaker’s late-night escapades appear to have kicked off on Hengshan Road, a busy thoroughfare in Shanghai’s former French concession that is home to dozens of expat bars and the 1925 Anglican-style Community Church.
Those photographs, which showed the woman reclining against one of the area’s unmistakable London planes, were followed by racier shots taken near Shanghai landmarks including the iconic Oriental Pearl Tower.
In one the streaker stares out from the historic Bund at Shanghai’s financial district. In another, she appears to be posing at Xintiandi, an open-air commercial and cultural district, near where the Communist Party held its first ever Congress in June 1921.
China’s stability-obsessed leaders spend more on homeland security than defense each year, with more than 769 billion yuan (£78.6 billion) devoted to maintaining domestic security in 2013.
But the Shanghai streaker has so far evaded the country’s swelling ranks of cyber police, security agents and spies.
On Thursday, a spokesperson told local media “the case has caught the attention of the police” and said its online crimes unit had launched an investigation to root out “the source of the nude picutres.” Local newspapers debated whether the elusive lady’s actions constituted “performance art, [a] commercial [gimmick] or exhibitionism” while academics were asked for their views on the exhibitionist’s nocturnal pursuits.
Gu Jun, a sociology professor from Shanghai University, condemned the images as a “vulgar and meaningless exploration of sex” that exemplified how eroticism was no longer a taboo in Chinese society.
Ma Wenbin, a lawyer from the Shanghai Huicheng practice, warned that the lady could pay a high price for her “flirtatious and pornographic postures”.
If found guilty of exposure in a public place she could face up to 10 days detention, he told the Eastday news website. But the punishment could be far harsher if she was charged with distributing “pornographic material”.
Ho Cheung Ping, a Hong Kong film director, showed greater understanding.
“[There is] absolutely no need to apologise,” he said, according to the Modern Gold Express newspaper from Zhejiang province.
Internet users also defended the mysterious lady. “Why do the police care about this?” asked one user of the Weibo micro-blog. “Who have the nude photos harmed? How did it harm the public interest?”
“This girl didn’t tear off someone else’s trousers or force anyone to see the pictures, so why not just let it lie?” questioned another, adding: “If the water is too clean, there will be no fish.”
