China's Unblushing Brides Bare All

BEIJING - Chinese brides traditionally married in red, the color of happiness. Then white weddings were introduced from the West, with women posing in ivory silk, supported by grooms in black tie.

The latest fad, though, is simpler - the naked wedding photo - and it has not gone down well with brides' parents.

"Some photo studios are going too far," said one angry mother. "They allow young women to have their photos taken in bikinis or with nothing on at all. I hope the authorities will do something."

According to a newspaper report, the mother had discovered that her daughter had had two sets of photographs taken - one in traditional attire for relatives, and one a more personal statement of modernity. Such exhibitionism is a surprisingly common feature of modern Chinese life, seen by many as a result of an abrupt and confusing exposure to American culture after two millennia of Confucian conformity and three decades of Maoist puritanism.

Books of nudes in erotic poses jostle for space in airport bookstalls with banned but easily available novels recounting wild drug-taking, lesbianism, and casual sex far removed from most people's actual experiences.

Weddings are the latest symptom. A marriage certificate takes 10 minutes and costs about $1.20, leading to the popular "quickie wedding," but marriage spreads costing, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars are featured in magazines.

Like the naked wedding photographs, they are described with a mixture of prurience and disapproval, a reflection of the ambivalence many feel towards changes in traditional values.