美黑，对于热衷于美白的亚洲人来说绝对是美容的另类，不过，不另类也就显不出你是时尚顶尖的弄潮儿了。在大家都慌忙着加倍美白又防晒的时候，美黑一族在2006年夏天也灿烂地活动开来，美容院的经典“美白”招牌也渐渐被“美黑沙龙”所代替。这种沙龙通常为客人提供日晒床，日晒灯，日晒喷雾服务，以及一系列日晒辅助产品，用来帮助那些喜爱棕色皮肤，又没有时间或是环境到大自然中享受阳光的美黑一族。

A customer waits to start her tanning session at a tanning salon in Shanghai August 1, 2006. [Reuters] Bronze Bodies, a newly opened tanning salon in fashionable central Shanghai, has expanded its VIP membership to about 900 people and is planning to deliver value-added services like how to coordinate hair and clothes with newly tanned skin.  "I am making a fashion statement," owner Li Rui told Reuters. "It's not merely about tanned skin , but creating a fresh lifestyle choice for Chinese." The service is not for everyone, though, being unaffordable for most ordinary Chinese. A one-month course of tanning sessions costs between 700 yuan ($88) and 2,000 yuan, almost the average monthly wage in Shanghai. "People can immediately tell how wealthy you are by looking at your golden tanned skin," said a tanning branch manager who identified herself as Jin. "It looks shiny and healthy, quite different from the dim and coarse skin of day laborers." The appearance of tanned models on billboards around China and of bronzed actors, such as Hong Kong heart throb Louis Koom, on television and at the movies is also having an impact. Lulu, an aspiring Shanghai singer does not want to look like the pasty skinned stars of her youth. Hispanic US actress-singer Jennifer Lopez is more her style. "It looks sunny and outgoing, not pale and fragile," she said. She is in the minority for Chinese women as tanning salon owners say 70 percent of their customers are men. Women generally opt for the traditionally defined concepts of beauty in China which call for pale skin, untouched by the sun. The young and trendy have been the first to pick up on the tanning fashion in China as well as people who have lived abroad and want to show off their new sophistication. Student He Ziqing tops up his tan at a salon in Shanghai after picking up the sun bathing bug on a trip to Germany. "Germans enjoy sun bathing on the beach. I go with my German friends when I'm there on holiday," he said, adding he did not visit the artificial beaches that sprout in Shanghai's suburbs during the punishing hot summers. "It's too course to do that here," he sniffed. (Agency)

Vocabulary:

tanning salon: 晒黑沙龙，日晒沙龙，美黑沙龙 tanned skin: 黝黑（晒黑）的皮肤 opt for: 选择 the sun bathing bug: 痴迷日光浴，bug指“着迷” （英语点津陈蓓编辑）