BEIJING, July 16 — Japanese high street retailer Uniqlo has become the hottest tourist attraction in Beijing for all the wrong reasons.
In a viral smartphone video posted Tuesday, a young Chinese couple can be seen having sex in what appears to be a Uniqlo store fitting room.
According to CNN, a bespectacled man, dressed in black from head to toe, is heard telling a naked woman to kiss him as he tapes their steamy session in the mirror.
“Call me husband” and “say we'll be together” were a few of other phrases he uttered to her ear as piped music played in the background.
The store in question was identified because an announcement can be heard towards the end of the video:
“Dear customers, welcome to the Uniqlo store at Sanlitun. There are no fitting rooms on the first floor. Please proceed to the second and third floor if you need to try clothes on.”
The footage, which went viral overnight on WeChat and Weibo, has been viewed by millions of people and attracted thousands of comments.
By midday yesterday, however, most posts containing the clip had been taken down.
By this morning, dozens of people could be seen snapping selfies outside the Uniqlo outlet where the sex tape was shot.
The Guardian reported today that commemorative T-shirts celebrating the Uniqlo encounter could be found on online shopping portals such as Taobao and Tmall.
Chinese authorities, however, don’t see things in quite the same humorous light.
Beijing police are reportedly investigating who made the film and how it appeared on the Internet.
The Global Times newspaper quoted Xu Feng, a director at Beijing’s online watchdog, Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), as saying, “The vulgar video had spread like a virus online and clashed with socialist core values.”
The government would “continue to crack own on vulgar materials online and safeguard the cyber environment,” Feng added.
Uniqlo, meanwhile, was forced to deny that it had masterminded the video as a marketing stunt, The Guardian added.
In a statement, the Japanese retail giant said, “We would like to remind the public to uphold social morality and use our fitting rooms in a correct and proper way.”
