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Exclusive: ‘Like ripples on the sea’: Chinese astronomer tells Global Times how the Milky Way got its newly discovered ‘wrinkles’_我的网站

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    Foreign tourists explore customized clothing services at the South Bund Soft Spinning Material Market in Shanghai. Photo: VCG
For many overseas travelers arriving in Shanghai, the Bund and the Oriental Pearl Tower are no longer the first stops on their itineraries. Instead, they head straight to the South Bund Soft Spinning Material Market, where custom-tailored outfits have become a signature experience driving "Chinamaxxing," a viral lifestyle trend popular among global travelers.
The market buzzed with energy, with conversations in various foreign languages echoing across storefronts, when a Global Times reporter visited it on a work day. 
Tourists from different countries take body measurements, browse design references, and discuss tailoring preferences with local shopkeepers. 
Evolving from the time-honored Dongjiadu cloth market, the area now hosts more than 280 fabric vendors and tailor studios, forming a complete industrial ecosystem for custom apparel. 
Inside one local shop, two foreign tourists excitedly tried on a series of Tang-style garments, taking photos of their favorite looks before professional tailors record precise measurements for their custom-fit clothing.
Gabbo, an Italian traveler, told the Global Times that he first discovered the market through TikTok and Instagram. As silk markets in Shanghai have grown popular among Italian tourists, he and his travel companion Nicco came specifically to shop for authentic traditional Chinese garments and premium silk pieces.
"I picked out a brown Tang-style jacket and a white shirt, while Nicole got matching white shorts. We wanted to try something new and plan to wear our custom outfits out tonight because the styles are very fashionable," Gabbo said. "The bespoke measuring service is professional and thoughtful, and the whole shopping experience has been wonderful."
Intl tourists emerge as a major force
Benefiting from China's visa-free policy covering Italy, the pair only needed to submit standard tourist documents for entry. They plan to stay in China for roughly two weeks to explore local culture and lifestyles.
Local tailor shop owners have witnessed a striking surge in overseas customer demand. Driven by expanded visa-free policies and viral social media exposure, growing numbers of foreign tourists come to the market for original Chinese-style custom clothing. 
According to shop owner Li, international visitors now account for 30 to 40 percent of her clientele, a dramatic reversal from previous years when domestic customers dominated orders.
"We source fabrics directly from suppliers and hire in-house tailors to eliminate middleman markups. Our bespoke pieces cost only one-third of similar custom outfits in Western countries," Li explained. The shop also offers expedited services tailored for short-stay travelers, allowing visitors to pick up finished garments within days.
All garments feature original in-house designs that retain classic Tang-style outlines with soft, wearable color tones suitable for daily wear. Many foreign customers style the traditional jackets with casual trousers and sneakers, creating unique, modern outfits that blend Eastern aesthetics and Western casual fashion, Li said.
Qian, another tailor with 20 years of industry experience, has also seen robust growth in overseas orders, with her annual order volume rising 20 percent year-on-year. 
Most foreign visitors come for custom-tailored suits and enjoy the full immersive bespoke production process. Her workshop divides labor for suits, shirts and dresses to boost efficiency, once completing a full set of custom clothes and delivering them to a tourist's hotel by 10 p.m. on the very day of ordering. The studio also accepts personalized design drafts brought by international visitors.
Backed by the mature textile supply chain of the Yangtze River Delta, hand-tailored suits at the market cost merely one-quarter of equivalent bespoke outfits in Europe, with 24-hour rush order services available. This year, market foot traffic has increased roughly 30 percent year-on-year, with foreign shoppers making up 60 percent of all customers, the Global Times learned from the market.
Behind the change are China's visa-free policies. China's 240-hour visa-free transit policy covering 55 countries has greatly facilitated cross-border travel. Official data shows China received 22.91 million inbound foreign visits in the first half of 2026, a year-on-year increase of 20.4 percent, China Media Group reported.
From short-term visits to lasting influence

Boosted by China's visa-free policies, the social media trend "Chinamaxxing" has gone viral worldwide. Easier cross-border travel has allowed young foreigners to immerse themselves deeply in authentic Chinese lifestyles, including traditional fitness practices, Chinese dramas and local food culture. 
Beyond garment customization, Shanghai's inbound tourism experience sector continues to expand. Spring Travel recently launched hands-on traditional snack workshops for foreign visitors, focusing on wonton and spring roll making. Tourists can cook, taste homemade snacks and learn the cultural stories behind local cuisine. 
The workshops have received visitor groups from the US, Brazil and Australia and earned wide praise, the Global Times learned from Spring Travel.
Sugiurat Akuto, one foreign participant, said that making Shanghai snacks left him with precious travel memories. Before leaving China, he asked chefs for original recipes, hoping to recreate authentic Chinese delicacies at home and share his unique Shanghai travel experience with family and friends.
Unlike disposable souvenir purchases during routine sightseeing, custom-tailored clothes and learnable cultural skills turn short travel experiences into enduring cross-cultural connections. "These custom outfits will remain precious memories for decades. Even 20 years later, we will still remember custom-tailoring clothes in China. Every time I see these garments in my wardrobe, I will recall this special trip," Gabbo said, adding that distinctive local custom pieces are far more valuable than ordinary travel souvenirs.
Industry analysts note that the Chinamaxxing phenomenon marks a structural upgrade in China's inbound tourism consumption. Driven by optimized visa policies, foreign travelers are shifting from superficial landmark sightseeing to high-value, personalized immersive experiences. Longer stays and upgraded consumption drive coordinated growth of modern service industries and inject new vitality into China's service economy.
Research by the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce shows that inbound tourists who opt for customized consumption stay an average of six to seven days in Shanghai, more than double the city's average 3.21-day stay for general foreign visitors. 
Current cultural tourism experiential products represent only the initial stage of this emerging industry. China's rich cultural resources can be continuously developed into high-quality, replicable tourism offerings for global audiences, Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Most importantly, the Chinamaxxing trend boosts people‑to‑people exchanges. One‑off on‑site travel purchases translate into steady overseas demand and repeat orders, helping international audiences gain deeper insight into China's charm, Zhang noted.
。         Schematic diagram of Milky Way Photo: Courtesy of Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO)
Chinese astronomers have discovered that the Milky Way is not a simple, smoothly warped disk, but contains widespread "wrinkle-like" structures resembling ripples on a water surface, providing new clues to understanding the galaxy's 3D structure and evolutionary history.
The discovery was made by a research team from the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, using data from the "Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting" (MWISP) survey. The findings were published online titled "Widespread corrugations superimposed on the Galactic warp in the outer CO disk" in the journal Nature Astronomy on August 7.
For decades, astronomers have known that the Milky Way's disk is not perfectly flat. Instead, its outer regions are slightly bent upward on one side and downward on the other - a structure known as a galactic warp.
However, the latest study shows that this large-scale bending is not the whole story. Smaller-scale vertical fluctuations are also embedded within the warped disk, creating a more complicated 3D structure.
"In many illustrations and in the public imagination, the Milky Way looks like a flat vinyl record," Sun Yan, associate researcher at PMO and the first author of the paper, told the Global Times on Tuesday. "In reality, the outer part of the Milky Way is more like a record that has been heated and deformed, with one side lifted and the other side lowered. That is the warp. On top of this large-scale deformation, there are additional smaller waves, which we call corrugations," Sun explained.
Using a more everyday analogy, Sun compared the Milky Way's structure to a sea surface. The warp is like a large swell that changes the overall height of the ocean, while corrugations are smaller waves superimposed on that swell.
"The two structures exist together. In our data analysis, we first removed the large-scale warp model, which allowed us to reveal the smaller wave-like patterns hidden underneath," Sun said.
The research focused on the Milky Way's outer gas disk rather than the more familiar stellar disk. According to Sun, cold molecular gas and stars provide two complementary ways to study the galaxy.
"Molecular gas is a sensitive probe for studying the vertical structure and dynamics of the galactic disk because it is concentrated near the disk plane and responds strongly to disturbances," she said.
Molecular gas is also the raw material for star formation, meaning its distribution is closely connected with the formation of young stars. The researchers traced this gas through carbon monoxide (CO) emission, which can penetrate regions obscured by interstellar dust and provide a different perspective from optical observations of stars.
The breakthrough was made possible by the MWISP survey, conducted using China's 13.7-meter millimeter-wave telescope. 
"MWISP can be understood as giving the Milky Way a large-scale medical examination using millimeter-wave observations," Sun said.
Previous CO surveys were limited in sensitivity and coverage, making it difficult to accurately study the distant outer regions of the galaxy. In contrast, the latest study identified more than 30,000 molecular cloud samples, covering about half of the Milky Way's outer disk and extending to a distance of about 26 kiloparsecs from the Galactic center.
With such a large dataset, researchers were able to first establish a model of the overall warp and then separate subtle structures from the background. The newly identified corrugations have radial wavelengths of about 3.9-7.9 kiloparsecs and vertical amplitudes of about 100-200 parsecs.
The study also identified a corrugation structure extending about 40 kiloparsecs in azimuth at a distance of around 12.7 kiloparsecs from the Galactic center. In some spiral arm regions, vertical displacements can reach approximately 200 parsecs.
The researchers believe these large-scale vertical fluctuations are likely related to "bending waves" triggered by external gravitational disturbances, suggesting that the Milky Way might have experienced more complex interactions during its evolutionary history.
Although the newly discovered structures sound dramatic, they do not have any direct impact on Earth or the solar system. "Humans cannot directly sense these corrugations," Sun said. "Their scales reach thousands or even tens of thousands of light-years, and even if these structures are evolving, such changes would not be directly perceptible on human timescales."
The study focuses on the outer disk of the Milky Way and does not include the region around the solar system. "There is currently no evidence that these structures have any observable influence on Earth's environment," Sun said.
Instead, their significance lies in what they reveal about the past. Like geological layers recording Earth's history, these galactic structures preserve traces of the Milky Way's evolutionary journey, the researchers explained.
Researchers said future studies combining more precise motion measurements and numerical simulations could further reveal the origins of these structures and their role in the long-term evolution of the Milky Way.
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