Swedish tourism officials are struggling to quash rumors in China that the country is home to a women-only town where residents are desperate for men.

Several Chinese media outlets, including the Xinhua and local newspapers in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, have published reports claiming that 25,000 women live together in Chako Paul City.

Millions of Chinese men have since searched the Internet for more details of the city, said to have been founded by a man-hating widow in the forests of northern Sweden in 1820.

According to the rumors, the residents have turned to same-sex relationships to satisfy their desires, and any men attempting to gain entry risk being "beaten half to death" by the blonde sentries at the gates.

The far-fetched fantasy appears to have been swallowed by so many Chinese men that Swedish officials have issued a formal denial that the town exists, or ever existed.

"I have no idea where something like this could have come from," Claes Bertilson, of the Scandinavian country's Association of Local Authorities and Regions, told The Local newspaper.

"At 25,000 residents, the town would be one of the largest in northern Sweden, and I find it hard to believe that you could keep something like that a secret for more than 150 years."

It is unclear where the story originated, although officials have suggested that a publicity stunt by the northern Swedish town of Palaja in the 1980s may have been lost in translation. The male-dominated town arranged for busloads of women to be driven through in an effort to attract more female residents.

www.ananova.com