Chinese tourists carving out a bad reputation abroad
Child's graffiti on an Egyptian temple has sparked debate about bad behaviour and the need for mainlanders to spruce up their image
Many young mainlanders know the story of writer Lu Xun, who carved the character for "early" on his desk as a reminder to rise early to study after getting into strife for bring late for school.
He was never late again.
The story is meant to teach children to be punctual, not carve characters on public property, even though many mainland tourists write or carve on walls, trees, or rocks, seemingly oblivious to the fact they are doing something wrong.
The recent online exposure of a teenager from Nanjing who defaced a 3,500-year-old Egyptian temple has provoked nationwide introspection on such poor behaviour abroad, which many said had damaged the image of mainland tourists.
The boy's parents apologised and the Egyptian tourism authorities said they had managed to remove the graffiti, characters saying "Ding Jinhao was here", but the debate has rolled on.
Ding's parents said their son, now in middle school, had scrawled the characters when he was little. They were with a tourist group and had not noticed when he scrawled on the sculpture, his mother said.
But when Xinhua published a photograph showing that the graffiti had been erased, eagle-eyed internet users noticed it had been written above head height for an adult, suggesting Ding may have had some adult assistance. True or not, tourism industry workers say many Chinese adults behave as poorly as uneducated children.
