Chinese internet users unimpressed by romantic vandals who etched their names on centuries-old relic
A photo showing a 300-year-old bronze water vat in Beijing’s Forbidden City with graffiti scribbled on it by by two visitors has sparked a fierce reaction online, with calls for visitors to behave themselves, a news website reported.
The photo shows two names engraved on the surface of the vat, the Shanghai-based news portal Thepaper.cn reported. The heart sign around the names indicates they were a couple.
But romantic or not, weibo users were not impressed, with some implicating that the two would break up soon due to their newfound notoriety.
Other comments said that the management staff at the Forbidden City, now known as the Palace Museum, should have called the police as the artefacts were permanently damaged.
“This is far worse a violation than the woman who posed naked for photographs earlier,” one post read.
The museum management staff told Thepaper.cn that such acts of vandalism take place every year, and are reported to police if the violations are severe.
In June, a photographer and his naked model posing in the Forbidden City sparked a public outcry, with some saying it had “profaned historical relics”.
