Chinese tourists damage ancient landform where dinosaurs roamed, post video to brag
Two turn themselves in after posting video showing them trampling coloured sands of the protected land formation
Two of four tourists who damaged a 200,000-year-old land formation in a geopark in Zhangye, in central China’s Gansu province, and bragged about it on video-sharing platform Douyin turned themselves in to the police on Tuesday night.
The two were a 20-year-old man surnamed Li, who published the video, and a 17-year-old man surnamed Xu.
The identities of the other two are being investigated by the police, according to a statement by the Zhangye government.
The video, now deleted, was originally published on Tuesday morning.
From a cached copy on Shanghai-based news portal Thepaper.cn, two men and a woman, not including the video maker, can be seen walking on red and yellow stripes of sand, a signature of the Danxia land formation.
The video was uploaded with the text: “Good things must be shared twice: we went through the back door and didn’t have to pay for a ticket. This area looks even better”, the report said.
As he films, one of the tourist brags, “I destroyed a 6,000-year-old [formation].” In another clip, a tourist is seen digging the sand with a bare foot.