‘Disgusting’ China tourist swaps used water bottle for new souvenir flask at British Museum, angering mainland social media
- Incident goes viral after online observer reveals ‘shameful’ behaviour
- Mainland Chinese tourists have developed poor reputation for behavior abroad
A visitor from China touring the British Museum has come under fire after she opened a box containing a souvenir flask and replaced it with a used water bottle.
A video of the incident went viral in mid-March after a user on Xiaohongshu, China’s Instagram, brought attention to the incident and said she felt “speechless” when she saw it, according to the news outlet Illnews.com.
Online sleuths are confident the woman is from China because the water bottle was marked in both English and simplified Chinese characters, the mainland’s official written language.
The characters indicate that the water bottle was from the Xinfu branch of the Bank of Jinzhou in Liaoning province in northeastern China and was likely given away for free as a marketing tool, a common strategy worldwide.
That being said, there is no definitive proof the person is from the mainland, and they could be from other parts of the world where simplified characters are relatively common.
The Xiaohongshu user said: “Many people only visit the British Museum once in their life. Imagine buying a souvenir and opening the package only to discover a used, dirty bottle. What would they think?