Move over 'ugly American,' China's tourists are in town

After a young Chinese boy defaced an ancient Egyptian temple, it looks like the 'ugly American' that some Europeans and Latin Americans love to hate is about to get a run for his money.

|
AP
The Chinese words "Ding Jinhao visited here" is seen on bas-relief in the 3,500-year-old Luxor temple in Luxor, Egypt, May 6. A Chinese teenager who defaced the ancient temple in Egypt with graffiti has come under fire at home where his vandalism prompted public fretting about how to cultivate a good image overseas as more newly affluent Chinese travel abroad.

The Chinese government is getting worried that as its newly rich citizen-tourists fan out across the world, their behavior is giving their country a bad name.

The latest incident of Philistinism, in which a Chinese teenager scratched his name in a 3,500 year old bas relief in a temple in Luxor, in Egypt, has also triggered a tsunami of embarrassed anger among China’s Internet community.

Earlier this month, deputy Premier Wang Yang was merciless during a televised meeting called to discuss a proposed tourism law. Too many Chinese tourists “talk loudly in public, cross the road when they shouldn’t, spit, and carve characters on tourist attractions,” he complained. “This has damaged China’s image and had a dreadful impact.”

Fifteen-year-old Ding Jinhao has not helped. He is the young hooligan who scratched graffiti into a Luxor temple wall – graffiti photographed by another Chinese tourist who then posted the desecration on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform, last week.

More than a quarter of a million people have commented on the post, mostly to express their shame. His parents have publicly apologized.

Jinhao is hardly the first visitor to have defaced Egyptian monuments. Tourists have been carving their names into the pyramids outside Cairo for millennia. (My favorite: a wistful inscription in Latin left by a lonely Roman atop Cheops’ pyramid. “I saw the pyramids without you, and wept.”)

But young Jinhao’s indiscretion, which the Egyptian authorities say they have now repaired, is only the most recent in a litany of reports from abroad about the ways in which Chinese tourists have managed to offend the locals.

If it’s not Hong Kongers sniffing at a mainland mother encouraging her young son to urinate into a bottle in the middle of a restaurant, it’s Balinese complaining about brash Chinese tourists making too much noise, or Thai Buddhists offended by immodestly dressed Chinese female visitors to temples.

The Chinese Tourism Agency has taken note of these reports. Last month the government department issued a set of “civilized behavior guidelines” for tourists going abroad, urging them to “be attentive to etiquette, maintain dignity … protect the environment…queue in an orderly fashion and eat quietly” among other recommendations.

On the same day, though, the agency issued a similar, but even more draconian, charter intended to govern the behavior of visitors to domestic tourist attractions, warning them not to sneeze in other people’s faces, nor to chase and hit animals, nor to spend too long in public lavatories.

 In the end, lamented deputy Premier Wang, the problem comes down to what he called “the poor quality and breeding” of many Chinese, whether they are at home or abroad. It looks like the “ugly American” that some Europeans and Latin Americans love to hate is about to get a run for his money. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Move over 'ugly American,' China's tourists are in town
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2013/0529/Move-over-ugly-American-China-s-tourists-are-in-town
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe