Egypt’s famed city of Luxor is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations thanks to its status as one of the world’s richest locations for ancient Egyptian temples and cultural artifacts. Everyone wants to go there, even me! However, one Chinese tourist did more thank take pictures and leave footprints. Instead, 15-year-old Ding Jinhao decided to leave some graffiti on an ancient temple’s wall.
The graffiti read, “Ding Jinhao visited here.” It was written parallel to a line of hieroglyphics on the monument. The defacement in crude Chinese characters wasn’t discovered until a different Chinese tourist took a picture of it and posted said picture to China’s Sina Weibo social networking website. That kicked off a firestorm of controversy, with Ding’s school website getting hacked and the teenager himself suffering both the wrath of his parents, but the wrath of China itself. The behavior of Chinese tourists has been particularly deplorable around the world, with Chinese abroad spitting, jay-walking, and being obnoxiously loud (at least according to Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang).
“People must die if they lose face for the nation,” one user on the Sina Weibo website said.
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