chinese tourist defaces egyptian temple

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Chinese teen defaces Egypt temple; sparks outcry

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BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese teenager who defaced an 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 teen scratched “Ding Jinhao visited here” in Chinese on a temple wall in the ancient city Luxor, and the incident came to light when another Chinese tourist posted a photo of it on a popular microblog with the comment: “My saddest moment in Egypt. Ashamed and unable to show my face.”

The photo quickly caught the attention of the Chinese public, attracting thousands of comments, and someone was able to identify the person responsible for the graffiti as 15-year-old Ding Jinhao from the eastern city of Nanjing. Many criticized Ding’s act as an embarrassment to the country.

“Why there are so many citizens who go abroad and humiliate us? How many generations will it take to change this kind of behavior?” Xuan Kejiong, a prominent journalist with Shanghai Television, wrote on his microblog.

The sentiment was echoed by the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, the People’s Daily newspaper.

“Nowadays, people in China no longer want for food and clothing, and even in the luxury shops abroad, there are advertisement posters in Chinese,” the paper wrote in a commentary. “But many people also feel as though their ‘hands are full but hearts are empty.’ In the process of modernization, how have the people come to lack modern manners and consciousness?”

The outcry prompted Ding’s parents to publicly apologize. In an interview with a Nanjing newspaper, Ding’s father said “the child has committed a mistake and the main responsibility falls on the adults. It was because we did not supervise him well, and have not taught him well.”

The soul searching comes as Chinese tourism overseas has seen an explosion in growth over the past decade, fueled by rising incomes and the relaxation of government restrictions on citizens’ ability to travel abroad.

China has been the fastest-growing source of international tourists in the world for the past 10 years, the World Tourism Organization, a U.N. agency, said in April. The organization said the volume of international trips by Chinese tourists has grown from 10 million in 2000 to 83 million in 2012 — accompanied by a nearly eightfold increase in spending.

Last year, China surpassed Germany to become the largest spender in international tourism, with tourists’ expenditure amounting to a record $102 billion, the organization said.

But Chinese travelers, many of whom join tour groups, are frequently criticized for rude behavior. Deputy Premier Wang Yang earlier this month during the passage of a tourism law urged Chinese travelers to mind their manners.

“They make a racket in public places, carve words at scenic spots, cross the road when the light is red, spit, and do other uncivilized things,” Wang was quoted as saying. “This is detrimental to the image of the country’s people and leaves a bad impression.”

Associated Press researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report from Shanghai.

Chinese boy etches graffiti into Egyptian treasure; the last straw?

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BEIJING — “Ding Jinhao was here.”

It was a banal declaration scratched by a teenager at a 3,500-year-old Egyptian temple that has launched a round of soul-searching about bad behavior of Chinese tourists.

The Chinese-language graffiti was discovered at Luxor this month by a Chinese tourist who posted a photograph on a microblog in which he deplored the conduct of his countrymen abroad. “I’m so embarrassed that I want to hide myself,” the microblogger wrote last week.

Within days, Chinese had outed the vandal as a boy from Nanjing who had visited Egypt with his parents.

The incident has set off a very public debate in China about etiquette and the country’s image abroad. In response, the National Tourism Administration put out guidelines Tuesday advising Chinese going abroad on eight key points of etiquette, from waiting in line to refraining from spitting and littering.

“They speak loudly in public, carve characters on tourist attractions, cross the road when the traffic lights are still red, spit anywhere and [carry out] some other uncivilized behavior. It damages the image of the Chinese people and has a very bad impact,” Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang complained.

Newly empowered by their rising wealth, Chinese have become the world’s leading tourists with 83 million going abroad last year, according to the U.N. World Tourism Organization. While the $102 billion they spend is welcome, their behavior often is not.

The media here and elsewhere in Asia are full of stories of outrageous Chinese conduct. In Hong Kong, a child was allowed to defecate in a subway car. In Paris, wealthy Chinese drive sales clerks in luxury boutiques to tears with their imperious behavior.

“In general, Chinese tourists are too loud. When they get into a hotel they talk nonstop at the top of their lungs. They swarm into the elevator when the door opens,” said Li Dezhi, a Guangdong-based tour agent who takes Chinese groups abroad. He said he was embarrassed in Japan to see signs – only in Chinese – advising people they need to flush the toilet. “Obviously, they think it is only the Chinese who engage in this kind of bad behavior.”

In fact, there is plenty of non-Chinese graffiti in Luxor and elsewhere in Egypt. But the Chinese are particularly fond of writing their names on monuments. It is a tradition that is sometimes attributed to the Chinese classic, “Journey to the West,” in which the Monkey King carves “I was here” on Buddha’s finger. The magazine Caixin, in response to the Luxor scandal, ran a photo spread this week on its website of historic sites in China that were defaced with graffiti.

Liu Kaiming, a Shenzhen-based activist and social critic, sees parallels with destruction encouraged by the Communist Party from the founding of modern China in 1949 through the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

“Everything in China has the same kind of carvings. There is a lack of respect for social order and rule of law,” said Liu.

Editorials in Chinese media in recent days have pontificated on the lessons learned from the Luxor incident. Peoples’ Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, opined that “this instance shows our families and schools have failed to deliver to the children something that should be expected first and foremost of any education: moral principles and civic virtues.”

Ding Jinhao’s chagrined mother over the weekend said that her son, now 15, had carved the graffiti a few years ago.

“We want to apologize to the Egyptian people and to people who have paid attention to this case across China,” she told a Nanjing newspaper over the weekend. The boy’s father begged Internet users to stop hounding the teenager. “This is too much pressure for him to take,’’ he told the newspaper.

However, the retribution against Ding continues. Infuriated Chinese Internet users over the weekend hacked into the website of his former elementary school and defaced the home page with a message: It read, “Ding Jinhao was here.”

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Barbara Demick is a former foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times who previously headed bureaus in Beijing and Seoul, as well as New York. She is the author of “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea” and “Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood.” Demick has won Britain’s Samuel Johnson Award for best nonfiction; the George Polk Award; the Robert F. Kennedy Award; the Osborn Elliott Prize for Journalism from the Asia Society; the Overseas Press Club’s Joe and Laurie Dine Award for human rights reporting; the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Award; and Stanford University’s Shorenstein Award for best Asia reporting. She has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Mandarin Graffiti

A chinese teenager defaced the luxor temple. that’s bad, but scribbling on egyptian antiquity is as old as tourism itself..

Tourists take pictures as they walk inside the Luxor Temple in Luxor city, around 650 km (404 miles) south of Cairo, December 4, 2010.

Photo by Asmaa Waguih/Reuters

China is very sensitive about its international reputation. That explains why a single act of tourist vandalism—committed by a Chinese citizen while overseas—has created a social-media uproar in the country. The controversy began last Friday, when a Chinese traveler named Shen Yuwen logged on to the social media site Weibo and posted a snapshot of a 3,500-year-old Luxor Temple carving that had been scratched over with the phrase, “Ding Jinhao was here.” (“It was the saddest moment during my stay in Egypt, and I felt ashamed,” Shen lamented.) The photo quickly went viral, prompting online outrage, and in less than 24 hours netizens had publicly identified “Ding Jinhao” as a 15-year-old middle school student from Nanjing. Amid online declarations of national disgrace and social-media death threats, Ding’s family came forward to express their regrets in a local newspaper. “We want to apologize to the Egyptian people and to people who have paid attention to this case across China,” Ding’s mother stated, adding that the boy had “cried all night” out of shame over the incident.

Ding should be ashamed—but he’s hardly the first. Indeed, the teenager’s defacement of a priceless piece of Egyptian antiquity is merely the latest expression of a tourist tradition that is nearly as old as tourism itself. In Travel in the Ancient World , historian Lionel Casson notes that evidence of the practice dates back at least to 2000 B.C., when Hena, a high official under Mentuhotep III, chiseled his name and accomplishments into the sandstone of Wadi Hammamat , near the Red Sea. Elsewhere, at Giza, scratchings on a temple wall, dated to 1244 B.C., read: “Hadnakhte, scribe of the treasury, came to make an excursion and amuse himself on the west of the Memphis, together with his brother, Panakhti.” Scribes, perhaps unsurprisingly, accounted for the bulk of such graffiti, and Casson notes that their inscriptions follow a fairly standard formula: “Scribe So-and-So … of the clever fingers came to see the temple of the blessed King So-and-So.” Most such messages were painted onto monuments with a brush or scratched into the stone with a sharp point.

The Golden Age of graffiti on Egypt’s tourist-circuit monuments coincides with the heyday of the imperial Romans. In Pagan Holiday , a travel-themed account of the ancient Roman Grand Tour, author Tony Perrottet observes that travelers of the era regarded the Great Pyramid as “a vast, open visitor’s book, where every tourist could chisel his or her impressions. This was not considered defacement, but a grab at immortality—an effort by visitors to join their own fates to the most enduring of mankind’s creations.” Many inscriptions read, simply, “I was amazed!” One Roman tourist visiting the Valley of the Kings took a cue from Julius Caesar’s famous line and enthused, “I looked, I investigated, I arrived, I marveled.”

Touristic graffiti underwent a modern renaissance in the 19 th century, as Industrial Age European travelers fanned out across what came to be known as the “Near East,” leaving thousands of inscriptions in their wake. So common was the practice of scratching one’s name into Egyptian monuments that French writer François-René de Chateaubriand, having no time to visit the pyramids during an 1806 Egypt sojourn, sent an emissary out to engrave his name for him. (“One has to fulfill all the little obligations of a pious traveler,” he noted in his journal.) Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni is as much remembered for his prolific graffiti as he is for his contributions to Egyptology—and the large “Belzoni” inscription he left on the walls of the Ramesseum can be viewed not far from the serif-engraved surname “Rimbaud,” allegedly left by the French poet, on the sandstone walls of Luxor Temple.

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert was not impressed by the graffiti he found during an 1850 journey through Egypt. “One is irritated by the number of imbeciles’ names written everywhere,” he wrote, noting that the name and address of a certain Parisian wallpaper manufacturer had been written, in black letters, at the top of the Great Pyramid. “In Alexandria,” he added, “a certain Thompson, of Sunderland, has inscribed his name in letters 6 feet high on Pompey’s Pillar. You can read it from a quarter of a mile away. … All imbeciles are more or less Thompsons from Sunderland. How many of them one comes across in life, in the most beautiful places and in front of the finest views!”

With the rise of mass tourism in the 20 th century, Flaubert’s chagrin was echoed by upper-class travelers alarmed by the spectacle of tour buses at ancient monuments. Soldiers and sailors famously indulged in tourist graffiti during the World War II era (“Kilroy was here” inscriptions, left by American GIs, have been found everywhere from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to the Marco Polo Bridge in China), but by the mid–20 th century, travel guidebooks were specifically condemning the practice, which fell out of favor among middle-class travelers.

In Egypt, defacing monuments is a serious offense. The crime can carry a fine of more than $20,000 and up to 12 months in prison. It’s unlikely that young Ding Jinhao will ever face prosecution in Egypt. (The country’s local tourism authorities have announced that the marks made by Mr. Ding were superficial and have been removed.) Still, the issue has catalyzed an important discussion among Chinese travelers. In the wake of the uproar, China’s National Tourism Administration has stepped up its efforts in promoting a new set of guidelines for countrymen traveling abroad. Asserting that “being a civilized tourist is the obligation of each citizen,” the government agency is urging Chinese tourists to refrain from touching or writing on cultural relics, and avoid engaging in uncouth habits such as spitting, littering, jaywalking, vandalism, and cutting in line. Even before Ding’s shaming, well-publicized reports of Chinese boorishness in places like France and Hong Kong compelled the nation’s officials to draft new tourism laws that give tour companies the power to “revoke the contracts” of misbehaving clients. Meanwhile, Xinhua News Agency reports that the nation’s netizens have begun to investigate incidences of domestic graffiti, including a tourist etching on an ancient iron jar in Beijing’s Palace Museum and an inked message in a Xia Dynasty grotto in Gansu Province.

What makes this all significant lies less in the specific incidents than in the fact that China is on the cusp of a travel boom that may well dwarf all previous waves of tourism to places like Egypt. One teenager scratching his name into Luxor Temple is hardly remarkable, given the history of the site—but the reality of 100 million Chinese citizens expected to embark on international journeys by 2015 means that a little public shaming could ultimately do us all some good.

Chinese Tourist Defaces Egyptian Temple; Ding Jinhao's Parents Apologize Following Online Outrage (PHOTO)

Law student & former journalist

No, it's not an undiscovered hieroglyph -- according to the BBC, a Chinese tourist recently left his mark on an Egyptian temple, scrawling "Ding Jinhao was here."

A photo of the carving on the Temple of Luxor , later discovered by another Chinese visitor, soon began circulating online, and users of Sina Weibo -- a Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter -- were quick to out the teenage offender who was visiting Egypt with his family at the time, Xinhua News Agency reports.

The teen's parents have since apologized for the incident , Global Times notes, but widespread backlash online prompted China's Foreign Ministry to address the issue.

(Story continues below)

"There are more and more Chinese tourists visiting foreign countries in recent years," ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Monday, according to the South China Morning Post. "We hope that through tourism, we may improve our friendship with foreign countries, and we also hope that Chinese tourists will abide by local laws and regulations and behave themselves."

Shen Yuwen, another Chinese traveler, captured an image of the defaced temple and posted the photo on his Weibo account on May 24.

“I tried to erase this shame by rubbing it off, but my effort was in vain," the Weibo user wrote in the post , according to The Asahi Shimbun.

The post spread widely on social media, where netziens criticized the vandalism and expressed disgrace over the behavior of the young Chinese tourist, CNN notes.

Apologizing in a local newspaper Saturday, the teen's parents said their son understands what he has done , The Asahi Shimbun reports.

Fortunate for the temple, the damage was not permanent. As The New Straits Times reports, Egyptian restoration experts evaluated the superficial marks on the 3,500 year-old panel and successfully removed them earlier this week.

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International, parents of teen who defaced egyptian artifact apologize.

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The graffiti on an Egyptian carving at the 3,500-year-old Luxor Temple reads: "Ding Jinhao was here." Weibo hide caption

The graffiti on an Egyptian carving at the 3,500-year-old Luxor Temple reads: "Ding Jinhao was here."

The parents of a Chinese teenager are not happy. Their 15-year-old son was found to have defaced an Egyptian artifact at the 3,500-year-old Luxor Temple.

What's more, he did it using the most mundane of markings: Using what appears to be chalk, the boy wrote: "Ding Jinhao was here."

According to CNN , another Chinese tourist saw the markings and uploaded a picture to the Chinese social network Weibo.

"The saddest moment in Egypt," the tourist wrote. "I'm so embarrassed that I want to hide myself. I said to the Egyptian tour guide, 'I'm really sorry.' "

Within days, Internet sleuths traced the scrawl to Ding in Nanjing.

China Daily reported yesterday that when his parents got wind of the vandalism, they issued an apology.

"We want to apologize to the Egyptian people and to people who have paid attention to this case across China," the boy's mother is quoted as saying.

China Daily says high-profile cases like this have triggered a new "tourism law" in China. It is scheduled to take effect in October and "will force some Chinese tourists to behave properly at tourist sites"

Xinhua explains :

"Leaving graffiti is common among Chinese tourists, damaging historic sites and demonstrating poor education and behavior. "Yasser Hamed, the Egyptian tourist guide who led the tour on which Shen Yuwen discovered Ding's graffiti, said the boy may have noticed similar graffiti left as long ago as the early 20th century on the temple's walls, and thus may not have realized the gravity of his act. "The tourist guide who led Ding's group should also be blamed for not stopping such graffiti, according to Hamed."

Watch CBS News

Chinese teen tourist's alleged vandalism of Egyptian temple sparks outrage

May 29, 2013 / 10:51 AM EDT / CBS News

(CBS News) A case of vandalism on the wall of an ancient Egyptian temple has become a major source of shame and anger in China.

For three-and-a-half millennia, the spectacular Luxor temple has stood along the Nile, a monument to ancient Egyptian architecture. But now, it's a not-so-ancient, not-so-impressive graffiti etching left by a teenager that has grabbed attention: "Ding Jinhao was here," scribbled in Chinese characters.

An image of the graffiti went viral, sparking widespread outcry. It's not the way the Chinese like to be seen. The incident comes at a time when Chinese are increasingly turning online to expose problems or prompt a response from their government.

Another tourist, 41-year old "Shen" -- who would not give his full name -- posted his photo of the graffiti Friday on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter. The image received almost 100,000 re-tweets. "I did not expect it to be so powerful," Shen admitted when we reached him via a Chinese chat program.

CBS News' Seth Doane asked Shen, "You were in Egypt on vacation, you saw this graffiti, and you snapped a picture and posted it online. Why did you decide to put it online?" Shen replied, "This is a relic with 3,500 years of history. Doodling on something I revere, I feel should be condemned."

And it was. Another, unidentified Weibo user tracked down and posted the personal information of the underage, 15-year-old boy believed to be behind this, publicizing his name, date of birth and school. It focused the online outcry. Many called it an "embarrassment."

One user wrote, "You and your parents repair this -- the face of 1.3 billion Chinese people has been lost."

On Sunday, the boy's parents pleaded to a local newspaper "The kid made a mistake. ... We apologize."

The controversy warranted a response at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Spokesman Hong Lei said, "We hope that Chinese tourists will abide by local laws...and behave themselves."

This prompted the central government's tourism administration to issue new guidelines this week, calling on all citizens in China to be "civilized tourists," adding that behavior, such as cutting in line, spitting, and vandalism are not considered acceptable.

Watch Seth Doane's report in the player above.

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‘ding jinhao was here’: chinese teenager scrawls graffiti on 3,500-year-old luxor temple in egypt.

A 15-year-old Chinese boy has been outed as the person who scrawled graffiti on a 3,500-year-old temple in Luxor, Egypt.

The boy’s crudely carved message, which was written with Mandarin characters on a bass relief in the Luxor Temple, read, “Ding Jinhao was here.”

Originally built by Amenhotep III in the 14th century B.C. and completed by Ramesses II, the temple sits on the banks of the Nile, not far from the Valley of the Kings.

A photograph of the graffiti taken by another Chinese tourist quickly went viral in China on Friday after being posted to social media site Weibo, where it garnered more than 100,000 comments.

Users on the website were able to identity of the boy and posted his address online. Over the weekend, his school’s website was hacked, and reporters descended on his home in the city of Nanjing.

Besieged by reporters, the child’s mother offered a formal apology on Saturday for her son’s behavior.

“We want to apologize to the Egyptian people and to people who have paid attention to this case across China,” the boy’s mother told local newspaper Modern Express.

Ding’s mother also said that her son scrawled the graffiti years ago, the BBC reported, and had since come to appreciate the impact of his actions.

With China’s economy booming over the past decade, a growing number of the country’s residents have become global tourists.

Earlier this month, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang addressed what he termed the “uncivilized behavior” of some of tourists that was giving his country a bad name abroad.

The teenager whose act now symbolizes a national shame, meanwhile, wishes he could return to anonymity once more.

“The boy has known about it since Friday and cried all night. He has had to be moved around because reporters rushed to their house for interviews,” a reporter from the Modern Express who talked with the parents told the Global Times.

On the bright side, Egypt’s ministry of antiquities described the damage to the temple wall as superficial and said it would attempt to restore it.

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As fall elections loom, are fears for the state of democracy in canada justified, 'ding jinhao was here': chinese tourist, 15, defaces 3,500-year-old egyptian relic.

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Parents of a 15-year-old boy have apologized after their son posted a photo to Chinese social media platform Weibo showing his name graffitied into the face of a 3,500-year-old temple relic he recently visited as a tourist in Egypt.

The graffiti, in crooked Mandarin script scratched the phrase "Ding Jinhao was here" into the priceless, ancient monument at a Luxor temple on the edge of the Nile River.

The incident which prompted an online "human flesh search" to determine the boy's identity in order to harass him.

A photo posted online by a Weibo user named "Kongyouwuyi" (Shen) shows several Chinese characters crookedly written on delicate sandstone on the east bank of the Nile River in Egypt, which has a history of more than 3,000 years.

Shen, the micro blogger who posted the picture of vandalized relics, visited the Egyptian temple on May 6. "I felt embarrassed. It was my most unhappy moment in Egypt."

The photo has been shared more than 90,000 times since Friday, triggering outrage in the Chinese social media sphere. Social media users engaged in what is colloquially known as a "human flesh search" - seeking information on Ding Jinhao - and quickly revealed Ding was 15-year-old middle school student in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province.

Ding's school website was hacked on Sunday. Visitors were forced to click on a message box which said "Ding has visited this place" before entering the website, according to the Beijing News. The site can no longer be accessed.

Ding's parents contacted local media Saturday, apologizing for their son, admitting that they hadn't properly educated their child and pleaded for society to give him a chance.

Li Shaofu, of Modern Express - the only journalist to have had direct contact with the boy's parents - said the boy has become increasingly distressed on realizing the impact of his crime, and his family has been forced to move from house to house because of the swarm of reporters who have descended.

Gu Xiaoming, a professor at the Tourism Management Department of Fudan University, said the 'human flesh search' had gone too far. "It's not only the boy, there are other tourists that leave graffiti on relics. But as the person is a minor, more protection and education should be given to him rather than criticism," Gu said.

'Ding Jinhao was here': Chinese tourist, 15, defaces 3,500-year-old Egyptian relic Back to video

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Chinese teen defaces ancient Egyptian temple; sparks public soul-searching

BEIJING, China - A Chinese teenager who defaced an 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 teen scratched "Ding Jinhao visited here" in Chinese on a temple wall in the ancient city Luxor, and the incident came to light when another Chinese tourist posted a photo of it on a popular microblog with the comment: "My saddest moment in Egypt. Ashamed and unable to show my face."

The photo quickly caught the attention of the Chinese public, attracting thousands of comments, and someone was able to identify the person responsible for the graffiti as 15-year-old Ding Jinhao from the eastern city of Nanjing. Many criticized Ding's act as an embarrassment to the country.

"Why there are so many citizens who go abroad and humiliate us? How many generations will it take to change this kind of behaviour?" Xuan Kejiong, a prominent journalist with Shanghai Television, wrote on his microblog.

The sentiment was echoed by the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, the People's Daily newspaper.

"Nowadays, people in China no longer want for food and clothing, and even in the luxury shops abroad, there are advertisement posters in Chinese," the paper wrote in a commentary. "But many people also feel as though their 'hands are full but hearts are empty.' In the process of modernization, how have the people come to lack modern manners and consciousness?"

The outcry prompted Ding's parents to publicly apologize. In an interview with a Nanjing newspaper, Ding's father said "the child has committed a mistake and the main responsibility falls on the adults. It was because we did not supervise him well, and have not taught him well."

The soul searching comes as Chinese tourism overseas has seen an explosion in growth over the past decade, fueled by rising incomes and the relaxation of government restrictions on citizens' ability to travel abroad.

China has been the fastest-growing source of international tourists in the world for the past 10 years, the World Tourism Organization, a U.N. agency, said in April. The organization said the volume of international trips by Chinese tourists has grown from 10 million in 2000 to 83 million in 2012 — accompanied by a nearly eightfold increase in spending.

Last year, China surpassed Germany to become the largest spender in international tourism, with tourists' expenditure amounting to a record $102 billion, the organization said.

But Chinese travellers, many of whom join tour groups, are frequently criticized for rude behaviour. Deputy Premier Wang Yang earlier this month during the passage of a tourism law urged Chinese travellers to mind their manners.

"They make a racket in public places, carve words at scenic spots, cross the road when the light is red, spit, and do other uncivilized things," Wang was quoted as saying. "This is detrimental to the image of the country's people and leaves a bad impression."

Associated Press researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report from Shanghai.

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Chinese Teenager Ding Jinhao Defaces 3,500-Year-Old Egyptian Luxor Temple By Engraving His Name

A Chinese teenager has vandalised a 3,500-year-old Egyptian temple relic - by carving his name into it.

The 15-year-old was visiting the Luxor site, originally built by Amenhotep III in the 14th century BC and completed by Ramessess II, when he felt compelled to scrawl "Ding Jinhao visited here" in Mandarin across one of the sandstone carvings.

The vandalism was photographed by another Chinese tourist, who posted it on social networking site Weibo, with the comment: "My saddest moment in Egypt. Ashamed and unable to show my face."

Making his mark: 'Ding Jinhao visited here'

The post subsequently went viral, with networkers engaging in a sinisterly termed "human flesh search" as they worked to track him down.

As he had cunningly left his name, Ding was quickly revealed to be a middle school student in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province.

According to the Beijing News, Ding's school website was hacked on Sunday, with visitors forced to click on a message box which read "Ding has visited this place" before being granted access to the site.

Many Chinese citizens criticised Ding's act as an embarrassment to the country.

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"Why there are so many citizens who go abroad and humiliate us? How many generations will it take to change this kind of behaviour?'' Xuan Kejiong, a prominent journalist with Shanghai Television, wrote on his microblog.

At a conference to implement newly passed tourism laws earlier this month, vice premier Wang Yang said tourists who behaved badly hurt the nation's image, The South China Morning Press reports.

Ding's parents have issued a public apology via an interview with a Nanjing newspaper.

His mother told local newspaper Modern Express: "We want to apologise to the Egyptian people and to people who have paid attention to this case across China."

The reporter who interviewed the boy's parents in turn told the Global Times: "The boy... has cried all night. He has had to be moved around because reporters rushed to their house for interviews."

Thankfully, the Egyptian ministry of antiquities said the damage to the temple was superficial and was being repaired.

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'Ding Jihao was here': Chinese tourist, 15, defaces 3,500-year-old Egyptian temple and his family issue national apology

• Chinese visitors to the 3,500-year-old Luxor Temple spotted the graffiti
• They tweeted a picture of the scrawl alongside their outraged comments
• Chinese government claims tourists are giving China a bad name abroad
• Parents of 15-year-old schoolboy have issued grovelling national apology

By Daily Mail Reporter

Published: 08:56 EDT, 27 May 2013 | Updated: 08:04 EDT, 15 July 2013

View comments

A Chinese schoolboy has been caught defacing an ancient Egyptian temple just a few days after China's government attacked 'uncivilised' tourists for ruining the country's reputation abroad.

Chinese visitors to the Luxor Temple were outraged when they spotted the graffiti reading: ' Ding Jinhao was here' on 3,500-year-old hieroglyphics on the wall of the temple.

They posted a picture of the graffiti written in Chinese online along with comments expressing their disgust at the boy's actions.

'National embarrassment': Ding Jinhao, from Nanjing in east China's Jiangsu Province, wrote: 'Ding Jinhao was here' over hieroglyphics on the wall of an ancient Egyptian temple in Luxor

The tourist, surnamed Shen, said: 'It was the saddest moment during my stay in Egypt, and I felt ashamed.

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'We try to wipe out the shame with tissue, but it was difficult to clear it out, and we could not use water as the relief is a historical relic 3,500 years old.

'All of the 14 members of our tour group kept silent after seeing the sentence as we felt ashamed.'

The post prompted an online search which revealed Ding's identity, his date of birth and his school in Nanjing in east China's Jiangsu Province.

Shocked: Chinese tourists who spotted the graffiti posted a picture of it online alongside comments expressing their disgust at the boy's action

Public apology: The embarrassed parents of the schoolboy apologised to both the Chinese people and the Egyptian authorities for their son's actions

The parents of a 15-year-old Ding Jinhao have since issued a grovelling national apology to their fellow countrymen over their son's behaviour.

They told the Nanjing-based Modern Express newspaper: ' We apologize to Egyptian authorities and Chinese people who pay attention to the incident.

' He has realized he made a mistake, and we beg your pardon, please give him a chance to correct his act.'

Many social media users in China condemned Ding for damaging the ancient relic and his parents for not educating him properly.

One said: 'Ding's uncivilized behavior disgraced Chinese people.'

A Communist Party official has warned Chinese tourists to behave better when abroad to stop harming China's image (file photo)

It comes shortly after China introduced a new law in April which warns against tourists committing uncivilized behavior but does not specify punishments.

Senior Communist Party official Wang Yang, one of the country's four vice-prime ministers, has also warned that holidaymakers should be more polite, singling out talking loudly and spitting as poor behaviour by his fellow citizens.

Writing in the official party newspaper People's Daily, Mr Wang said: 'Improving the civilised quality of the citizens and building a good image of Chinese tourists are the obligations of governments at all levels and relevant agencies and companies.'

He said Chinese authorities should 'guide tourists to conscientiously abide by public order and social ethics, respect local religious beliefs and customs, mind their speech and behaviour... and protect the environment'.

Big spenders: Shoppers from China and the Far East scramble for bargains during the Christmas sales at Selfridges in London's Oxford Street. Chinese travellers spent an incredible $102bn on foreign trips last year

Share or comment on this article: China 'disgraced' by tourist vandal who engraved ¿Ding Jihao was here¿ over hieroglyphics at Egyptian temple

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Chinese teen sparks outcry after writing name on Egyptian temple wall

May 6, 2013: In this photo, the Chinese words "Ding Jinhao visited here" is seen on bas-relief in the 3,500-year-old Luxor temple in Luxor, Egypt. (AP)

BEIJING – A Chinese teenager who defaced an 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 teen scratched "Ding Jinhao visited here" in Chinese on a temple wall in the ancient city Luxor, and the incident came to light when another Chinese tourist posted a photo of it on a popular microblog with the comment: "My saddest moment in Egypt. Ashamed and unable to show my face."

The photo quickly caught the attention of the Chinese public, attracting thousands of comments, and someone was able to identify the person responsible for the graffiti as 15-year-old Ding Jinhao from the eastern city of Nanjing. Many criticized Ding's act as an embarrassment to the country.

"Why there are so many citizens who go abroad and humiliate us? How many generations will it take to change this kind of behavior?" Xuan Kejiong, a prominent journalist with Shanghai Television, wrote on his microblog.

The sentiment was echoed by the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, the People's Daily newspaper.

"Nowadays, people in China no longer want for food and clothing, and even in the luxury shops abroad, there are advertisement posters in Chinese," the paper wrote in a commentary. "But many people also feel as though their `hands are full but hearts are empty.' In the process of modernization, how have the people come to lack modern manners and consciousness?"

The outcry prompted Ding's parents to publicly apologize. In an interview with a Nanjing newspaper, Ding's father said "the child has committed a mistake and the main responsibility falls on the adults. It was because we did not supervise him well, and have not taught him well."

The soul searching comes as Chinese tourism overseas has seen an explosion in growth over the past decade, fueled by rising incomes and the relaxation of government restrictions on citizens' ability to travel abroad.

China has been the fastest-growing source of international tourists in the world for the past 10 years, the World Tourism Organization, a U.N. agency, said in April. The organization said the volume of international trips by Chinese tourists has grown from 10 million in 2000 to 83 million in 2012 -- accompanied by a nearly eightfold increase in spending.

Last year, China surpassed Germany to become the largest spender in international tourism, with tourists' expenditure amounting to a record $102 billion, the organization said.

But Chinese travelers, many of whom join tour groups, are frequently criticized for rude behavior. Deputy Premier Wang Yang earlier this month during the passage of a tourism law urged Chinese travelers to mind their manners.

"They make a racket in public places, carve words at scenic spots, cross the road when the light is red, spit, and do other uncivilized things," Wang was quoted as saying. "This is detrimental to the image of the country's people and leaves a bad impression."

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Chinese teen defaces Egypt temple; sparks outcry

A Chinese teenager who defaced an 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 teen scratched "Ding Jinhao visited here" in Chinese on a temple wall in the ancient city Luxor, and the incident came to light when another Chinese tourist posted a photo of it on a popular microblog with the comment: "My saddest moment in Egypt. Ashamed and unable to show my face."

The photo quickly caught the attention of the Chinese public, attracting thousands of comments, and someone was able to identify the person responsible for the graffiti as 15-year-old Ding Jinhao from the eastern city of Nanjing. Many criticized Ding's act as an embarrassment to the country.

"Why there are so many citizens who go abroad and humiliate us? How many generations will it take to change this kind of behavior?" Xuan Kejiong, a prominent journalist with Shanghai Television, wrote on his microblog.

The sentiment was echoed by the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, the People's Daily newspaper.

"Nowadays, people in China no longer want for food and clothing, and even in the luxury shops abroad, there are advertisement posters in Chinese," the paper wrote in a commentary. "But many people also feel as though their 'hands are full but hearts are empty.' In the process of modernization, how have the people come to lack modern manners and consciousness?"

The outcry prompted Ding's parents to publicly apologize. In an interview with a Nanjing newspaper, Ding's father said "the child has committed a mistake and the main responsibility falls on the adults. It was because we did not supervise him well, and have not taught him well."

The soul searching comes as Chinese tourism overseas has seen an explosion in growth over the past decade, fueled by rising incomes and the relaxation of government restrictions on citizens' ability to travel abroad.

China has been the fastest-growing source of international tourists in the world for the past 10 years, the World Tourism Organization, a U.N. agency, said in April. The organization said the volume of international trips by Chinese tourists has grown from 10 million in 2000 to 83 million in 2012 — accompanied by a nearly eightfold increase in spending.

Last year, China surpassed Germany to become the largest spender in international tourism, with tourists' expenditure amounting to a record $102 billion, the organization said.

But Chinese travelers, many of whom join tour groups, are frequently criticized for rude behavior. Deputy Premier Wang Yang earlier this month during the passage of a tourism law urged Chinese travelers to mind their manners.

"They make a racket in public places, carve words at scenic spots, cross the road when the light is red, spit, and do other uncivilized things," Wang was quoted as saying. "This is detrimental to the image of the country's people and leaves a bad impression."