Chinese boy defaces ancient Egyptian sculpture, prompts online outrage

I find this wholly embarrassing as someone who is ethnically Chinese. This is not an isolated incident. I have personally witnessed domestic and international Chinese tourists behaving poorly, impolitely and without any consideration for the artifacts and other tourists. As an example -- whilst visiting the Ming tombs in Beijing, Ding Ling, to be specific, a couple let their child behind the cordoned off area to sit on the emperor's throne. This was a priceless 800 year old artifact and when I gently remarked upon this to them, it fell on deaf ears. Most warning signs are patently ignored -- examples such as smokers on the great wall, photographers in Buddhist Temples, screaming children in museums are just par for the course.<p>You have no idea how depressing it is to see the Great Wall of China littered with cigarette butts, or witnessing a small child defecating in the corner of the Forbidden City with the full blessing of its parent.<p>I would even go so far as to say that most people don't think the "rules" apply to them. This is true not just in tourism, but in everyday life. Any visitor to China will tell you stories of smokers in the pristine bathrooms of Beijing Capital Airport, or the subways, and people spitting on the street, jaywalking, or queue jumping.<p>Some personal pet peeves of mine include -- people getting on to subway cars before allowing passengers to get off, smoking in clearly designated non-smoking areas, littering anywhere and everywhere, line cutting, pushing and shoving others, blasting music from ipads on planes, and driving in the emergency lane on freeways.<p>This poor behaviour has only recently gained international attention because Chinese people have become more affluent and started travelling outside of China. However, prosperity doesn't correlate with class. Unless the Chinese government take drastic steps to cure this problem at home first -- the crass perception of its people will only perpetuate in the west as more and more start to travel internationally. Perhaps a system like Singapore where violations are fined severely might work -- provided it's implemented across the board everywhere.<p>Signed -- an embarrassed Chinese Canadian.

I wonder how one teaches people who don't know better.<p>In India, there is a place called hampi which is near a village called hospet. It is one of the worlds most ancient and spectacular ruins. There is also literally pigs and sewer everywhere.<p>For a more popular example take taj mahal. Agra is dirty like hell and words cannot describe the sanitation situation there. The taj mahal doesn't need help to look awesome but with a background of a stinking river and a filthy city, it looks like a diamond in shit.<p>Actually why tourist places. Are you guys aware that Indian railways encourages defecating in the open? Yes sir visit any train station in India and you will see fresh human faeces on the tracks. All toilets of the train open up straight into the ground.<p>All this to say that in countries like India people cannot take care of their own land forget other people s land.

At least in discussions on Western websites, the outrage always has an underlying racism permeating it. None of these people really have any right to be upset; they didn't care about the artifact, they've probably never <i>been</i> to a museum, let alone done anything to help preserve these sorts of things. That, coupled with all sorts of Chinese stereotypes and slurs that happen to pop up in this outrage, makes me think it's less about an ancient artifact and more about getting their weekly fill of hating a faceless "other." You don't see the same hate for all of the American tourists who write their names on the Great Wall[0] or the Colosseum.[1]<p>Seriously, what do they want from him now? What sort of responsibility do they want him to take, years after it happened? Beat him, as the top comment on NBC News (and many other sites) suggested? Ridiculous. Pay restitution to the Egyptian government? I'm sure neither one of these governments care enough to waste time over such a trivial matter as graffiti, and it's not like China is a stranger to people messing with ancient pieces of their society.<p>So, really, most of the people "outraged" have acted more disgracefully than that child.<p>[0]: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/rNsPC6V.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/rNsPC6V.jpg</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://www.hotsr.com/content/uploads/pictures/2013/01/Italy-Colorful-Coloss_Rasm.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.hotsr.com/content/uploads/pictures/2013/01/Italy-...</a>

It comes down to manners, something that seem to be lacking all over the world. I've had to prompt parents to stop their kids from touching (more like pawing) artwork in museums and crawling all over historical sites, and the parents look at me like I'm an alien. It's all about them and their precious little snowflake, rather than appreciating the art or history.<p>You can see it in the parents' apologia for their son's atrocious behavior, focused on how their son is a "good student" which has nothing to do with anything.<p>&#62;&#62;They also confessed that they had not been watching their son while on tour in Egypt<p>How long did it take him to carve the characters. Was he really unsupervised that long???<p>Keep in mind also this kid and his family are very fortunate to be able to travel overseas and see these priceless treasures, especially considering how poor most of his countrymen still are.

I find this quite amusing. Yes, it was out of place for the kid to deface the wall. Yes, he should have thought twice before proceeding with his actions, but at the end of the day, this is nothing more than a material object.<p>People are so quick to bash on somebody, as evident in the comments on the article. This raises the question of whether the true issue is that the kid did something that was immoral, or that these commenters and those other people who are lashing out in anger in response to this are merely using this as a way to feed their ego, or possibly as a way to justify something that they've done, that caused others to consider them to be "stupid, "irresponsible", etc.<p>My heart aches for each time I see a child, and often an adult, kill, a living creature. Something even so small as a fly, killed just because the fact that it is a fly and considered "annoying". Everyone has a right to life, a scratch in some 3.4 thousand year old limestone wall is not going to hurt anybody. In fact, three millennia into the future, people might regard that very same scratch to be of important historical value. The fact that people are focusing so much anger and hatred to this naive child, instead of focusing on something more important such as spreading peace and love, saddens me. And how ironic, that the very same people who are so against graffiti, graffiti on something themselves.<p>The reason that these artifacts exist is to tell a story, the true value in these is not the material aspect of this artifact, but the <i>informational</i> value. The information, although now slightly altered, is not destroyed. This is what is important. And I don't doubt that there is photographic evidence of the egyptian glyph in it's preexisting form archived somewhere, possibly in a library.<p>If you <i>really</i> wanted to deface it, you'd need to find a way to remove it from history. Only then will it's true purpose, historical archive of an important message, will be defeated.<p>And think about this, for everyone complaining about him defacing the artifact, wake up, you probably deface the oldest artifact in existence every day. The earth itself.

Call me radical, I think we should legalize both all drugs and all graffiti. To be honest, I don't think this should be a big deal.<p>We should teach the cycles that civilizations have gone through, we should teach all we know about former civilizations, but I don't think we should treat their old stones as sacred.<p>I think we should build new, ontop of the old. You can't build something new without destroying the old, sometimes.

Wasn't there a guard or someone in charge to stop him scrawling his name? It should take long enough to notice scrawling something that large.

I hope there will be a day when what one visible minority does doesn't reflect badly on his entire race. Not just thinking about what this Chinese kid did, but also about those two guys who killed that British serviceman. Muslims living in England must be on edge right now.

In Chinese traditional culture, to write poems or paint on places or buildings or something, is some kinda, honor(?). And more famous persons's writing or painting, more famous the place to be. Then, the words or paints became important components of the place. It looks not shame, or bad but some behavior of culture.<p>Even one place is known by few people or none, or landscape is not attracting, if some well-known person defaced, then it will be well-known and be attracting.<p>Chinese belief in that nature and culture should be harmony. Later travelers come to see not only how beautiful the place, but also the marks left by whom, and how the words and paintings effected people to evaluate the place.<p>Now, people think to do so is damage the place.. It's bad, people who did that will be punished.<p>My point is, anything illegal, should be punished or maybe then discussed. If not, should be discussed.

I find that part of oriental culture great.<p>Had any of my classmates done something similar, their parents would have denied everything, downplayed the damage, and in general be overprotective and caring only about themselves.

Note, when they say "quality and breeding", I'm pretty sure they're using a poor translation of the word 素质. I would translate it more like "character". I think it means how you behave when no one is looking.

Why does the NBC headline need to mention that the boy is Chinese?