Uploaded May 2013 | Updated September 2026, 21 minutes ago
On May 24th this picture exploded onto the Chinese Internet. What you're seeing is the wall of an ancient Egyptian temple in Luxor. But, wait, that doesn't look like ancient Egyptian writing to me.
It's actually several Chinese characters etched in the wall. Wow! This must be new archeological evidence that the ancient Chinese had travelled to Egypt?
No, actually it's graffiti, and it reads: "Ding Jinhao was here." It is written in simplified Chinese characters indicating it was written by a tourist from Mainland China.
The picture was posted on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, by this guy from Beijing. He described seeing the Chinese graffiti as the "saddest moment" on his vacation to Egypt. Chinese Netizens were so outraged by the photo that someone even did an Internet search on this Din Jinhao character and found him to be a 15-year old middle school student from Nanjing. The boy's parents have since apologized.
Statistics show that Mainland China has now surpassed Germany and the United States to become the largest nation of world travelers both in terms of total trips abroad and money spent overseas. But some Mainland Chinese may not be as culturally aware as world travelers ought to be.
Chinese newspaper Da Ji Yuan quoted one Chinese tour guide named Mr. Zhang saying: "Writing 'was here' is a bad habit of certain Chinese tourists, they may not have realized that doing this can seriously damage cultural relics."
He goes on to talk about other bad habits that Chinese tourists apparently have, like making lots of noise, running red lights, spitting, defecating in public places, what? Yeah that really does happen. Citizens of Hong Kong have been complaining about it for years. But I'm sure foreign governments feel those tourist dollars are worth it right?
And with all the attention this is getting on the Internet, perhaps it is giving the Mainland Chinese a bit of a wakeup call. The fact that the Chinese web user who posted this described it as the "saddest moment" of his trip to Egypt shows there are many Chinese who really do care about how their behavior is perceived overseas. Even this senior Chinese official said this month that "uncivilized" Chinese tourists are giving the country a bad name.
But what do you think? Is the practice of writing so and so "was here" un-civilized? Have you ever witnessed a tourist, from any country, behaving badly? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below. And if you are interested in learning Chinese, don't forget to check out my channel Learn Chinese Now. Thanks for watching.
On May 24th this picture exploded onto the Chinese Internet. What you're seeing is the wall of an ancient Egyptian temple in Luxor. But, wait, that doesn't look like ancient Egyptian writing to me.
It's actually several Chinese characters etched in the wall. Wow! This must be new archeological evidence that the ancient Chinese had travelled to Egypt?
No, actually it's graffiti, and it reads: "Ding Jinhao was here." It is written in simplified Chinese characters indicating it was written by a tourist from Mainland China.
The picture was posted on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, by this guy from Beijing. He described seeing the Chinese graffiti as the "saddest moment" on his vacation to Egypt. Chinese Netizens were so outraged by the photo that someone even did an Internet search on this Din Jinhao character and found him to be a 15-year old middle school student from Nanjing. The boy's parents have since apologized.
Statistics show that Mainland China has now surpassed Germany and the United States to become the largest nation of world travelers both in terms of total trips abroad and money spent overseas. But some Mainland Chinese may not be as culturally aware as world travelers ought to be.
Chinese newspaper Da Ji Yuan quoted one Chinese tour guide named Mr. Zhang saying: "Writing 'was here' is a bad habit of certain Chinese tourists, they may not have realized that doing this can seriously damage cultural relics."
He goes on to talk about other bad habits that Chinese tourists apparently have, like making lots of noise, running red lights, spitting, defecating in public places, what? Yeah that really does happen. Citizens of Hong Kong have been complaining about it for years. But I'm sure foreign governments feel those tourist dollars are worth it right?
And with all the attention this is getting on the Internet, perhaps it is giving the Mainland Chinese a bit of a wakeup call. The fact that the Chinese web user who posted this described it as the "saddest moment" of his trip to Egypt shows there are many Chinese who really do care about how their behavior is perceived overseas. Even this senior Chinese official said this month that "uncivilized" Chinese tourists are giving the country a bad name.
But what do you think? Is the practice of writing so and so "was here" un-civilized? Have you ever witnessed a tourist, from any country, behaving badly? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below. And if you are interested in learning Chinese, don't forget to check out my channel Learn Chinese Now. Thanks for watching.
