China’s National Tourist Office has recently issued its new travel regulations that state that when Chinese tourists behave ‘uncivilized’ whilst traveling, they will be restricted or banned from future travels.
The topic “20 tourists enter the blacklist” became trending on Sina Weibo on August 20.
A popular Weibo blog by state broadcaster CCTV answered the questions many netizens wanted to know: who are these 20 blacklisted travelers, and what did they do?
CCTV did not only provide details over the incidents that triggered these travelers’ blacklisting, they also provided their full names and cities of residence.
50% of all cases on the blacklist related to arguments over seating arrangements. 60% of banned passengers were blacklisted due to their behavior on an airplane or at the airport. Out of all the cases, 40% took place while traveling within mainland China. Out of the travelers, 9 are female and 11 are male. These are the 20 cases:
Number 1 & 2: Two Chinese passengers lashed out at the crew of an Air Asia flight in route from Bangkok to Nanjing in a dispute over their seating in late 2014. The angry passengers caused so much havoc on board, even scalding the stewardess with hot noodles, that the plane had to return to Bangkok to kick the passengers off the aircraft.
The two passengers on the blacklist are a man from Jiangsu province named Mr. W. and a woman from Anhui named Mrs. Z.
Number 3: Beijing resident Z. (male) tried to open an emergency door on an airplane awaiting takeoff to Beijing at Yunnan’s Kunming airport in 2015. This was not the only case; there have been multiple cases of Chinese tourists opening up airplane emergency exits over the past few years.
Number 4: Mr. L. from Shaanxi will no longer be able to travel after he climbed the statue of a Red Army soldier at Shaanxi province memorial park to take a picture in April 2015. The photograph later went viral on Chinse social media.
Number 5 & 6: Two Chinese women will no longer be able to travel after causing so much chaos on an airplane from Dalian to Shenzhen, that the plane from Shenzhen Airlines had to make an emergency landing. The women allegedly were unsatisfied about their seating.
Number 7: A young man from Sichuan decided to climb one of the main statues at the Qinghai scenic park to take a picture. He later uploaded the picture to social media, which, according to CCTV, “brought about a nasty influence on society”.
Number 8, 9, 10, 11: Three women and one man from Sichuan and Chongqing are put on China’s traveling blacklist when refusing to board their plane and singing the national anthem at Bangkok airport, after their flight had a 10-hour-delay due to bad weather conditions. Together with other Chinese tourists, the four created major uproar at the airport.
Number 12: One male traveler from Hunan joining a day tour to Qingcheng Mountain was so upset that he had to pay a children’s ticket for his child that was over 1.2 meters tall, that he got angry with local staff and injured a tour guide.
Number 13: Mr. R. from Shanghai is on the blacklist after getting into an argument with a convenience store employee in Sapporo, Japan. When he opened up a package of food in the store before paying, local staff informed him and his wife that it was not allowed to eat within the store. Mr. Rong allegedly attacked the man, who then suffered injuries in his face.
Number 14, 15, 16: Two women and a man from Sichuan were banned from traveling after being thrown off an airplane in Cambodia for creating havoc over their seating.
Number 17: Mr. Y. from Hubei insulted and abused the tour guide of a travel tour going to Taiwan when he was unsatisfied with the dinner seating arrangements.
Number 18: A Yunnan male traveler participated in a Taiwan travel group when he illegally took a total of 0.5 kilo living coral and violated local environmental laws in Taiwan’s Taidong County.
Number 19 & 20: A man and woman from Heilongjiang threatened to kill their tour guide during an argument over their bus seating arrangements in the city of Sanya in China’s Hainan province. The incident was captured on video and went viral on Chinese social media.
The blacklisted travelers will not be able to travel for a minimum period of three years, during which multiple organizations and institutions, such as customs, inspection & quarantine, and border control offices will be informed about their actions. These institutions will then be able to prevent these individuals from going abroad, boarding an airplane, or joining a tour group. Other places, such as national scenic parks, will also have the right to refuse these individuals entrance to their premises.
Many Weibo netizens applaud the blacklist, and think that it should be changed to a permanent travel ban for people showing extreme behavior while traveling. “We should’ve implemented this rule much earlier,” one netizen says: “These people really are an embarrassment.”