"You do it your way, and I'll do it mine"

   

"Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs" goes the song, and recently a new sign popped up at the Louvre Museum in France. The sign, written only in Chinese, "forbids people from urinating or defecating wherever they want.”

     Why was this sign put in place? There doesn't seem to have been a particular incident related to this sign, but one reason may be that some Chinese don't have the same views on their bodily functions as many in the west do. For example, many Chinese parents don't put their babies in diapers, something that, if you were to do in Europe or the US, would get you stares at the least, or visits from the police at worst. Instead, they prefer to put their children in split pants, a type of pants that have an open crotch, and let them relieve themselves in any open area they can find. Also, to many Chinese, it is perfectly normal to spit just about anywhere. Because of this, some tried to curb public spitting before the Olympics started in 2008, so as not to damage China's image to those visiting from abroad.

     These differences in cultural issues, and the problems they have caused, have not gone unnoticed by Chinese officials. Recently China passed a new tourism law. The law will give travel agencies the authority to penalize tourists who violate social ethics. Wang Yang, a deputy prime minister from China, said that while many countries had welcomed tourists from his country, the quality of some of them left something to be desired. Yang said: "They speak loudly in public, carve characters on tourist attractions, cross the road when the traffic lights are still red, spit anywhere and some other uncivilized behavior. It damages the image of the Chinese people and has a very bad impact."

    While the Chinese are working on the image problem their tourists have caused as they travel, they weren't the first nation to have a negative association with their tourists. For a large portion of the recent past, Americans have been seen as the ignorant tourists. There must be something about gaining superpower status that signals the worst behaving members of that society to go out into the world.





1. http://qz.com/88334/china-is-starting-to-get-embarrassed-about-its-tourists-obnoxious-behavior-abroad/
2. http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1f5ry9/china_is_starting_to_get_embarrassed_about_its/
3. http://www.businessinsider.com/china-is-embarrassed-by-its-tourists-2013-5
4. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-starting-embarrassed-tourists-obnoxious-194019907.html
5. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-51379838/how-pg-brought-the-diaper-revolution-to-china/
6. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/world/asia/17manners.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&em&;ei=5087%0A=;en=95c25c162ed63e15;ex=1177041600
7. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd2j9P9gh0ML3Y6GUJVh59KT8y5GAFgaOEYWwv0_V4hkJ_JrtrvEDyfr5nGpdVfd5NZ8vvtelKmqvEDtZknWHTKUgePjerJge1jGQsbE-yodoJs32onylyXixthuifQVsmeiteEbzmAZK-/s1600/road-signs-and-traffic-light.png