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Holiday Chaos: China’s Scenic Areas Overcrowded and Dangerous

As millions of people are flocking to China’s most scenic areas during the national holiday, some spots are so chaotic and packed that they form a potential safety hazard to visitors.

Manya Koetse

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Millions of Chinese use the National Holiday period to go out and visit some of China’s most scenic spots. But some areas are so crowded and unorganized that the situation is perilous. On Weibo, people complain about the security hazards of China’s overcrowded tourist attractions.

As people across China are celebrating the Golden Week holiday, the country’s scenic spots are packed with tourists.

Huge crowds formed a potential safety hazard at the Seven Small Arches (Xiaoqikong) scenic area in Libo County, Guizhou (image via Weibo).

This year, many people on Weibo are especially complaining about the situation at the Seven Small Arches (Xiaoqikong) scenic area in Libo County, Guizhou.

On Sunday, Pear Video reported on Weibo that the roads leading to the sightseeing spot were so jammed that some foreign tourists decided to get out their car to play a game of frisbee on the expressway.

On Monday, the situation seemed even worse, as some Weibo netizens posted that the extreme crowds in the area led to people being stuck for over three hours in the heat, with no available food or water, and no people to manage the situation.

Not just the roads to the area were jammed, people were also stuck within the area waiting for buses – sometimes for two to three hours, according to visitors’ reports.

“Such a chaos!” some visitors wrote online: “And no staff members to maintain order, no mechanisms to respond to emergency situations.”

One netizen (@小蜗牛牛儿) posted a that a SWAT team eventually came to the scene to check on the situation.

“First I drive 3 hours to Libo, then it still takes me 3 hours to actually reach the scenic spot, then I catch a glimpse of the Seven Small Arches and the day was gone like this. You really don’t control this well, you shouldn’t let in so many people,” one person complained on Weibo.

“Of all the scenic attractions I’ve ever visited, the Seven Small Arches left the worst impression on me,” netizen (@飞骑引雕弓2016) said: “We waited for two hours on the rocks in the heat before we could get on the bus, people are getting heatstroke this way!”

“This is the first time I experienced a traffic jam within a scenic spot!” another commenter, who also visited the area on Monday, wrote on Weibo.

“The Seven Small Arches area is receiving too many visitors, creating huge congestion. People are currently fighting to get on the bus,” another visitor wrote, warning local authorities about the potentially hazardous situation.

China’s scenic spots yearly attract attention for becoming too crowded during the national holiday. During these days, places such as the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and many other tourist attractions are so crowded that people can hardly move.

The Seven Small Arches Xiaoqikong scenic spot covers an area of 10 square kilometers, and is known for its karst forest, beautiful scenery, and numerous waterfalls.

A young woman from Sichuan posted on social media: “I understand that there are a lot of people here. But it’s past six o’clock and we’ve been waiting for over an hour for the tour bus to pick us up and it hasn’t come. So many people here and it’s soon getting dark, we’re over ten kilometers away from the exit and cannot walk so far. We don’t have food and it’s hot. Nobody is answering on the complaint line, and still, the entrance ticket to the park is so expensive!”

On Monday night, other visitors posted that they had been waiting for over four hours in the dark for a bus to pick them up from the scene.

“I will never come back here,” they wrote.

By Manya Koetse

Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us.

©2017 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.

Manya is the founder and editor-in-chief of What's on Weibo, offering independent analysis of social trends, online media, and digital culture in China for over a decade. Subscribe to gain access to content, including the Weibo Watch newsletter, which provides deeper insights into the China trends that matter. More about Manya at manyakoetse.com or follow on X.

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  1. Richard Smith

    November 19, 2017 at 12:24 am

    I’ve just returned from researching tourism in some of China’s best known tourist sites — Hua Shan, Jiangjiashie, Guilin, the Forbidden City, Great Wall, Suzhou, Hangzhou and others. China has many beautiful natural features that have not yet been destroyed by overdevelopment, many beautiful parks and gardens, and a still a few old villages and cities. But they’re all being overwhelmed by way too many people and incessant overdevelopment. A couple of weeks ago a Chinese friend and I visited Yu Garden in Shanghai. He grew up in Shanghai and used to go there on Saturday mornings as a child in the 1950s and 60s with his grandfather. They would spend a couple of hours in near solitude, contemplating the beauty of the rocks, lakes and nature. The garden was ideal for meditation and in those days one could do that. But today even on a regular week day, not a holiday, the place is mobbed with masses of Chinese tourists posing for selfies every ten steps. Meditation or even just enjoying nature is the last thing one can do there. The same can be said with nearly every other tourist site i visited. A visit to tourist sites really brings home the fact that China is massively overpopulated. Moreover, what with “market reform” every site charges admission. Not cheap either. Even to visit a dirty public beach in Guilin you have to buy a ticket. So everywhere you go there are “cattle pens” to regulate long queues of people buying tickets, getting on buses or cable cars up the mountains and so on. Then there is all the trashy commercialism, the KFC junk food, etc. etc. Of course these problems are not limited to China. I live in the middle of New York City. This place is nothing if not massively overpopulated. Go the the Eiffel Tower or Venice or any tourist site in Europe and many in the U.S. The world doesn’t need a one-child policy. It needs a NO-child policy for a few generations to get the human population back down so some reasonable sustainable level so that we don’t completely destroy the last of the natural world. I certainly don’t support compulsory population reduction but I see no reason why, with adequate social security arrangements, we can’t provide economic and other incentives to people to have just one or even forego having children so future generations can live in a sustainable, harmonious, beautiful world instead of an overpopulated, market-driven world verging on ecological collapse.

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China Local News

Aftermath of Suzhou Marathon’s “Pissing Gate”

Manya Koetse

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🔥 Quick Take: Trending in China – Week 17
This is a brief update from our curated roundup of what’s trending in China this week. A version of this story also appears in the Weibo Watch newsletter. Subscribe to stay in the loop.


It has already been over seven weeks since the Suzhou Marathon took place, but it was trending again today in light of a statement that has come out regarding a particular situation.

During the March 2nd Suzhou Marathon, which had over 25,000 participants, images and videos went viral showing how some runners stopped to take a toilet break and urinated against the main sign of the Jiangsu Suzhou Experimental Middle School (江苏省苏州实验中学).


At the time, the Suzhou Marathon soon released an official statement denouncing the “uncivilized” behavior of the runners.

Other images showed that there were portable toilets set up along the route, but even there, there were runners urinating in public.

Portable toilets along the route.

Runner urinating behind the portable toilets.

On April 24, the Chinese Athletics Association (中国田径协会, CAA), the national governing body for athletics in China, issued a statement saying that, according to the association’s disciplinary regulations, ten participants who urinated against the school sign have been banned from participating in any marathon affiliated with the CAA for the next three years, until March 1, 2028.

The Chinese Athletics Association further stated that they have decided to revoke Suzhou Marathon’s eligibility to apply for event certification in 2026.

Although most online commenters agree that the runners should be punished for their behavior, some also note that it seems “unfair” that Suzhou Marathon also cannot apply for organizing its 2026 marathon:

💬 “(..) because of the uncivilized behavior of just 10 people, Suzhou Marathon’s eligibility to apply for certification from the Chinese Athletics Association in 2026 was directly cancelled. Isn’t this kind of penalty a bit unfair to Suzhou? After all, just 20 meters away from where those people were peeing, there were many portable toilets set up.”

Just around the corner from where the runners urinated in public, there were plenty of portable toilets set up.

Where they peed against the wall, and the toilets nearby.

The punishment for the Suzhou Marathon seems to be a classic case of “killing the chicken to scare the monkey” (杀鸡儆猴): a drastic measure that sends a clear message to other marathons. Not only should they provide plenty of portable toilets, but they must also enforce measures or assign staff to ensure that another “pissing gate” doesn’t happen in the future.

 
By Manya Koetse with contributions by Miranda Barnes

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China Local News

“Scared to Intervene”: Local Celebrity ‘Bag-Clutching Brother’ Stabbed to Death during Square Dancing

In a shocking incident caught on camera, a well-known Songyuan resident nicknamed “Brother Clutch Bag” was tragically stabbed to death. On Weibo, people react with disbelief.

Manya Koetse

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In a stabbing incident caught on camera by bystanders, a man locally known as “Bag-Clutching Brother” (夹包哥) was killed in the city of Songyuan in China’s Jilin province on June 30.

The incident occurred around 19:00 at Bodune Square in the city’s Ningjiang District, where people often gather for square dancing.

One familiar face on the square was the 54-year-old Mr. Zhao, who became well-known locally for his eccentric square dancing while clutching a bag, earning him the nickname “Jiabaoge” (夹包哥), meaning “Bag-Clutching Brother” or “Brother Clutch Bag.” As a devoted “dancing king,” he had become somewhat of a local celebrity, and he also posted videos online of his dancing at the square.

“Brother Clutch Bag” had become somewhat of a local celebrity due to his personality, dancing style, and clutched bag.

Square dancing is common across Chinese cities. It’s when local residents, usually older and retired residents, meet at a public park or plaza in the mornings or evenings to perform synchronized dance routines together or improvise own dances while playing loud music.

On Sunday, a night of careless dancing abruptly transformed into a horrifying stabbing incident.

Footage circulating online shows Mr. Zhao dancing in the square before being approached by a man in a black t-shirt, who first bumps into him and then suddenly starts stabbing him while dozens of people stand by.

Moments later, Mr. Zhao can be seen lying on the floor in a puddle of blood while still being attacked by the man. Bystanders do not seem to have intervened at this point.

On July 2nd, the police released more information about the incident. The attacker, a 53-year-old man, has been detained. He had reportedly been drinking and did not personally know the victim, but apparently was triggered by his dancing and a moment of eye contact.

On Weibo, the topic went trending. “It’s terrifying!” one commenter wrote: “He just stabbed him like that in front of everyone, and so many people were watching.” “I’m speechless,” others said.

“Looking at the video, people just stand around without running away or saving him,” one person observed.

According to one account, a bystander who also knew Mr. Zhao said he wanted to help but was scared to intervene, fearing he might be implicated if the police ruled it a “mutual fight” (互殴) instead of justified defense (正当防卫).

One Toutiao blogger responded: “I’m sorry that for us ordinary people, these terms [justified defense vs mutual fight] have clouded our ability to judge. From the initial ‘whoever hits first is responsible’ to ‘it’s ruled justifiable defense once you’re hurt,’ and now to the so-called ‘mutual fight,’ determining who is responsible is entirely up to ‘them.’ As a result, people have become numb and fearful.”

“So many people were at the scene. If just one person had gone up and kicked him, they could have stopped it. But instead, all those people just looked on helplessly and watched him get stabbed to death. My God.”

Many other commenters on Weibo made similar remarks: “All these men standing around, was there not one of them who could have stopped it?”

The problem of bystanders not intervening has been a long-discussed issue in China. Some say it is related to a cultural attitude of “mind your own business” or “shaoguanxianshi” (少管闲事), where people are accustomed to remaining uninvolved when it does not concern them.

This attitude is often more pronounced in situations involving an altercation between a man and a woman, as people may feel it is a private issue. A notable example is the 2016 incident where a woman was attacked near a Beijing hotel without anyone stepping in to help.

While there might be specific Chinese social, cultural, and legal reasons why people are scared or hesitant to step in when someone needs help, the ‘bystander effect’ is a worldwide phenomenon. This effect describes the tendency for people not to help a victim in need when (many) other people are present.

It is a social psychological matter: the more people who witness a person in peril, the less likely it is that any one of them will intervene as they feel it is not their responsibility to do so. In other words, a person is more likely to help in an emergency situation when they are alone than when there are ten people standing by.

But on Chinese social media platforms, many discussing the tragic death of “Bag-Clutching Brother” believe that people in society today are just too self-centered: “Everyone stands in silence because the person on the floor isn’t them.”

Amidst this sentiment, the Chinese woman Hu Youping (胡友平) is seen as a ‘selfless heroine.’ The school bus attendant was recently praised by Chinese authorities and state media for her bravery in protecting a Japanese mother and child during a stabbing incident at a school bus stop in Suzhou, ultimately sacrificing her own life.

Meanwhile, Mr. Zhao, his clutched bag, and eccentric moves are now gaining nationwide fame after news of his death spread online. As people are visiting his Douyin account and old videos, they wish him a peaceful journey to the afterlife. “I’m sorry I got to know you like this, rest in peace, Brother Clutch Bag.”

By Manya Koetse

Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us. First-time commenters, please be patient – we will have to manually approve your comment before it appears.

©2024 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.

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