The Ningbo tourism bureau confirmed that tourists staying at a hotel in Nagoya, Japan had stolen a toilet seat cover that was kept underneath a bed.

After initially denying the accusations, the unidentified tourists admitted to taking the toilet seat. It was mailed back to the Japanese hotel, and the offending tourist has written a letter of apology. The Ningbo tourism bureau won’t identify the tourists in question, but deny they are from Ningbo, explaining that they left Ningbo airport on a chartered plane.

News of the incident went viral on Chinese social circles after it was revealed on an online platform for tour guides in China.

Chinese people reacted with shame to the story. One person said, “What an embarrassment for Chinese people. When in China, they lose their own face, but when outside China, they lose face for all Chinese.” Another wrote: “The foreign media is going to have a field day with this. I can see the headline now: ‘Chinese mainland tourist steals toilet seat from Japanese hotel’.”

The Southwest Economic Report lashed out at the tourists in its report by directly addressing them in this passage:

Just what were you two thinking in stealing a toilet seat? Is it because you heard everyone say that buying a toilet seat supports the Japanese economy. Did you think you two could collapse the Japanese economy and serve your country by doing this? Or are you so cheap that you can’t afford to buy your own toilet seat?
You two have made our countrymen lose their face, haven’t you? And in front of the Japanese!

Last December, a 64 year-old Xi’an woman was fined HK$2,000 for stealing a life preserver from a Cathay Airlines flight. This past May, two mainland tourists were seen sleeping in an ATM vestibule in Hong Kong instead of staying at a hotel.

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Newly introduced measures will restrict people on the blacklist from taking flights, joining travel groups or taking overseas trips, reported China Daily. As per the new rules, information on the blacklist can also be shared by provincial and national tourism authorities with the public, travel agencies and industry organizations.

Additionally, government agencies responsible for public security, customs, inspection and quarantine, border protection, transportation and finance can also be privy to the Chinese tourist blacklist.

“Punishments can be imposed by travel agencies or other related agencies or organizations based on the record,” says a draft of the proposed regulations.

The China National Tourism Administration (NTA) established the blacklist back in April 2015. Offenders’ names were to be recorded for two years by a two-tiered provincial and national system. At the time, the tourist blacklist gave tourism authorities the right to report such violations to public security, customs and transport authorities as well as the central bank’s individual credit department.

By establishing the blacklist, tourism authorities could “propose correction measures in order to mitigate the negative impact” against Chinese tourists who have “humiliated” their country.

In its 15 months of existence, there have been 19 names added to the China tourist blacklist. But even as the tourist blacklist changes from a record of names to enforceable preventative action, some experts are warning that it will remain ineffective. Liu Simin, vice-president of the tourism branch of the China Society for Futures Studies, said the blacklist may not work as effectively in practice as is in theory.

“It is not that difficult to introduce restrictive measures on flights,” Liu said. “However, if tourism authorities want to restrict blacklisted tourists from traveling overseas, they can only do this through travel agencies. If travelers plan their own trips and skip the agencies, they’re out of reach.”

Although a previous China Daily report described the blacklist as an attempt to “to rescue the image of its citizens as holidaymakers”, a recent report downplayed the impact of misbehaving Chinese tourists as “a few ugly incidents”.

Last month, a Chinese tourist was arrested for assaulting a clerk at a duty-free store at Los Angeles airport. In June, a Chinese tourist was fined by officials at Yellowstone National Park for walking on terrace formations and collecting spring water. This past April, Japanese news cameras captured Chinese tourists abusing trees during the annual cherry blossom season.

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The decision to maintain a driver blacklist was reached in collaboration with China’s top car-sharing company, Didi Chuxing, and the Share Economy Committee of the Internet Society of China.

According to China Daily, there are several databases in China, including a national crime database, an escaped criminal database, a drug suspect database, a public security traffic management platform, and a mentally ill patient information system. If an applicant’s name shows up on any of these systems, the applicant will be blacklisted from working as a ride-share driver.

Ride-shares in China have been plagued by news of brutal crimes where hired drivers victimize their passengers.

This past May, a driver working for Didi Chuxing confessed to killing a Shenzhen woman who had hailed him for a ride. The same month, another Didi Chuxing driver in Tianjin was arrested by police after a female passenger complained he had picked her up in his car without wearing any pants. Last August, an Uber driver was arrested for molesting and robbing a female passenger.

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The Ministry of Culture (MOC) announced Thursday that live-stream performers will be held accountable for their content. Anybody who streams content deemed unacceptable will be put on a national blacklist, with the MOC conducting random checks on the country’s various live-stream video accounts.

Prohibited content includes pornographic and violent content as well as any live-stream video that displays deformed bodies or the torture of humans or animals. Presumably, it also includes anything politically sensitive. Content creators are being asked to employ supervisors that maintain strict control over live-streams and censor any offending material.

Some 20 live-streaming video providers already signed an agreement this past April. Under the terms of the deal, live-stream performers are required to register their real names, and all live videos must be recorded and saved for at least 15 days for inspection purposes.

This past April, the MOC cracked down on videos showing “predominately attractive women showing their cleavage”. As a result, performers seen eating bananas in a “seductive fashion” were banned from live-streaming videos.

China has some 200 million registered live stream video users, of which three-quarters are estimated to be young and male.

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A man named Qiu approached the Juneyao Airlines check-in counter and asked to have his friend’s travel itinerary printed. When the airline attendant, named Chen, asked Qiu to produce his friend’s identification, Qiu became upset and struck Chen in the head with a sign that was sitting on the counterChen suffered cuts to her head and face, and was photographed bleeding on the airport floor. She was taken to hospital for medical treatment.

Qiu was arrested by airport police. He was given administrative detention for ten days and fined RMB 500 for assault, the standard punishment for “interfering with the normal order of civil aviation transport” according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Qiu also had to pay RMB 4,900 ($745) to cover Chen’s medical costs.

Earlier this week, the flight crew of a Hainan Airlines flight was assaulted by two male economy ticket passengers who refused to leave the first class section. The pair refused to sit down and pounded on the door of the cockpit. They were eventually arrested by Taiyuan Airport police, detained for ten days, and given a RMB 500 fine.

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Japan has been encouraging Chinese tourists to visit by offering multi-entry visas of up to ten years, but their guests haven’t always been so cooperative. The latest scandal happened at a 1,200 year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto where a mainland Chinese tourist was seen flagrantly breaking the temple’s rules even though other Chinese tourists had respectfully complied.

A person at the shrine said he saw a man speaking Mandarin bypass a line-up of people waiting to drink from a sacred waterfall, which is said to contain the ability to grant wishes. The unidentified man simply waded into the sacred pool below the Otowa-no-taki Waterfall instead of waiting for his turn.

Normal shrine rules ask visitors to use long-handed ladles as a way to collect water from the waterfalls. Tradition says each of the three streams of the waterfall represent longevity, love, and wisdom.

Visitors are not supposed to drink from all three streams, which is said to bring bad luck. The Chinese tourist that jumped into the sacred pool was photographed using an empty bottle to collect water from each of the three streams.

First built in 778 AD, the Kiyomizu shrine is a designated UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site.

Chinese tourists had last caused a commotion during the this year’s cherry tree blossom festival when a disgruntled news personality suggested visitors from China be confined to a specific area in order to limit damage to area trees.

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After being asked to return to their economy seats, the passengers became abusive and proceeded to insult and beat the flight crew. A police officer assigned to the plane was also beaten when he tried to intervene. A witness named Zhou said the police officer suffered a bloody nose in the fracas.

Although it had already begun taxiing for lift-off, the plane returned to the gate where airport police took the two passengers into custody. As a result, the plane was delayed for two hours.

As the plane was delayed and assault was involved, the two men are now subject to administrative detention between five and 15 days, as well as a fine between RMB 500 and 1,000.

Hainan Airlines is urging the authorities to put the two men on a “travel blacklist”.

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A number of Chinese tourists have covered the Everest visitor information sign in graffiti with Chinese phrases such as “I was here”, “let’s wander the mountain together”, and “farewell to the mountain.” The graffiti is so thick in places that it obscures the text on the sign.

Called Qomolangma in Tibetan, Mount Everest’s base camp located in Dingri County is a popular spot for Chinese tourists. The four tourism monuments that Dingri County maintain are routinely targeted by vandals.

“Starting this year, we will set up a blacklist system to punish badly-behaved tourists, such as those who leave graffiti. The blacklist will be made public through media outlets,” said Gu Chunlei, deputy head of the Dingri County tourism bureau.

Officials say it should be easy enough to identify offending tourists and place them on blacklists because all tourists are required to apply for a special permit to travel to Tibet.

In order to reduce the amount of graffiti, tourism officials have established “graffiti walls”. “It’s a way of getting travelers to change their habits without even knowing it,” said local tourism official, Gu Chunlei. A similar graffiti wall was established at the Great Wall of China.

Chinese tourists behaving badly has become such an issue that the government established a blacklist to publicly shame offenders.

The Tibetan side of Mount Everest attracted 62,000 tourists last year, raking in 14 million yuan ($2.15 million). During peak season, the camp receives 550 visitors per day. With China reportedly in talks with Nepal to build a railway line that tunnels directly below Mount Everest, presumably those numbers will only increase.

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Xia Jun, president of the Shanghai Changning District Homemaking Service Association, and a founder of the group of caregiver agencies, explained how the blacklist works:

The 30 agencies in the alliance have roughly 1,000 nannies in Shanghai, and nearly 10,000 all over the country, including some doing service for foreign families. Any (caregiver) that is found by any of the agencies to encroach on the seven taboos will be blacklisted, and their information will be shared by the people in charge of the 30 agencies in a chat group on WeChat.

The seven “taboos” mentioned by Xia include: not showing up for job interviews, presenting fake qualifications or forged resumes, refusing to pay a brokerage fee to the agency, borrowing money from employers, asking for more pay during the middle of a contract, and quitting the job if refused a raise.

“Some nannies exaggerated their experience or how many years they had worked, while others borrowed money from their employer and didn’t repay it. That’s why we want to deter such people, and those with bad credit records, from the industry, thereby protecting the interest of our clients with our utmost efforts,” said Xie.

The establishment of the blacklist comes at a time when demand for caregivers is rising in China. Over 20 percent of Shanghai families use a caregiver for at least a few hours each day, according to a recent poll conducted by the Family Development Research Center of Fudan University.

The abolishment of the one-child policy and a rapidly aging elderly demographic is putting a strain upon Chinese families: “As aging quickly gathers pace and more couples plan to have another child, the (caregiver) market will expand more rapidly,” said Hu Zhan, an associate professor at the University’s School of Social Development and Public Policy.

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China’s Ministry of Culture has put 120 songs on a blacklist for promoting obscenity or violence, and ordered them to be removed from all Chinese websites. The ministry said the songs “trumpeted obscenity, violence, crime or harmed social morality,” and anyone that ignores the ban will face “severe punishment” that was left up to the imagination.

The blacklist contains a number of famous singers including Taiwanese pop star Chang Csun Yuk, Taiwanese actor Stanley Huang, and even Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong. For the most part, the blacklist targets the rap genre with certain rap groups like Yinsaner and the New Street Talk Assembly appearing multiple times among others like MC Hotdog.

The song titles give us some clues into why they might have rubbed Chinese authorities the wrong way:

• Getting a Hotel Room Together Does Not Mean We are Lovers by Yiran
• Cheap Women, Bad Men by the Internet Singers
• This is Not a Song About a One Night Stand by Guangguang
• No Sex, No Love by Guangguang and K-Bo
• Mistress, You Are So Cheap by Benkui
• Fuck Your Love by the Internet Singers

The announcement the songs were banned caused a sensation among Chinese people, with one person saying: “These song titles are shameful in and of themselves. Is it right to publish them the way they are?” Another person took exception to not extending the ban further, saying “Why don’t they ban Myth of the Phoenix (the singers of many popular square dancing songs)? Everyday they massacre my ears.”

And citing the Streisand effect, another netizen said, “I have never heard of these songs before in my life, but now I really want to hear them.”

Anyone else interested in what songs the Ministry of Culture doesn’t think you should be able to listen to can find a full list published on their website.

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