One of the features of the newly opened Shanghai Disneyland is the Winnie the Pooh-themed attraction. With a 5-year-old Chinese girl defecating into a flower bed near that attraction on May 31, maybe the parents thought “Pooh” is the same as “poo” or “poop.”
The incident was not the first, reported Global Times. It cited posts made by iknow-021 on WeChat, that on May 22, a boy peed on the floor of the resort instead of using the toilet to answer the call of nature. On June 18, another small boy defecated on the grass of Shanghai Disneyland which was reported on thepaper.cn, a news portal.
The report became viral, resulting in the hashtag #defecating and urinating on the ground at Disney# getting 4.3 million views in Sina Weibo. Many Chinese netizens criticized the incident.
Even before Shanghai Disneyland, misbehaving Chinese tourists have been the recent fodder of news. While the bad behavior has a wide range – from fighting inside planes to not following regulations in tourist destinations overseas – nothing is more embarrassing than being criticized for the unsanitary use of the toilet by some Chinese travelers.
The Chinese government has spent so much to upgrade China’s toilets to global standards, not only in terms of the design from holes on the ground to the standard toilet seat that westerners are used to, but also in educating locals in the sanitary use of the toilet.
What appears to be missing is that the public education campaign should have first emphasized that when nature calls, they should answer it inside toilets, not on public grounds. Otherwise, tourist destinations – like Shanghai Disneyland which has a long list of do's and don’ts - run the risk of being converted into a huge toilet bowl.