14 DAY TRIAL // A 15-year-old Chinese boy was recently found guilty of having carved the words “Ding Jinghao was here” into one of the walls of a 3,500-year-old Egyptian temple.
Although the schoolboy had vandalized the Luxor Temple on the east bank of the Nile a few years back, while on holiday with his parents, it was only a few weeks ago when his actions triggered a rather unexpected series of events.
Thus, several other Chinese visitors to this Egyptian temple noticed the message engraved in stone and got a tad angry at the idea that one of their own would ever dare deface such a historical monument.
After attempting to wipe out the words using tissues and failing to erase the message, these tourists took pictures of the 15-year-old's “artwork” and posted them on a micro-blogging site.
“We try to wipe out the shame with tissue, but it was difficult to clear it out, and we could not use water as the relief is a historical relic 3,500 years old.”
“All of the 14 members of our tour group kept silent after seeing the sentence as we felt ashamed,” the Chinese tourists reportedly told the press.
Once the picture of Ding Jinghao's graffiti made it online, it was not long until the teenager was tracked down and accused of shaming the country and vandalizing an ancient monument.
The schoolboy's family has apologized for their son's actions time and time again, and has said that they are also to blame seeing how they did nothing to stop him from carving his name into the temple's walls.
“We have taken him sightseeing since he was little, and we often saw such graffiti. But we didn’t realize we should have told him that this is wrong,” the teenager’s mother explained.
“We want to apologise to the Egyptian people and to people who have paid attention to this case across China,” she went on to add.
Ding Jinghao allegedly feels very bad about what he did, and promises to never again scribble personal messages in places where they do not belong.
Officials in Egypt wish to reassure the public that the Luxor Temple has not been permanently damaged, and that efforts are being made to restore it.