A young tourist from Nanjing, China scrawled his name Ding Jinhao onto a 3500 year-old relief in a Luxor, Egypt temple. Big mistake. Photographs of the damage quickly spread from Chinese social network sites to major news sites, and it might be indicative of a bigger future diplomacy problem for China.
Jinhao’s parents have since apologized on his behalf and said he cried all night after learning of the vigilante threats against him. The Chinese media seized upon this opportunity to remind Chinese tourists to be very careful, that they represent their homeland when traveling abroad. But there is a fear that vigilantes will deepen the damage caused by this senseless action.
The good news is that Egyptian minister of antiquities Ahmed Eissa told Ahram online that restoration is possible. Luxor’s head of antiquities, Mansour Boreik later said that the damage was not deep and that the relief has been restored.
A glance at YouTube, or any reality television illustrates the timeless human craving for fame and self-expression. This expression can take many forms, from the words “Hamad was here” scrawled across a desert and visible from Space to protest graffiti, to peaceful illusions of a better world. But senseless destruction of valuable parts of cultural history is something we need to stop before we completely lose touch with the roots of civilization.
Author: Brian Nitz
Brian remembers when a single tear dredged up a nation's guilt. The tear belonged to an Italian-American actor known as Iron-Eyes Cody, the guilt was displaced from centuries of Native American mistreatment and redirected into a new environmental awareness. A 10-year-old Brian wondered, 'What are they... No, what are we doing to this country?' From a family of engineers, farmers and tinkerers Brian's father was a physics teacher. He remembers the day his father drove up to watch a coal power plant's new scrubbers turn smoke from dirty grey-back to steamy white. Surely technology would solve every problem. But then he noticed that breathing was difficult when the wind blew a certain way. While sailing, he often saw a yellow-brown line on the horizon. The stars were beginning to disappear. Gas mileage peaked when Reagan was still president. Solar panels installed in the 1970s were torn from roofs as they were no longer cost-effective to maintain. Racism, public policy and low oil prices transformed suburban life and cities began to sprawl out and absorb farmland. Brian only began to understand the root causes of "doughnut cities" when he moved to Ireland in 2001 and watched history repeat itself. Brian doesn't...
