Outrage at photo of Danish tourists urinating on Shanghai highway

Chinese internet users expressed their anger after six Danish tourists were witnessed urinating in the middle of a busy overpass in Shanghai.

Their behaviour on Saturday was first revealed online when an eye witness photographed them and published it on Sina Weibo, China’s twitter-like microblogging platform. The photo showed six foreign men lining up in the middle of an overpass road, next to a coach, urinating.

The woman who took the photo, surname Huang, told the news outlet, kankanews.com, the men were grinning as they relieved themselves.

Police officers later reviewed surveillance video and traced it back to the bus according to its licence plate number. The bus driver told police the passengers were Danish tourists who had just completed a tour of Shanghai’s Formular One Circuit.

While he was driving along the overpass, the driver said they forced him to stop. “They even tried to grab the steering wheel… and could have caused a traffic accident,” he said.

The driver said the Danish tourists had been drinking a lot of beer.

Traffic police said they would continue investigating and might take action against the men.

The news sparked considerable discussion online. Many people expressed outrage and said the men should be punished.

A taxi driver asked whether the bus had violated any traffic rules. “I think the vehicles were not supposed to park [in the middle of highway overpass] in normal circumstances,” he said.

One Shanghai resident said the men’s actions could have been “dangerous”.

On weibo, a blogger appealed to police to take a tougher line with badly-behaved visitors.

Another said the visas of the six should be cancelled.

However, another blogger said the incident might have been due to a lack of public toilets.