Two women have been criticised online for locking a crying and screaming toddler inside an airplane toilet to ‘educate her’.
The girl began crying not long after the 7.20am flight left Guiyang, a city in central China, to Shanghai last Saturday.
Gou Tingting uploaded a video of herself carrying the girl inside the plane cubicle on China’s TikTok counterpart Douyin.
Gou claimed that the girl was crying loudly during the flight, with some passengers blocking their ears with tissues or moving a few rows further back.
The girl’s grandmother let Gou and another woman take the restless youngster to ‘educate’ her on why crying onboard a plane isn’t ideal for other riders.
They tried to encourage her not to cry for three minutes in a bid to ‘set rules’ and ‘let everyone have a good rest’, Gou said on Douyin.
‘Don’t cry! Shut your mouth!’ the child is told in the video. ‘You can’t go out even if you make any sound!’
During this, the gran wasn’t allowed to enter the cubicle. She waited outside the door, Chinese news outlet Dayoo reported.
The clip went viral – though not for the reasons Gou had perhaps hoped.
‘Children cannot control their emotions when they are one or two years old. What’s wrong with crying? Didn’t you cry when you were young too?’ wrote a user on Weibo, the Chinese social media network where the video went viral.
Another added: ‘We should be thinking about how public spaces can better accept and accommodate young children.’
Juneyao Airlines said as part of an investigation into the incident, airline officials spoke with the girl’s mother who ‘expressed understanding’ of the two strangers.
The airline said in a statement on Monday: ‘In order to avoid disturbing other passengers’ rest, with the consent of his grandmother, two passengers took the child to the toilet for education. During the process, the child’s grandmother went with him and waited at the toilet door.
‘We have verified the situation with the child’s mother by phone. The child’s mother said that she had learned about the whole incident from her grandmother, and expressed her understanding of the two passengers’ behaviour of assisting in the plane.
‘Juneyao Airlines has always strived to create a relaxed and comfortable travel experience for passengers and will provide assistance to passengers in need to ensure a good flight experience. We thank all sectors of society for their concern, and thank netizens and the media for their attention and supervision.’
Police told Zaobao News that the girl was flying to Shangai with her grandparents to visit her father. The grandparents had been asking passengers to help calm the child down.
‘After verification, it turned out that there was no big problem,’ the force said.
For decades, China severely restricted the number of children people could have. Fewer children meant fewer mouths to feed, officials claimed.
The government loosened its one-child policy in 2016, with officials now encouraging people to have children to combat China’s shrinking and ageing population.
Critics say that Chinese people won’t rush to have more children overnight, with some even saying that the country is ‘overrun with screaming, crying “bear kids”‘.
‘Bear kids’, or xionghaizi, has been increasingly used to describe spoilt children who act inappropriately in public spaces, all part of a wave of ‘child hatred’, as Zabou News put it.
Last July, Weibo influencer and writer Su Xiaolan said that passengers on a train complained about an eight-month-old baby making babbling noises. Train staff made the family move to the dining car.
‘More than 90% of people surveyed by Nanjing last year said they support ‘setting up children’s carriages on trains’.
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