By Li Hongmei
Wen Wei Po, Hong Kong-based newspaper, expressed strong disproval of the misconduct by the alleged Wen Wei Po senior reporter, who vandalized Gansu's Mogao Caves years ago with the scraped graffiti, which reads: "Summer 2000, Wen Wei Po senior reporter Song Yin visited here."
The newspaper published the condemnation on its official microblog, most popular social networking services in China, but it also claimed the newspaper has no reporter by the name at present.
Infuriated internet users in China have unearthed yet another act of vandalism by a Chinese tourist on a priceless historical artifact, reports the Chinese-language Beijing Morning Post. This time, however, the vandal is not a high school student but someone claiming to be a journalist with one of Hong Kong's leading newspapers.
Just days after the parents of a Nanjing teenager were pressured into apologizing for their son's scribbling on a piece of 3,000-year-old artwork in Egypt's Luxor Temple, Chinese netizens have posted a photo of graffiti allegedly scraped by a Wen Wei Po reporter on Dunhuang's Mogao Caves, otherwise known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, located on the Silk Road in northwest China's Gansu province.
"Summer 2000, Wen Wei Po senior reporter Song Yin visited here," the graffiti reads, according to photos allegedly taken from the walls of the caves. The Mogao Caves, which contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
On Sunday afternoon, Wen Wei Po announced on its official microblog page that the newspaper had conducted an investigation and concluded that they had never employed anyone named Song Yin.
However, angry netizens dug further and found that a reporter named Song Yin had once worked for another newspaper, the Hong Kong Commercial Daily. The paper confirmed later that day that a Song Yin had been employed there but left the company in 2008, and added that the act of vandalism has "nothing to do with the newspaper."
These recent publicized acts of vandalism have sparked an avalanche of further embarrassing revelations online, with one netizen posting a photo of an urn at the Forbidden City in Beijing carved with a similar "I was here" message including the vandal's full name. Other netizens have posted photos of graffiti likely scribbled by Chinese tourists in Palau and at Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
