- A tour guide yelled at a woman who fell asleep during the tour's bus ride.
- Online users supported the tourist, calling the guide "unscrupulous" on Weibo, a microblogging app.
A guide in China's Yunnan province caused a heated online debate about tourist etiquette when she yelled at a passenger on her tour for sleeping on the bus.
The tourist, who has not been identified, was visiting the town of Lijiang and took a tour group over the weekend, according to a statement from the Lijiang's bureau of culture and tourism. When she fell asleep on the bus, on July 8, however, the tour guide woke her and said the woman was being disrespectful.
In a video recorded and uploaded by the sleeping tourist, the guide can be heard saying, "No sleeping! You need to respect me, and I need to respect you."
Despite the tourist's protests that she should be allowed to sleep, the guide continued to ask for her "respect."
"We'll stop here and discuss," the guide said to the tourist in the video. "Once you're awake, we can continue."
Multiple people weighed in on the situation on Weibo, calling the tour guide "unscrupulous" and comparing her to a strict teacher, according to the South China Morning Post.
While Chinese social media users seemed to unanimously condemn the tour guide's actions, she is not the first to complain about tourists sleeping while a tour is going on. Just last month, according to reporting from the Straits Times, a different guide apologized to a man who he berated for falling asleep while touring the Xinjiang region.
While investigating the video posted of the tour guide yelling at the woman, Lijiang's bureau of culture and tourism found the guide, identified only by her last name Zhang, was not licensed and took the group on their tour illegally, according to a bureau statement.
"On July 8, on the way to Dazu Village from Luguhu Town, Yanyuan County, Sichuan Province, Zhang had a dispute with tourists on the tourist bus," reads the statement. "Zhang's behavior violated the provisions of Article 28 of the 'Tourism Law of the People's Republic of China.'"
The situation is just one of multiple conflicts taking place between tourists and the guides or countries they visit — though recently, the tourists have been in the wrong. Two separate people have defaced the Colosseum in Rome, while other tourists have taken serious risks touching hot springs in Yellowstone National Park.
Zhang will face a 100,000 yuan fine — about $14,000 in the United States — for violating the licensing law, added the bureau statement.