Two teenagers and their parents were slapped with a huge fine after the 17-year-olds were caught urinating into a hot-pot broth in a popular restaurant chain
A pair of 17-year-old teenagers and their parents have been fined the equivalent of £227,000 after they were filmed themselves urinating into a restaurant’s hot-pot broth. The pair, named Wu and Tang, were caught standing on a table and relieving themselves into the dish in a private dining room at a branch of the Haidilao restaurant chain in Shanghai, China.
Now, the teens and their parents are ordered to publicly apologise and pay a hefty fine, according to state-run broadcaster CCTV News.
According to Shanghai’s Huangpu District People’s Court, one of them shared the video on social media earlier this year, with it being an “intentional” act despite being “fully aware” of potential negative impact.
After the horrifying post went viral, Haidilao apologised about the disgusting incident, and said it had now “destroyed and replaced” all the affected utensils.
On top of that, the popular restaurant chain refunded more than 4,000 affected dine-in orders and gave each customer extra compensation worth 10 times what they had paid.
The teenagers, and their parents, were sued in March by two catering companies. According to NBC, it is “likely” they were “linked to Haidilao.”
The companies pressed for a public apology and more than 23 million yuan (£2.4m) in damages for business losses, reputational harm and other related costs.
In the end, the pair and their parents were ordered to apologise in newspapers to the catering companies, and the parents needed to pay an eye-watering fine of 2.2m yuan (£227,000).
In an editorial published in China Comment, an influential magazine of the ruling Communist Party, the ruling is proof that parents risk “heavy penalties” if they fail to supervise their children.
It said that the “behaviour can no longer be dismissed as a simple prank” and that it was in “extreme disregard for others’ rights and a blatant challenge to social norms.”
It comes as the amount of Chinese food we eat out still hasn’t recovered from the effects of the pandemic. In 2007 the average Brit ate 15g a week of Chinese grub outside the home, but by 2023 that had halved to a meagre 7g.
And experts fear it could fall further as second generation Chinese don’t want the back-breaking work of running restaurants and takeaways.
Sky-high rents, leaping employee costs and changing tastes are also adding to the problem, they say.
Figures show that going for a Chinese has always been popular in the UK – until recently.
In 2006, Brits ate an average of 14g of Chinese food outside of the home per person per week. It peaked at 15g in 2007 and 2008, according to data from Defra collected by Statista.
But in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 it dropped to 12g and by 2017/18 it had fallen further to 10g. In 2019/20 it fell to a mere 2g – no doubt fuelled by restaurants closing thanks to the pandemic – but has still not recovered.
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