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It’s the eternal dilemma of every traveller: What do you do when there’s a crying baby on your flight?
For two female passengers onboard a domestic flight in China, the situation became personal.
In a now-deleted video which has sparked anger and intense debate on Chinese social media, the women were seen carrying a wailing toddler into the aeroplane bathroom and scolding the distressed child.
In the one-minute video, seen by CNA, the duo, dressed in black, were overheard sternly telling the child to stop crying. “Shut your mouth! Don’t cry. We’ll let you out when you stop crying,” one of the women said, while the other continued filming.
The incident was confirmed by Juneyao Airlines on their official Weibo page, and had taken place on board a morning domestic flight on Aug 24 from China’s southwestern city of Guiyang to Shanghai.
According to the airline’s statement, the young child had been throwing a tantrum, prompting the two female passengers to take matters into their own hands. They carried her away from her grandmother and brought her into the toilet, the airline said.
The women had consent from the girl’s grandmother, the airline said. “Her grandmother had been waiting outside the toilet” the entire time, it added.
The original video, which has since been deleted from Douyin, TikTok’s sister app, was first uploaded by one of the women who shared their version of the controversial incident.
The little girl was “spoiled by her grandmother” and had been “crying very loudly and disturbing other passengers,” the woman wrote. “So (we) took her from her grandmother and brought her into the toilet,” she said. “We didn’t allow her grandmother to follow, but I recorded the whole thing while the aunty and I and disciplined her.”
The child’s mother has also broken her silence and said that she knew about the incident. In the statement released by Juneyao Airlines, the woman, who was not named, said she had been aware of the incident and expressed her “understanding” towards the women for their “assistance and actions” during the flight.
The video quickly went viral in China and continues to be shared widely across numerous social media platforms despite being removed on Douyin. It has prompted heated online discourse about the treatment of children and public tolerance towards them in the country.
Many expressed shock that a grandparent could willingly allow two strangers to take her grandchild away to be scolded and disciplined.
“Don’t be absurd. Allowing your child to be taken away, look at how she was crying. Recording and posting the video on Douyin, is this even normal?” wrote one comment under Juneyao Airlines’ post, which had 14,000 likes.
“The mum expressed understanding to the people who tormented her child, do you think we (netizens) are dumb? If you’re a mother would you say this is correct?” another comment wrote.
One mother on Weibo said that the incident reflected a “growing impatience” towards children in public settings across the country. “Nowadays, people have a low tolerance for children crying,” she said. “To avoid the problem, I always tried to drive rather than take public transport when my child was young.”
An opinion piece published on The Paper slammed the women, calling their actions “inappropropriate”. “This is terrifying,” the writer said. “What if these ‘educators’ harboured bad intentions or displayed inappropriate behaviour?”
The writer of the piece also called for more empathy and tolerance towards children throwing tantrums, and that parents may also feel the stress when their children are crying loudly in public settings.
But some netizens called for calm and defended the women. One person who commented on The Paper’s piece said that children can display spoilt behaviour and there may be a need to reign in such behaviour in front of strangers.
“Whether or not these people did the right thing, it all boils down to seeking the consent of the child’s (guardians) and what happens after.”
The person added that while corporal punishment and scolding were “obviously not good”, there was “nothing wrong with it” if it quietens the child.
Another Weibo commentator spoke up for the women, writing: “As a parent, if my kid is also misbehaving like that, I would lock him in the aeroplane toilet to calm down.”
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