China News: Social media users in China are engaged in a heated debate after a post was shared, showing a noisy toddler locked inside an aeroplane toilet as a punishment. A one-year-old girl travelling with her grandparents was reportedly crying all the away, and two fellow women travellers not known to each other locked her in a toilet apparently to discipline her, media reports said.  


The incident took place on August 24 on a Juneyao Air flight going to Shanghai from Guizhou in southwest China, South China Morning Post said, quoting a local media report.


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According to the report, the post was shared on Douyin, a TikTok-like video-sharing platform in China, by one of the two women travellers whose seat was close to where the girl was sitting with her grandparents. She said the toddler was making so much of noise that other passengers had to other put tissues in their ears to block out the loud cries, or move to other end of the aircraft. The woman said in her post, as reported by SCMP, that she had tried to show entertainment videos to the child to pacify her but failed.



This woman, along with another female passenger, then took the girl to one of the toilets on the plane and locked the door from inside.


A BBC reported identified the woman as Gou Tingting, and said her Douyin account has been since set to private.


One-Year-Old 'Slapped', 'Threatened' 


The video posted on Douyin showed that the two women threatened the girl that they would not take her back to her grandmother if she continued to cry, the SCMP report said. It added that the girl was also "slapped", and that she was crying out for her grandmother and repeatedly saying “OK” to the two women, before she was taken back to her seat.


The girl apparently did not cry any more during the flight, one of the women was quoted as saying, adding: “I prefer to take action rather than just watch...I thought disciplining her would help everyone get some rest.” 


Juneyao Air issued a statement on August 26, claiming that they had contacted the mother of the child and she said she "understood the actions of the two passengers".


It also said the toddler's grandparents acknowledged that they lacked "childcare experience", and that they had given consent to the two passengers to discipline the child.


Social Media Divided 


The video made headlines with topics related to handling unruly children in being discussed across social media.


According to the SCMP report, one user wrote that the was "very satisfying" to see. “I’ve always wanted to reprimand unruly children who ruin my rest on planes. These two women did what I could not, and it’s very satisfying.”


There were disapproving voices too. “The method these women used was wrong. Imagine how helpless such a young child would feel being locked in a small toilet with strangers,” one of them wrote, with another user posting that people should have more tolerance towards kids. “Crying and emotional instability are inevitable for toddlers.”