Chinese furious at star's toilet humor

Enraged Chinese Internet surfers have called for a public apology from a Taiwanese model after she poked fun at the mainland's public toilets and their users on a Taiwan chat-show, local media reported Thursday.

Jessey Meng, who made a name for herself as an actress and a television presenter in China, joked about mainlanders' toilet habits to a chorus of laughter from fellow guests on the show "Red Storm" last week.

"Many mainland toilets don't have doors and even when they do, most people don't even shut the door!" Meng said.

She regaled the host with a story about a toilet in a Chinese city where she had seen "hundreds of pale bottoms all lined up in a row."

Dubbed "toilet-gate," the video of Meng's on-air performance, which also included a swipe at Chinese state television, was posted on major mainland Web portal Sina.com, and generated more than a million posts from indignant Web surfers, state media reported.

"If you are still Chinese and you have any conscience, you must apologize!" fumed blogger Gu Siqing.

But Meng said she was hurt by the online assault and that her name had been smeared, the Nanfang Daily reported.

"I could never have imagined such slander, inflammatory remarks and distortions could be used to attack me," she said.

Free-wheeling Taiwanese television is incredibly popular in China, mainly viewed as Internet downloads or on satellite, with younger viewers enjoying the much more racy content than can be seen on the mainland's staid, state-controlled channels.

Reuters

The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet