While the museum suspended two senior-level employees pending an investigation into the matter, the apology didn’t sit well with many people on Chinese social media, who believe that the women were allowed to ignore the museum’s ban on cars because of their family backgrounds and wealth.
The controversy began with a since-deleted post on January 17, in which Gāo Lù, one of the young women, whose handle is on the Weibo microblogging platform, shared multiple photos of her and a friend posing beside a Mercedes-Benz SUV parked inside the iconic site. “The museum is closed today, so I’m taking advantage of this opportunity to avoid tourists and run wild,” the woman wrote in the caption accompanying the photos.
