Hotel orgy sours Japan-China relations

When Japanese tourists tried to raise their national flag outside a five-star Chinese hotel earlier this month, the tactless gesture failed.

Inside their luxury accommodation, however, the 400 visiting men and their 500 Chinese prostitutes encountered no such difficulties, engaging in a three-day orgy that has become the talk of Chinese society and soured relations between the two countries.

Anger at the event, first reported by China's New Express Daily News, has been heightened by the fact that it took place during the anniversary of the Japanese army's brutal occupation of northeast China in 1931, in which rape, abduction and murder of women was commonplace.

Hotel employees, however, told reporters that Japanese tourists regularly came to their hotel to use the services of prostitutes and said they thought the timing of the event was merely an unfortunate coincidence.

The tourists reportedly even used the lifts to have sex in, leaving other guests at the hotel queuing to get to their rooms on the upper floors.

The hotel in Zhuhai in the southern Guangdong province has since been closed and the police have launched an investigation.

Although illegal, prostitution has become common in China since the country's economic reforms began over two decades ago, and the many new luxury hotels have become focal points for sex tourists.

- INDEPENDENT