Chinese Celebrities Report a String of Paris Thefts as Golden Week Travel Begins
Hong Kong actress Kara Wai says her team's car was broken into on the highway into Paris — the third celebrity theft reported from France in two days — just as the Golden Week holiday sends millions of Chinese travelers abroad.
The Hong Kong actress Kara Wai's Wednesday post began with three exclamation marks: her team's car, held in traffic on the highway from Paris's airport into the city, had its window smashed and a bag snatched. "Our folks got robbed!!!" she wrote, before turning the incident into advice for the millions of Chinese travelers about to head abroad for the Golden Week break that begins Wednesday: try not to carry an expensive bag, keep it "hidden, or under the seat where it's hard to see," and guard your documents and bank cards. Her sign-off was almost a blessing: "Set out with joy, come home safe" (开开心心出门去，平平安安回家来).
She was not alone. A day earlier, the actress Wan Qianhui posted that a camera had been stolen from beside her near the Eiffel Tower "in the time it took to turn around" — thirty seconds, she wrote, with a full day's footage from a L'Oréal fashion show inside, and no surveillance camera anywhere nearby. Before her, the actress Huang Yi had high-fashion shoes stolen on a Paris trip to see the shows; last July, another celebrity team's car was broken into on the same airport highway, a makeup artist cut by the glass. One post tallying the string of incidents reads less like gossip than a warning label for Paris Fashion Week season.
Wai's team reported the robbery to French police and contacted the Chinese embassy "the first moment" they could, she said in a follow-up comment, with "all follow-up matters being arranged." Her photograph of the aftermath shows tempered glass still holding its shape in the frame, spider-webbed everywhere except the jagged hole where the grab went through.
The story is traveling because it lands on the year's biggest outbound travel window. Golden Week sends hundreds of millions of people on the move, and France's theft problem around tourist sites and transit is familiar enough that China's diplomatic missions there have issued standing reminders to guard passports and valuables. Her post drew more than 13,000 likes within hours — celebrity reach carrying, for once, an ordinary holiday worry.
The embassy's advice — guard documents, split up valuables, avoid flashing brands — predates all of this year's incidents. It now comes with a photograph of the broken window attached.