Man smoking in restaurant throws hot soup at woman who asked him to stop

The man ended up apologising and paying fine to the woman

File: A hotpot concept restaurant in Hong Kong. A man threw soup at a Chinese woman at a hotpot restaurant on 29 March (AFP via Getty Images)

A Chinese woman was attacked by a man in a restaurant after she requested he stop smoking.

The man splashed hot soup over the woman and her friends, after she complained to him that the smoke was exacerbating a lung condition.

Video of the incident was recorded by the woman, who works for a women’s rights NGO, as she confronted the man for smoking indoors. It was shared on Chinese social media site Weibo, where it went viral with more than 170 million views, the South China Morning Post reported.

In the video the two can be seen exchanging a heated argument and the man threatens to smash her phone for recording him.

“How much money have you spent in this restaurant? Are you entitled to require me not to smoke? Who gave you this power?” the man said.

The man then threw a bowl of traditional hotpot soup, which is served at the dining table with a portable burner in the middle, on the woman.

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The woman reported the matter to the police and the accused ended up paying a fine of 1,000 yuan (£110) and issuing an apology to the woman.

The restaurant was also fined by its parent company for 50,000 yuan (£5,520) and warned that its franchise would be revoked if a similar case happens again.

The woman said she shared the video to raise public awareness over the health issues of second-hand smoke.

“Many old people, kids, people like me with lung illnesses, and even healthy people, don’t want to inhale the second-hand smoke,” she said. “Not smoking in public places is a basic respect for others.”

A government-funded NGO, the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control, hailed the woman for confronting the man and said second-hand smoke accounts for at least 69 kinds of carcinogen, a cancer-causing substance. It said in a post on Weibo that more stringent laws are needed to ban smoking in public places.