Chinese nationals Yong Yang and Qiang Chen fined for acting in offensive manner at Bondi Beach

Two Chinese nationals were escorted off a Bondi Beach tour bus after beachgoers complained about their repeated photographing of women and schoolgirls in bikinis, a court heard.

A pair of Chinese tourists, who “previously had not been exposed to beach culture”, were arrested on-board their tour bus at Bondi Beach, after repeatedly photographing bikini clad women.

Radiologist Yong Yang and mechanical engineer Qiang Chen, from Beijing, appeared before Waverley Local Court after each pleading guilty to one count of behave in an offensive manner near a public place.

The pair, both aged 56, were due to fly back home but had their return flights delayed after being arrested on Bondi Beach last week.

Agreed fact state both men were part of the same tour group visiting from Beijing, who had arrived together by bus.

While taking in the sights Yang, who the court heard is an on-call radiologist at the People’s Hospital in Beijing, took 44 photographs which seemed to “only target women in bikinis enjoying the beach”, according to police facts.

Chen Qiang and Yo Yang leave Waverley Court.

Among those captured in Yang’s photographs were a group of 15-year-old girls wearing bikini bottoms offering “minimal coverage”.

According to police facts, Yang photographed the girls “from the front perspective, and then the rear”.

The men were arrested on Bondi Beach

In another image captured by Yang, a woman can be seen trying to shield herself upon realising she was being photographed.

At the same time, Chen recorded two videos while at the beach, which again police facts stated “clearly target women wearing bikinis”.

The first video shows a woman sunbathing before Chen “manoeuvres his focus” to another woman.

In a second video, which goes for just over a minute, Chen “zooms in” on a woman, with “majority of her bottom showing”, before “altering focus on another female in a brown bikini” walking past, before pointing back to the ocean.

Bondi Beach.

The men leaving Waverley Court.

A person who was known to the teenagers targeted by Yang called triple-0, before police arrived and escorted both men off the bus.

On Thursday, the court heard both Chen and Yan were deeply apologetic and hadn’t been advised by the tour guide that such actions were offensive.

Magistrate Stephen Barlow said he was not satisfied Yang and Chen were “knowingly causing offence to the victims”, rather he chalked it up to a “cultural gap”.

“I accept there’s some level of cultural gap between the offenders life experience and what they were exposed to at Bondi Beach, they hadn’t planned on seeing people run along in those sort of garments,” he said

Magistrate Barlow said while the offending largely arose from “curiosity about that cultural phenomenon”, he accepted there was “a level of voyeurism” at play.

“As I said there’s a cultural gap, both men have prior good character and no prior record in China, and it’s been embarrassing and inconvenient ordeal being arrested and brought to court,” he said.

Both men were fined $100, without a conviction recorded, and had their passports returned enabling them to fly home to China.