A statue of a young woman breastfeeding her mother-in-law has been taken down from a Chinese park after sparking outrage online.

The incident took place at Yingpanshan Park in the city of Huzhou in the Chinese province of Zhejiang after one park visitor complained online.

A tourist who visited the park last week complained to the authorities about the statue and shared images on social media where it was roundly criticised as inappropriate.

The statue is of a woman in traditional clothes lifting her top to expose a breast which an older woman drinks milk from.

Before agreeing to remove the statue, a park spokesperson said: “The person who made the complaint was young and did not know about ‘filial piety’.”

Filial piety is the respect for one’s parents, elders, and ancestors in Confucian, Chinese Buddhist and Taoist ethics.

The spokesperson pointed out that the statue was based on a scene from The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars, a classic text of Confucian filial piety written by Guo Jujing during the Yuan dynasty (1260-1368).

However, many netizens disagreed and said the statue does not represent modern-day values.

One netizen said on Weibo: “In the modern world, can you imagine a woman breastfeeding her in-law? It makes people uncomfortable and misleads children.”

Another Weibo user added: “We do not have to follow everything in our tradition, we can keep what is good and disregard the rest.”