Earlier this week, mainland Chinese tourists engaged in a feeding frenzy that drew ire from netizens both in the country and abroad.
According to Asian Correspondent, a video recorded during the all-you-can-eat buffet of a Thai hotel depicts a dozen or so Chinese tourists scrambling to capitalize on the buffet's prawn fritters. In the 30-second clip, diners jostle for position at the buffet table and begin using plates to shovel the fritters out of their serving tray.
Once the video was posted online, netizens around the globe weighed in, calling the over-enthusiastic diners “greedy” and “obnoxious”. Most were quick to condemn the shrimp-loving mob's actions, however some also pointed out that not all Chinese tourists behave this way.
“What on earth? Have you never eaten shrimp before? Could you lose any more face abroad?” commenter zx11xz1974 wrote upon seeing the video, reports Shanghaiist.
Another Fujian netizen commented: “Us mainlanders act like locusts abroad, no matter where we go, not a blade of grass grows.”
The video has since made it into Chinese social media and onto state-run media outlets. As Chinese tourists begin to leave the country more often, the Chinese government has struggled to deal with unruly travelers, going so far as to create a blacklist to ban particularly hostile tourists from international travel, such as the couple who threw hot instant noodles at an AirAsia flight attendant and threatened to blow up their plane because they disapproved of their seating arrangement.
However, government efforts from China have also drawn criticism from the country's well-behaved citizens, who did not take kindly to a 2014 public service announcement which encouraged Chinese tourists to be “good pandas” while traveling abroad.
[Video via Asian Correspondent]