A group of Malaysian tourists is facing intense backlash for filming strangers and mocking locals in China as “smelly”, sparking debate on travel etiquette and national image.The clips, which also appeared to show the visitors shouting insults in Malay while travelling in the country, were allegedly first posted on TikTok by user @ekyn.wong.They were later deleted from the account when checked by This Week in Asia, but not before going viral on Malaysian social media, where users panned what they called the guests’ crude and entitled behaviour.
SRCSouth China Morning Post
LANGEN
LEANCenter-Right
WORDS87
ENT6
WED · 2026-06-17 · 04:07 GMTBRIEF NSR-2026-0617-85085
NSR-2026-0617-85085News Report·EN·Human Interest
Malaysian tourists in China scorned for calling locals ‘smelly’
A group of Malaysian tourists is facing significant criticism after videos surfaced online showing them mocking Chinese locals as "smelly" and shouting insults in Malay. The clips, allegedly first posted on TikTok by user @ekyn.wong, went viral on Malaysian social media before being deleted.
Iman Muttaqin YusofSouth China Morning PostFiled 2026-06-17 · 04:07 GMTLean · Center-RightRead · 1 min
South China Morning PostFIG 01
Reading time
1min
Word count
87words
Sources cited
1cited
Entities identified
6entities
Quality score
100%
§ 01
Briefing Summary
AI-generatedNEWSAR · AI
A group of Malaysian tourists is facing significant criticism after videos surfaced online showing them mocking Chinese locals as "smelly" and shouting insults in Malay. The clips, allegedly first posted on TikTok by user @ekyn.wong, went viral on Malaysian social media before being deleted. This incident has ignited a debate regarding travel etiquette and the national image of Malaysia. The tourists' behavior has been widely condemned by Malaysian social media users who described it as crude and entitled.
Confidence 0.85Sources 1Claims 3Entities 6
§ 02
Article analysis
Model · rule-basedFraming
Human Interest
Tone
Measured
AI-assessed
CalmNeutralAlarmist
Factuality
0.80 / 1.00
Factual
LowHigh
Sources cited
1
Limited
FewMany
§ 03
Key claims
3 extracted01
The tourists' behaviour was described as 'crude and entitled'
quote
Confidence
1.00
02
A group of Malaysian tourists is facing intense backlash for filming strangers and mocking locals in China as 'smelly'
quote
Confidence
1.00
03
The clips were allegedly first posted on TikTok by user @ekyn.wong.
factualThis Week in Asia
Confidence
0.90
§ 04
Full report
1 min read · 87 words§ 05
Entities
6 identifiedKey playerOppositionContextPositiveNeutralNegative
Organizations2
§ 06
Keywords & salience
8 termstravel etiquette
1.00
national image
0.90
tourist behavior
0.80
cultural insensitivity
0.70
social media backlash
0.60
china
0.50
malaysian tourists
0.50
tiktok
0.40
§ 07
Topic connections
Interactive graph No topic relationship data available yet. This graph will appear once topic relationships have been computed.