

One unfortunate woman’s passport has become the latest casualty in the firestorm of outrage sparked by the South China Sea ruling in The Hague earlier this month.

While going through security at Tan Son Nhat International Airport upon landing in Ho Chi Minh City, a Chinese woman surnamed Zhong handed her passport to one of the customs officers. After 2 or 3 minutes, she got it back and found that the words “Fuck you” were scribbled on two of the pages. Those pages happened to contain maps of China, complete with the infamous nine-dash line, which Beijing uses to exert its claim over more than 80% of the South China Sea. Chinese passports issued after 2012 contain this map on pages 8, 24 and 46.

Zhong doesn’t speak any Vietnamese, so she didn’t respond to the insult, Sohu reports. She says that once she gets back to China, she will apply for a new passport.



The Chinese Consulate in Ho Chi Minh has released a statement, reporting that they are handling the situation and demanding that Vietnamese officials take action to punish whoever is responsible and make sure that something like this will never happen again.

Netizens have condemned the actions of the custom officer and hit back with some insults of their own:

“Nice, looks like that Vietnamese monkey knows how to write. [He/She] is learning,” @blackTodd wrote.

“How many bananas did the Philippines give you [to write the insults]? Remember that those were the bananas we didn’t want,” @林大状 wrote.

“What an immature thing to do. I can clearly see what Vietnam is like now,” @fongAz- wrote.

“If Vietnam keeps acting like this, we’ll put them down to their place. Like this comment if you agree,” @对的人不能随便选个某某某 wrote.



In the end, the woman probably just didn’t tip the customs officer 10 RMB.

By Sarah Lin

[Images via People’s Daily]

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