Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain recently posted on his social media accounts photographs of himself and President Barack Obama tucking into bowls of pho noodles, grilled pork, and cold beer in a restaurant in Vietnam.
But Chinese citizens are still not quite convinced that the casual dinner session was authentic.
Obama had arrived in Vietnam on May 22 as part of a week-long diplomatic trip in Asia. Japan is Obama’s final stop on the trip, and he is set to make history as the first U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, the city that America dropped an atomic bomb on in 1945 near the end of the Second World War.
Obama’s simple dinner with Bourdain at the Hanoi restaurant Bún chả Hương Liên had been arranged beforehand, and the conversation between the two would be shown in September on Bourdain’s CNN show, “Parts Unknown.”
It is unknown if any of these netizens who questioned the authenticity of the incident were part of China’s 50 cent army—paid commentators that spam the internet with posts aimed at painting the Chinese regime in a favorable light.
This is not the first time that Chinese netizens have closely scrutinized Obama’s public gestures. During Obama’s March visit to Cuba, many Chinese netizens expressed shock that Obama had held his own umbrella to shelter First Lady Michelle Obama from rain.
