A Chinese influencer’s bafflement at our reflexive gratitude reveals something we’ve stopped noticing about ourselves
By Dr Rahim Said
Zhi Zhi came to Malaysia expecting many things. Nasi lemak, probably. Traffic, certainly. The crushing humidity that makes every afternoon feel like being slowly folded into a warm towel — almost certainly.
What she did not expect was to get into a thanking contest with her neighbour.
The Chinese influencer, documenting her life in Malaysia on Xiaohongshu, recently posted a video about something she found both perplexing and oddly delightful: Malaysians say “thank you” compulsively, reflexively, and — crucially — recursively. You thank them. They thank you back. You thank them for thanking you.
Somewhere in the middle of this infinite gratitude loop, a simple transaction about returning a borrowed Tupperware becomes a philosophical exercise in mutual appreciation that neither party knows how to exit.
She found it funny at first. Then sweet. Then just… Malaysian. And she is not wrong.
There is something almost algorithmically broken about the way we deploy “thank you” in this country. The 7-Eleven cashier gets thanked. The cashier thanks you in return. The mamak server gets thanked for delivering teh tarik. He nods, which is his thank you. You thank him for the nod. He has already walked away. You are thanking the void. You do not care. This is fine.
In most cultures, gratitude is directional. Someone does something nice; you acknowledge it; the social ledger closes. In Malaysia, the ledger never quite closes because we are all quietly convinced that the other person did more. The seller is grateful you patronised them. The customer is grateful that they have somewhere to buy things. The hawker auntie is grateful you finished your food. You are grateful she cooked it. Round and round it goes, an ouroboros of courtesy eating its own tail.
Zhi Zhi, to her credit, came around to seeing the beauty in it. She noted that Malaysians seem gentle, approachable, and genuinely inclusive — that she never felt like an outsider. This is what the thank you loop actually does, beneath its comedic surface. It is not mere politeness. It is the small, repeated act of acknowledging the other person’s humanity. I see you. You were worth thanking. This moment between us mattered.
In a world that increasingly treats service workers as extensions of an app, there is something quietly radical about a country where you instinctively thank the person packing your plastic bag — and where they thank you back.
Of course, we should not be entirely smug about this. The thank you is not always conscious. Many Malaysians, if asked, would be genuinely unable to tell you why they thanked the ATM that beeped at them. It is Pavlovian or classical conditioning at this point. Transactional kindness on autopilot. We do it the way we do most things in Malaysia — habitually, cheerfully, without too much examination.
But perhaps that is precisely the point. A courtesy that requires no thought is a courtesy that has been fully absorbed into the culture. We do not thank people because we are performing warmth. We thank people because — somewhere between our mothers telling us to say terima kasih to the makcik at the kedai runcit and thirty years of daily mamak runs — it became who we are.
Zhi Zhi’s video gathered a predictable wave of comments from Malaysians explaining that yes, this is just how they were raised, this is basic courtesy, this is the Malaysian way. The comments were, inevitably, very polite.
Someone probably thanked her for the video. She probably thanked them back. Somewhere, a loop is still running.
Thank you for reading. No, thank you. Based on a report on Newswav https://newswav.com/A2605_JfzrfP?s=A_37Vo2sE&language=en