Did a Chinese singer perform in a Hungarian hussar costume during an official event celebrating a national holiday in Budapest on March 15, 2024? No, that's not true: The man in a photo circulating on social media is a Vietnamese-Hungarian artist, a tenor at the Hungarian State Opera.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on March 15, 2024, under the title (translated from Hungarian to English by Lead Stories staff):
Dishonoring the Hungarian holiday. On March 15, a Chinese man dressed as a Hungarian hussar sings. Shame.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Mar 25 16:18:55 2024 UTC)
The man in the photo is Ninh Duc Hoang Long. According to his Facebook page (archived here), he is a Hungarian opera singer with Vietnamese roots. Long attended the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and graduated in 2020. He works at the Budapest Operetta and Musical Theatre (archived here) and the Hungarian State Opera (archived here). In 2018, he was granted Hungarian citizenship.
Ninh Long sang during the state event on March 15, 2024, in Budapest, before Prime Minister Viktor Orban's speech. On that day, Hungarians commemorate the country's armed revolution for independence from the Habsburg Empire in 1848-49.
The tenor became well-known nationwide after he performed "Hazám, hazám" ("Homeland, homeland"), a song from a 19th-century Hungarian opera piece by Ferenc Erkel, in a classical music talent show, "Virtuózok" (archived here) on Hungarian public television channel Duna TV on June 2, 2018.
