Not surprised by the reaction, dressing-up like that would definitely be viewed by local viewers as making a fool of oneself. And in Chinese pop culture, and I get the impression that might be common for other major East Asian cultures (like Japanese or South Korean), those type of "making fool of yourself" type of things should not be done by most celebrities, it's kind of something reserved for what's called in mandarin 諧星（Xie-Xin), I can't really find a proper translation for this term, while Google Translates just gives me "Comedian" which ain't an exact translation at all. Those type of celebrities not exactly common in western cultures, the only person that I can think of that comes slightly close to what would be considered Xie-Xin in the US would be Conan O'Brien, and that seems like a stretch, cause there's also some level of being a C or D-list star associated with the expression. All of this just to say, that "making a fool of oneself" like that would only be appropriate for those types of celebrities, not an Olympian, thus the unsurprising backlash.
