Taipei — It is Olympics season now and everyone including celebrities is publicly cheering on for their country’s athletes. However, there are instances like Dee Hsu who rooted for the Taiwanese players and sparked a whole load of controversy.
Taiwanese badminton duo Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin beat China’s Liu Yuchen and Li Junhui on Saturday (July 31) to bring home Taiwan’s – or, to be more politically correct, Taipei’s – first Olympic gold medal in the sport.
The 25-year-old Lee Yang then took to Facebook to declare: “I am Lee Yang, I am from Kinmen, I am from Taiwan. [Flag of Taiwan emojis] We have let the world see Taiwan (…) The highest glory in the Olympic hall is dedicated to my country, Taiwan.”
According to 8days.sg, Chinese netizens were not happy with Lee Yang’s post and they accused the badminton player of supporting Taiwan’s independence from China. He was not the only one in hot soup. Taiwanese songstress, Jolin Tsai, 40, posted a photo of Lee Yang and Chi-lin on her Instagram Stories and added four sparkling heart emojis to show her love for them after their win.
Tsai also shared some words of support for the Taiwanese badminton player Tai Tzu-ying who won the silver medal in her match against China’s Chen Yufei. Despite Tsai’s subtlety with her support and her not mentioning anything that could be construed as an explicit sign of pro-Taiwanese independence, Chinese cyber-nationalists were still very triggered and considered her actions as an “insult to China”.
Soon the term “Pro-Taiwanese independence Jolin Tsai” started trending on Weibo and the star’s social media pages became flooded with unpleasant comments from Chinese netizens, who said things like, “Damn Taiwanese, don’t come to China” and “It looks like Jolin is planning to give up the mainland Chinese market”. Meanwhile, there were some netizens who noted that Tsai also congratulated Chinese Olympics winners in the past, which means that she is genuinely supporting all athletes and not trying to express any political views.
For Tsai, she only received angry remarks for her actions but her good friend Dee Hsu is reportedly having it a lot worse after committing a similar ‘offence’. Hsu, 43 recently got into trouble when she referred to Taiwan’s Olympians as “our national athletes” in her reply to an Instagram comment. The matter got so bad that Hsu was dropped from multiple endorsement deals, resulting in an estimated NT$32mil (SGD1.55mil) loss in income./TISG
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