Tennis player Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) yesterday repeated that she is a Taiwanese national and that the “glory” of winning the nation’s first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon belonged to everyone in Taiwan.
Hsieh returned to Taiwan on Wednesday night following her unprecedented victory in the women’s doubles at Wimbledon last week.
Yesterday morning, she first paid her respects to the deceased founder of Four Pillars Enterprises, Yang Pin-yen (楊斌彥), who was also the chairman of the Chinese Taipei Tennis Association (CTTA).
Photo: CNA
She met reporters following her visit to CTTA chairman Liao Yu-hui (廖裕輝).
The focus of the press conference was whether she would accept a NT$50 million (about US$1.7 million) per year sponsorship from a Chinese liquor company and switch allegiance to China.
Hsieh appeared to be rather irritated by the questions.
“I have never said anything about switching allegiance on my Facebook page, so I am a bit confused as to what happened here,” she said.
“Not just Qinghai [the Chinese liquor company], but other groups have approached me. I just never mentioned any of them in public,” she said.
“I think there’s no need to make a fuss about it. In other countries, people pay attention to tennis players who have potential. In Taiwan, nobody paid attention to tennis players before Wimbledon this year, but many people had in fact tried to talk to me about possible offers well before this time,” she said.
“My nationality is Republic of China [Taiwan], what more confirmation do you need?” Hsieh asked.
Hsieh said that she competed as a Taiwanese national at Wimbledon, and the glory of garnering the Grand Slam title belongs to everyone in Taiwan, whether or not she switches allegiance in the future.
She added that people should focus on how much effort she has made to make her what she is today.
Following her victory at Wimbledon, Liao and Hsieh each donated NT$1 million to establish a development fund for young tennis players. However, the funding is not enough for so many players, she said.
Asked about her plans in the next few months, Hsieh said that she wanted to rest for about a month before competing in the pre-US Open series. She would also start looking for training venues in other countries next week.
Asked who her partner would be in the doubles, she said: “It’s Peng Shuai (彭帥). It’s settled.”
Peng was her Chinese partner at Wimbledon.
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT: A US Air Force KC-135 tanker came less than 1,000 feet of an EVA plane and was warned off by a Taipei air traffic controller, a report said A US aerial refueling aircraft came very close to an EVA Airways jet in the airspace over southern Taiwan, a military aviation news Web site said. A report published by Alert 5 on Tuesday said that automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast (ADS-B) data captured by planfinder.net on Wednesday last week showed a US Air Force KC-135 tanker “coming less than 1,000 feet [305m] vertically with EVA Air flight BR225 as both aircraft crossed path south of Taiwan” that morning. The report included an audio recording of a female controller from the Taipei air traffic control center telling the unidentified aircraft that it was
A series of discussions on the legacy of martial law and authoritarianism are to be held at the Taipei International Book Exhibition this month, featuring findings and analysis by the Transitional Justice Commission. The commission and publisher Book Republic organized the series, entitled “Escaping the Nation’s Labyrinth of Memory: What Authoritarian Symbols and Records Can Tell Us,” to help people navigate narratives through textual analysis and comparisons with other nations. The four-day series is to begin on Thursday next week with a discussion between commission Chairwoman Yang Tsui (楊翠), Polish-language translator Lin Wei-yun (林蔚昀), and Polish author and artist Pawel Gorecki comparing
MOVING OUT: A former professor said that rent and early education costs in Taipei are the nation’s highest, which makes it difficult for young people to start families The population of Taipei last year fell to the lowest in 23 years due to high rent, more transportation options and the expansion of northern cities into a single metropolis, academics and city officials said on Monday. Data released this month by the Ministry of the Interior showed that the capital was home to 2,602,418 people last year, down 42,623 from 2019. The decline is second only to 1993, when the population fell by 42,828 people, while Taipei’s population was the lowest it has been since 1997. Taipei saw the biggest drop among the six special municipalities, while Taoyuan led the group in
A US aircraft carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt has entered the South China Sea to promote “freedom of the seas,” the US military said yesterday, as tensions between China and Taiwan raise concerns in Washington. US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement that the strike group entered the South China Sea on Saturday, the same day Taiwan reported a large incursion of Chinese bombers and fighter jets into its air defense identification zone near the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島). The US military said the carrier strike group was in the South China Sea, a large part of which
RSS