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.
‘CROCODILE TEARS’: The Taiwan Statebuilding Party said the Kaohsiung mayor was only apologizing after a poll revealed that 45% of the city’s residents favored a recall Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) at a city council session yesterday apologized for taking three months off last year to campaign for January’s presidential election. Han said that he was now prioritizing municipal affairs and was focused primarily on preventing the spread of COVID-19. He was “doing two days’ work each day” to make up for time lost, he said. Han on May 5 attended a city council session for the first time in 201 days, giving a report on pandemic response measures. At yesterday’s session, Han said the Kaohsiung City Government would be injecting NT$50 million (US$1.67 million) into the
Taipei City Councilor Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) on Saturday urged the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs to designate the Japanese colonial-era Showa Building (昭和樓) a cultural heritage site to protect it from being demolished. Wu made the remarks after the department on Tuesday last week visited the building to evaluate it for preservation, a standard procedure before a public building that is more than 50 years old is razed. The Showa Building, on Zhongxiao E Road Sec 2, was a rare kind of office building when it was constructed in 1942, Wu said. The three-story building was built with reinforced concrete and has European-style
A proposal by the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) to permanently ban sitting in Taipei Railway Station’s main hall has received a mixed reaction online, with some social media users vowing to launch a sit-in at the station. Gatherings at the hall have been prohibited since Feb. 29 in accordance with the Central Epidemic Command Center’s policy of reducing crowd sizes in public places. A Facebook user organizing the sit-in said that the hall is a public space and there is no legitimate reason to ban sitting on the floor. He said he suspected that the proposal was made due to business considerations and
Chinese over-the-top (OTT) service provider iQiyi cannot register as a provider in Taiwan after the Mainland Affairs Council declared it to be an illegal service, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday. Both iQiyi and WeTV were deemed to be illegal Chinese OTT operators in an interdepartmental meeting on Friday last week, officials said, adding that this prohibits them from marketing their services in Taiwan or seeking subscribers. The government plans to block a local server that iQiyi has been using to transmit content to domestic audiences, which would disrupt its content transmission. OTT Entertainment Ltd, which is enlisted by iQiyi to
RSS