Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls’ High School yesterday pushed back against “objectifying” remarks Chinese Internet users made about its students after Chinese table tennis champion Ma Long (馬龍) visited the school last month.
Ma toured the school as part of a cross-strait exchange organized by the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation, but Chinese social media users said it was like “a monk entering the den of spider demons.”
The comments were referring to a scene in the novel Journey to the West during which a coven of succubus-like spirits attempted to tempt and devour the monk-pilgrim Xuanzang (玄奘).
Photo: Screen grab from Tsai Ing-wen’s Facebook page
School principal Chang Yun-fen (張云棻) yesterday said the school condemns the inappropriate comments and untruthful stories about its students on social media and certain news outlets.
“The faculty and parents of this school reject the inappropriate language used to objectify women and condemn the harmful comments,” she said. “Targeting innocent Zhongshan students can never be tolerated.”
The school has taken the necessary measures to deal with the incident and sternly warned against false reports on the students’ conduct during the Chinese Olympian’s visit, she added.
The Zhongshan Girls’ High School parents’ association also issued a statement saying the spread of images showing some of the students and the exaggerations by Chinese outlets have caused emotional distress and reputational harm.
Foundation chief executive Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said that the public should refrain from politicizing the incident over improper remarks made by random Internet users.
Separately, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is an alumna of the school, yesterday attended an event celebrating the school’s 127th anniversary and told the students they should aspire to be “women who can brave the world.”
Women must not allow themselves to be defined or limited by others, she said.
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