Taiwanese actress Tiffany Ann Hsu apologises for liking post insulting mainland Chinese
- ‘I just discovered I’ve made a very stupid mistake’, says star of 2015 horror film The Tag-along
- 34-year-old, who has 1.7 million followers on Weibo, suspends Instagram account in wake of dispute
Taiwanese actress and model Tiffany Ann Hsu has apologised after becoming the latest celebrity from the self-ruled island to upset Chinese internet users by “liking” a social media post they found offensive.
“I just discovered I’ve made a very stupid mistake … I’m sorry,” the 34-year-old said in a statement published on Thursday on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service.
The apology came after the actress, who has a Taiwanese mother and an American father, on Tuesday liked an Instagram post that contained the word “a-lak-a”, a derogatory term for mainland Chinese in the Hokkien dialect, which is spoken in Taiwan and southeast China’s Fujian province, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
The original message, published by a Taiwanese travelling in Japan, said: “Oshino Hakkai, a place bursting at the seams with ‘a-lak-a’. At this moment, our patriotism was at its highest. We’re from Taiwan Taiwan.”
The post has since been deleted, according to Taiwanese media company NowNews.com.
Hsu, who starred in the 2015 box office hit The Tag-along and its 2017 sequel The Tag-along 2, has 1.7 million followers on Weibo and before suspending her account, 1.4 million followers on Instagram.