9 Comments
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Craig Shapiro's avatar

Cool girl. She passed on the French

citizenship question when I asked it as well.

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Steph's avatar

I loved this piece - how interesting!!

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Z.G.'s avatar

The whole idea that the women's tennis world needs to be polite to China and/or bridge cultural divides with China is insane to me after the Peng Shuai horror show. Shuai is being treated by the WTA the way Ukraine is being treated by Russian players like Blinkova: don't mention the subject, don't acknowledge the subject even exists anymore, and just talk about anything else.

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Rachel's avatar

I think it’s important to separate the people from the country … as an American I would hate to have people not want to interact with me because of my government.

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Shirley McLaughlin's avatar

I had forgotten about that. Thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole for a bit.

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Rachel's avatar

Thank you so much for sharing this. Blinkova has just become one of my favorite players! This is the dream to me - to get to see the world and interact with different cultures because of tennis.

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Sis Hight's avatar

Good for her. She sounds like such an interesting person.

When on tour, Roger Federer loved traveling with Mirka. They would see the sites, go to concerts and plays (Hamilton!), etc. I think he studied Chinese a little one year when he was on the Chinese swing.

Thanks for the great article!

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Shirley McLaughlin's avatar

Thanks so much for offering a perspective that is relevant to but not regurgitating the headlines. I appreciated this piece a lot!

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Ian's avatar

This might be the channel Blinkova mentioned: https://m.youtube.com/c/EverydayChinese/videos

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