Canadian players wipe the podium again, and Chinese netizens will not be able to fix it

On the evening of February 16, the short track speed skating competition of the Beijing Winter Olympics came to an end.

In the men's 5000m relay final, Canada won the championship.

But before stepping onto the podium, the five players of the team made the following actions in unison:

They stooped down and wiped the podium with their hands neatly before raising their arms in celebration of their victory.

This action undoubtedly made Chinese netizens "break the big defense". You must know that in the hearts of Chinese netizens, the action of wiping the podium is actually a means of expressing protest.

In the 5,000-meter relay at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics four years ago, the Canadian team wiped the podium before accepting the prize. Subsequently, this move was interpreted by many media and self-media as "insinuating that the host will use any means to attack the opponent in order to win the gold medal".

After the game, Charles Shamelin, one of the team members, posted a picture on Instagram with the caption: "Cleaning the podium for my 5th olympic medal."

And this sentence was also interpreted as "the podium is a bit dirty, like the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics."

In the eyes of netizens at the time, the Canadian team wiped the podium in one fell swoop.

Four foreigners, with no self-interested motive, regard the expedition of Chinese netizens as their own. What kind of spirit is this? This is the spirit of internationalism!

Since then, "wiping the podium" has been equated with "satiring the unfairness of the game."

Of course, the main reason is to satirize the unfairness of the game for the Koreans. Whenever a Korean player appears in a major sports event, there will always be a righteous Chinese netizen throwing out this moving picture, reminding everyone not to forget the protest of the internationalist fighters against the Korean stick.

Because of this, in the men's 500-meter speed skating competition on February 12, when Chinese netizens saw South Korean player Cha Minkyu wiping the podium, most of them were out of anger.

However, South Korean player Cha Minkyu's behavior of wiping the podium may have nothing to do with the protest.

After all, now that the nationalist sentiment is running high in South Korea, if Cha Minkyu’s protest is true, why would the South Korean media not report it?

In other words, if Cha Minkyu really wants to be a national hero by protesting at the Winter Olympics, why not spread the word on social media?

But the truth is that there was not much media coverage in South Korea at the time. After noticing the anger of Chinese netizens, Cha Minkyu responded: "The podium is very precious to me, and I set foot on the podium with more respect, out of this respectful thought. With such action."

When searching with keywords such as 'cleaning the podium' and 'wiping the podium', the only English report came from a media called Global Times.

Click to see, it turns out to be:

It can be seen that the Korean player Cha Minkui wiped the podium should not be a protest. In other words, it seems that only Chinese netizens feel that South Korean player Cha Minkyu wiped the podium in protest.

In fact, not only the Koreans wiping the podium is not a protest, but the Canadians wiping the podium are not for protest.

Going back to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics four years ago, if you look closely, you will find that there was no foreign media focused on the actions of Canadian players to wipe the podium.

On the well-known Q&A website Quora (overseas version of Zhihu), the question 'What do you think of the Canadian team cleaning the podium at the 2018 winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea?' received only 3 answers, including one Chinese people's wit.

In the Instagram comment area of Charles Shamelin, one of the parties, there is no legendary "Korean Internet violence", but it is full of Chinese and Chinese emoji English such as "dirty 🇰🇷"

In fact, as long as these netizens dig a little more, they will find that just a few weeks later, the player posted another picture of himself and his teammates wiping the podium - and the source of this photo is the world held by Canada itself Short Track Speed Skating Championship.

According to the logic of Chinese netizens, do Canadians feel that this competition held on their own soil is unfair to them, so they protest? This is obviously unreasonable.

Let's look at the recent game again. In the final of the men's 5000-meter relay at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Canadian players wiped the stage again. But in this game, they won the gold medal, what exactly needs to be protested?

There's probably only one plausible explanation: they're not protesting at all. There can be many explanations for wiping the podium, perhaps saying goodbye to the past, perhaps welcoming the future, perhaps bowing to the audience and friends - but protesting, the imagination is too rich.

It is a pity that Chinese netizens still do not believe in evil, and they are still trying to give a reasonable explanation for all this. But getting the Canadians to protest against the Koreans, but not the Chinese, is a really hard problem.

What I've seen so far are:

1. Koreans steal Canadians wiping podiums, Canadians protesting they were stolen this time
2. Canadians are mocking Koreans, but it's not clear what they are mocking
3. Maybe Canada is really protesting, then Canada is not a good thing
4. Let the bullet fly a little longer

It seems to me that it probably doesn't matter how they view this event. After all, the so-called wiping of the podium and the inextricable relationship between protests, in the final analysis, is just another self-exaggeration of the Simplified Chinese Internet.

References:

Are Korean players wiping the podium a protest? How to understand the Canadian koan. Sina Sports