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Former national shooter speaks about xenophobia amid Schooling’s success

Athletes competing in an air rifle event. (Photo: AP)
Athletes competing in an air rifle event. (Photo: AP)

A former air rifle shooter has spoken about her experiences with xenophobia as a foreign-born athlete representing Singapore.

Zhang Jingna, the Singapore National Olympic Council’s Sports Girl of the Year for 2006, posted the comments on her Facebook page on Tuesday (16 Aug), days after Joseph Schooling won an Olympics Games gold medal.

“The hating on foreign nationals on my feed has reached a point where I am beginning to feel sick,” Zhang, who now works as a fashion photographer in New York, wrote on her post.

“As a child I kept quiet because I thought the insensitive and hurtful words were what I deserved, for being born where I was despite being raised in Singapore. As an adult, I know now that these comments are not right,” she said.

By noon Wednesday, her post had garnered over 2,900 reactions and 1,100 shares, with most commenters praising her for speaking up and offering words of encouragement.

China-born Zhang moved to Singapore when she was eight, and represented the Republic actively in air rifle for six years, during which she broke a record in the 10m Air Rifle event in 2005 and took home a bronze at the Commonwealth Games in 2006.

She listed some of the common points of discussion she had seen online, including that the Singapore government should have spent more money on “people like Schooling” and should “cultivate more locals”.

“Joseph’s story is a golden and idealistic one. It’s really incredible, no doubt. But in hindsight, it is of course easy to say all of these after he has already achieved what he has,” Zhang said, adding that she knew of “local-born Singaporeans on scholarships overseas who never came back”.

Zhang also said there was a lot of prejudice against children who wanted to pursue a career in sports or arts, as chances are most parents “would hesitate to believe and invest in your child to go into such careers, because it’s risky, unproven and with little chance of returns”.

On the topic of local and foreign-born athletes, Zhang said that it was heartbreaking to hear people say they were “purist” and would not be “proud of someone born elsewhere”.

“We all came from somewhere, we all benefited from the immigrants that our parents, grandparents and forefathers were. So let’s stay civilized and not use racist and discriminatory words like ‘purist’,” Zhang said.

She also defended former national table tennis player Li Jiawei, who retired in 2012, saying, “Don’t look down on Jiawei just because she said she hated table tennis. How many of you knew what you wanted to do as a kid, are still doing it, and continue to have passion?”

Zhang said Schooling and his family had done a “great thing for our country” and she was proud that he had won.

“But that is the achievement of Schooling and his family. Not the society who would have judged his family for spending over a million dollars as stupidity, or him for pursuing something that seemed like an impossible dream as poor choice and irresponsible parenting. However, he did draw Singapore in the place-of-birth lottery, and it makes me wonder how different the narrative would have been had he not been born here,” Zhang wrote.