American tennis player Taylor Townsend apologised on Wednesday after calling turtle and bullfrog served at a dinner buffet “crazy” while at the Billie Jean King Cup in China.
“What the hell.. turtle and bullfrog is WILD,” she posted on Instagram on Tuesday night.
“These people are literally killing frogs, bullfrogs. Aren’t those the ones that give you warts and boils and stuff?” she said in a follow-up video.
The hashtag “American tennis player publicly insults Chinese food” was one of the top trending topics on China’s twitter-like platform Weibo and had been viewed more than 50 million times by Wednesday afternoon.
Weibo users condemned the player’s take on Chinese dishes. Some, however, resorted to racist remarks against Townsend, who is Black.
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Townsend’s original posts attracted floods of comments criticising the player and she again took to Instagram on Wednesday, this time to say sorry.
“I just wanted to come on here and apologise sincerely from the bottom of my heart,” Townsend posted.
“I have had nothing but the most amazing experience and time here. The things that I said were not representative of that at all.
“There’s no excuse. I will be better.”
The United States team, featuring doubles specialist Townsend, will play their quarter-final against Kazakhstan in Shenzhen on Thursday.
