The Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai sits in a crowded restaurant surrounded by friends and her coach, who is going through next year’s training plan with her. ‘Tomorrow is November 20th’, he says, in a seeming non-sequitur. ‘No, tomorrow is the 21st’, one of her friends corrects him. ‘Oh yes, oh yes, the 21st’.
This bizarre scene takes place in a new video released by several state-sources in China this afternoon, with one source even tagging the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic, Marin Cillic and others on Twitter…
If the forced mention of tomorrow’s date didn’t set alarm bells ringing, the clip begins with someone off screen saying ‘Okay Okay, now is perfect’. This is followed by a couple of seconds of silence where Peng Shuai laughs awkwardly, before the coach launches into his remarks. The entire thing seems scripted; and the presence of the director’s cue at the beginning of the clip is laughably amateurish.
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