“武汉蝙蝠T恤”事件细节曝光，绝不是“误会”丨Diplomat's ill intentions revealed（微信文章未删减版）

导读

近日，加拿大一外交官被曝找中国商家定制一批“武汉蝙蝠T恤”，引发中国网民强烈不满及中国外交部严正抗议。据悉，订购T恤的人士“Chad Hensler”为加拿大驻华使馆外交官，他在此事上主观恶意明显，加方所谓“误会”说法完全站不住脚。

A Canadian diplomat involved in the latest diplomatic spat over tailor-made T-shirts featuring a bat image and the "Wuhan" word had deceived the Chinese T-shirt maker and deliberately planned to conceal his ill-intentioned motive since May when he placed the order, according to Global Times.

Chad Hensler, who ordered T-shirts emblazoned with a bat-like image around the words "Wu-Han", has sparked outrage among Chinese netizens and officials.

Canada's foreign ministry explained this week that the shirts using the "W" logo of the Wu-Tang Clan but with the group's name replaced with "Wuhan" was not designed to offend.

China did not buy such explanation. "Misunderstanding is an alibi that we simply cannot accept. Some mainstream media have also acknowledged that the custom T-shirt has bat-like emblem on it," Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told a routine conference on Wednesday.

Source close to the matter told media that Hensler had sought companies that produce T-shirts with culture symbols as early as in May 2020, and after he contacted one Chinese e-commerce firm, he had been hesitating to provide the image to be printed on the T-shirts until July after he spent over two months to understand the urgent orders this firm needed and its turnover situation.

Meanwhile, the Chinese firm noticed that something went wrong with the image, so it refused the orders Hensler made several times, the source said on the condition of anonymity.

"But he was in a rush. Facing questions from the Chinese firm, he lied that the word 'WU-HAN' was just 'a line of Canadian words,' representing it's cool," the source said, noting that such a plan showed that this Canadian diplomat understands the sensitivity of the image.

After receiving 8 T-shirt samples, Hensler also promised to the Chinese merchant that he was fully satisfied with the product quality, hoping for long-term cooperation with abundant orders.

"It is beyond our belief that senior diplomats who have been working and living in China for years could make such a stupid mistake inadvertently," Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday.

Source: Global Times

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