Quan Zihua, a cadre from the athlete’s hometown, told Haibo News that about 1,000 people visit her house every day.
The villagers have transformed the thoroughfare in front of the Diving Queen’s house into a food street offering an array of local delicacies.
Large portraits of Quan have been placed at the entrance to the village and its ancestral hall, where tourists can take photos.
The village has also built a large parking lot for tourists, decorated with the symbol of the Olympic rings.
The two flame trees in front of their house were also a popular photo location for people looking for happiness and success.
Quan won gold in the individual 10-meter platform event and together with his teammate Chen Yuxi in the 10-meter synchronized diving competitions in Paris.
In the final of the 10-meter jump, she achieved a full score of 10, beating her 18-year-old teammate Chen with a total score of 425.60.
That performance was not as astonishing as her record-breaking total score of 466.20 at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, when Quan was just 14 years old and met the minimum age for the Games, which were postponed for a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In Paris, however, Quan had to overcome problems with height and weight growth, which posed major challenges to her technique.
Quan and Chen reached such a level that the competition between them was nicknamed the “Clash of the Titans.”
Quan has also inadvertently created several best-sellers on China’s e-commerce platforms, including her favorite turtle dolls and the “ugly fish slippers” she wore in Paris.
On August 9, she also topped the Olympic athletes’ e-commerce influencer list published by China’s largest e-commerce platform Taobao, which is part of the Alibaba Group, which also owns the South China Morning Post.
She is the second youngest Chinese Olympic diving champion after Fu Mingxia, who also caused a sensation when she won the gold medal in the 10-meter platform diving in Barcelona in 1992 at the age of 13.
Quan’s carefree and uncomplicated character helped her gain a large fan base.
After winning her first gold medal in Paris, she gestured “child’s play” with her hand while presenting her gold medal to a fan.
“I won the gold medal so I could show off,” she joked.
