Dharamshala, 11th February: Figure skater Zhu Yi and freestyle skier Eileen Gu, two of China’s participants in the 2022 Winter Olympics, were born in the United States but later decided to embrace their Chinese background and compete for the host nation. In China, however, Zhu was chastised on social media following a series of falls while skating, whereas Gu was lionized after winning gold in the women’s freestyle skiing big air final at the Beijing 2022 Olympics.
Despite having openly relinquished her U.S. citizenship in 2018, Gu has been praised for her patriotism despite skirting inquiries about her new nationality. Zhu, on the other hand, has been chastised for “messing up” and for her relative lack of Mandarin fluency.
Zhu’s tears, clear self-criticism, and a father who returned to the motherland to work as a top-level artificial intelligence expert don’t appear to have softened the internet criticism, while support for Gu appears to be all over the place.
Gu, on the other hand, has been afraid to confront the subject of patriotism head on. In early February, a search of the US Treasury’s website produced no official record of renunciation for someone with a name similar to Gu’s. However, most social media commentators appear to be unconcerned about her citizenship. Gu’s skiing gold has certainly given her a free pass among the Chinese people, according to Wang Jian, a journalist stationed in the United States.
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