It’s seemingly you’ll maybe maybe well presumably even have idea you’d heard the stay of Eileen Gu’s citizenship controversy when the 2022 Winter Olympics concluded in February, on the opposite hand it’s no longer over. The most modern chapter within the controversy surrounding Gu’s nationality and loyalty started closing week when the 18-twelve months-extinct American-born athlete broke the tips to her 6.7 million followers on Weibo that she was once leaving China, where she is identified by her Chinese language name Gǔ Àilíng 谷爱凌 and has been belovedly nicknamed “Snow Princess.”
“Thanks China,” she wrote on April 27 in a Weibo post, which comprises a Chinese language flag, a coronary heart emoji, and a collage of photos from her months-long halt within the country. All the blueprint in which in the course of the same time, Gu also posted on Instagram, announcing: “Thanks China for the unforgettable few months & for the never-ending treasure.”
Born and raised in San Francisco, California, Gu switched nationwide affiliations in 2019 to describe China within the 2022 Winter Olympics. Gu also deferred her admission to the prestigious Stanford College for a twelve months in affirm to compete within the Games. However going encourage to the U.S. for faculty was once frequently her thought, Gu acknowledged in loads of interviews at some level of the Olympics.
Eileen Gu, feature mannequin for China or opportunist?
However, Gu’s farewell post triggered swift and solid reactions from Chinese language internet users. In a topic of hours, her Weibo post sparked hundreds of responses, which fleet snowballed into “Gu Sick posts on Weibo to thank China (#谷爱凌发博说谢谢中国#), a top trending hashtag on the social media space closing Thursday. As of this day, her message has 431,000 likes and 77,000 feedback.
Whereas some of Gu’s supporters thanked her encourage for representing China at some level of the Beijing Games and being a feature mannequin for younger women within the country, the post also arrangement off off a firestorm of unfavourable reactions that ranged from grave disappointment to downright madden, with some of Gu’s most ardent followers turning into her hardest critics.
Many people took function at the tone of Gu’s farewell message, announcing that she sounded love a foreigner purposefully maintaining an emotional distance from Chinese language of us. Others pointed to the wording as proof and questioned why Gu didn’t consult with China as her “motherland” love other Chinese language athletes. “It’s evident that China is factual a slip back and forth vacation role to her,” a Weibo user wrote (in Chinese language).
The criticism piled on, with some of us calling Gu an “opportunist” capitalizing on China’s substantial market potential to realize her athletic profession and make a fortune. However others got right here to Gu’s protection and called out her critics for having “unfair” expectations for the snowboarding prodigy, who they stated was once factual a younger woman reluctantly caught between two countries and forced by many to steal a aspect.
“Gu brought Olympic medals to China. What have you accomplished? Bashing her on the safe?” a Weibo user slapped encourage at one in all Gu’s critics (in Chinese language). “Even though she competed for China factual for money, I would be fully cool with that. Wouldn’t or no longer it is unimaginable if China can also entice your complete skills within the U.S. with solid monetary possibilities?” yet another person wrote (in Chinese language).
Weibo started restricting discussions about Gu’s goodbye post on Thursday evening. However Gu, apparently ignorant of the controversy, endured to portion posts documenting her ride encourage to the united statesin the next days, and one in all the movies ended up adding more gasoline to the fireplace.
The clip, filmed by Gu and posted to Douyin — the Chinese language version of TikTok — over the weekend, facets her grandmother having a running workout in what appears to be like to be a non-public jet. “My grandma is jogging at 900 mph,” the caption reads. Hours after sharing the video, Gu answered to her maintain clip within the feedback, announcing, “Hahahaha right here’s hilarious.” Her discipline, displayed on Douyin, was once within the U.S.
Blasted on all facets of the Pacific
Since Gu announced that she would compete for her mom’s country of delivery, China, encourage in 2019, the skier has been bombarded with queries about her loyalties.
Even at some level of the Beijing Games, in media coverage and on-line discussions out of doorways China, Gu’s athletic skills had been frequently overshadowed by the fascination with her nationality and identity. On the FoX Recordsdata expose “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox pundit Will Cain called Gu “ungrateful” for “betraying the country that no longer factual raised her, however grew to alter into her into a world-class skier.” On Swap.org, nearly 8,000 of us signed a petition in a repeat to procure Gu’s Stanford admittance revoked. Gu’s “lack of integrity about her nationality” and her failure to “denounce the human rights violations” in China had been cited because the main arguments for the petition in its description.
Meanwhile in China, Gu was once the topic of a rotund-throated PR campaign that painted her because the recent face of China’s world picture and a paragon of girls’s empowerment. Gu’s movie superstar predicament was once further solidified after she received three medals — two gold and one silver — at the Beijing Olympics, which ended in an outpouring of adulation for Gu that was once so intense that it literally overwhelmed Weibo, causing its servers to trip non permanent overload.
The newfound popularity also translated into a monetary windfall for Gu, as media stories published that she brought in 200 million yuan ($31 million) in 2021, largely fueled by endorsement deals with two dozen brands at the side of global luxurious houses Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., and Swiss watchmaker IWC Schaffhausen.
Even though Gu has been outspoken about her pleasure in representing China, she has by no strategy without delay addressed questions about whether she had renounced her U.S. citizenship in alternate for a Chinese language passport. At press conferences, when asked about her citizenship, Gu frequently talked in regards to the potential of sports actions to unite quite than divide. “Once I’m in China, I’m Chinese language. Once I’m within the U.S., I’m American,” she once told a reporter.
Some of us speculated that whereas China prohibits dual citizenship, it would possibly really maybe maybe well need crooked its maintain criminal tips for Gu, who it desperately coveted for the sake of its medal count at the Beijing Games and its world popularity. And in yet another controversy, Gu once told an Instagram user that any individual in China can also spend a VPN, or digital private community, to circumvent China’s Huge Firewall and access the app, which is banned within the country. “It’s literally free on the App Store,” she wrote, with out acknowledging that the expertise was once an increasing form of complex to manufacture access to in China and that Chinese language internet users would possibly maybe maybe even be punished for the spend of this form of tool.
In gentle of her farewell message and her video of flying private, some Weibo users stated the controversy within the waste brought home the fact that Gu was once no longer an normal Chinese language — or in other words — one in all them.
Why Eileen Gu matters