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| Eileen Gu has all the elements of becoming a star for years to come. |
OPINION
Eighteen-year old Eileen Gu is smart, attractive, articulate, but her evasiveness over citizenship is not helping Asian Americans in their fight against the current wave of anti-Asian hate.
Chinese fans have dubbed her the "Snow Princess." Gu's story is well known in China and the lead up to the winter games her face can be seen on billboards, bus stop posters and magazine covers. Gu has become the unofficial face of China's Olympic ambitions while raking a small fortune from a slew of sponsors selling sports equipment and high fashion.
Born and raised in San Francisco, in her Olympic sport, Gu has chosen to represent the country from which her mother emigrated, China. She is fluent in Mandarin as a result of spending about a quarter of every year in China to hone up her math and study skills.
I want to cheer for her because of her Asian heritage -- one more mark on the positive side of AAPI -- but the "American" in the AAPI designation, cringes at her performance before the media, which is broadcast or streamed to all of the US networks and platforms.
When asked about her citizenship status -- Chinese or American -- she also demonstrated the art of not directly answering a simple question, a skill to make any politician -- Chinese or American -- envious.
The daughter of her Chinese mother who raised her and an American father little is known about, Gu won her first Olympic gold medal Monday.
The US allows for dual citizenship, but China does not. You're either in or you're out. Official Chinese government media said Gu gave up her US citizenship when she was naturalized as a PRC citizen when she was 15. However, her Olympic bio says she has a dual nationality. So naturally, this piqued journalists' curiosity.
Trying to clear up the confusion, a reporter asked her citizenship status after winning her gold medal.
"I've always been super outspoken in my gratitude to the US and to the US team as well. They have been nothing nut supportive to me, and for that I am forever grateful," Gu responded at a press conference.
"And same to the Chinese team. They have been so, so supportive of me. And so in that sense, I feel like sport is really a way in that we can unite people, it doesn't have to be something that's related to nationality, it's not something that can be used to divide people.
"We are all out here together pushing the human limit."
Nice response but she didn't answer the question. Seeking clarity, another reporter repeated the question again. Again, she hemmed and hawed.
“Yeah, um, first of all, I'm an 18-year old girl. I'm a kid. I haven't even gone to college yet. I'm a pretty normal person . . .”
She ended her non-answer a on a defiant note. “If people don't have a good heart, they won't believe me, because they can't empathize with people who do have a good heart. And so in that sense, I feel as though it's a lot easier to block out the hate now. And also, they're never going to know what it feels like to win an Olympic gold medal.”
Eileen Gu has the right to choose which country she wishes to represent. She is not the first, nor is she the only American on the Olympic team of another country. One of her teammates, figure skater Zhu Yi, from Los Angeles, admitted she renounced her US citizenship in order to compete for China. She is getting raked over the coals for her poor performance on the ice.
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SCREEN CAPTURE China's Eileen Gu has proven quite adept at answering media questions. |
By being so evasive, Gu is unwittingly reinforcing the old trope that all Asian Americans are foreigners giving weight to that familiar insult, "Go back to your country."
Even some of her old teammates on the US Olympics team have made comments that might sound like jealousy for all the attention Gu is attracting, but given the racial climate in the US today, making her look ungrateful for the nation that raised her and trained her, it sounds like a bit of racial animus has creeped into their comments.
My own discomfort about Gu and her citizenship probably says more about me and my state of racial sensitivity than it says about a teenager's difficult decision.
Any Asian American who is visible or has any kind of influence -- whether that person wants to or not, is representing the AAPI community, whether it be online, on the silver screen, on the athletic field or, in the Eileen's case, on the slopes and more importantly, during media events during the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Gu is extremely marketable. Bob Dorfman, a sports-marketing analyst and creative director at Pinnacle Advertising in San Francisco, told Bloomberg that “Eileen’s value is through the roof.” As a model, she has been modeling in Europe, the US and China. Gu has already been featured in campaigns for Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., Victoria’s Secret, and Estée Lauder.
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Many in positions of influence -- such as Daniel Dae Kim, Naomi Osaka, Ken Jeong and Olivia Munn have embraced the responsibility while others have learned, they can't shrug off who they are even as they deny their heritage.
Gu is naive if she thinks the Olympics is nonpolitical and she is simply an athlete trying to do her best. She is a pawn in the ongoing geo-political propaganda battle between the West and China.This political side of the Olympics shows up all the time, but this year the economic and military rivalry between China and the US heating up, it has been unavoidable that politics poke a hole in the Olympic dream. China is accused of human rights abuses, especially in its bully-like takeover of Tibet and its treatment of the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the far western province of Uyghur. In protest, the U.S and other Western nations withheld any official attendance of a government delegation.
US government officials have warned American athletes not to make any political statements or acts during the Winter Games out of fear how China might react.
In Gu's third attempt in the freestyle big air ski event, she was in third place. She needed to score big to overcome her rivals. She decided to do a a double cork 1620, a trick she's never done in competition. She aced it, landing backwards and skiiing backwards to the finish line. The gold medal was hers.
Ski experts, analysts and former coaches note what makes Gu athletically unique is an ability to easily spin in four different directions — left or right while skiing forward or backward.
She's won one gold and will likely end up winning two more. Watch her fly, flip, twist, land; fly, flip, twist, land. Skills Gu honed on the ski slope is proving useful in speaking with journalists.
EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd.
