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The face of China’s sporting dreams at this year’s Beijing Winter Olympics is undeniably American.
Eileen Gu’s meteoric rise to the top has been meteoric, and her popularity in China has exploded in the run-up to the Games. “Snow princess Gu Ailing ready to excel at home Olympics,” one headline in China’s state-run media Xinhua said, referring to Gu by her Chinese name.
Gu, however, has a second home: the United States, where she was born to a Chinese mother and an American father, and where she developed her love for the sport.
Only a few months after reaching her first World Cup podium, the San Francisco native revealed her intention to race for China rather than the United States, a contentious choice that catapulted her firmly into the limelight.
“This was an extraordinarily difficult decision for me to make,” she said at the time in an Instagram post. “I am proud of my background as well as my American upbringing.”
Since then, she has become a household name in China. As you go down the street, you’ll notice her face on billboards and magazine covers. Gu is shown in promotional movies for the Olympics performing feats in midair and jogging on the Great Wall. She has roughly 2 million followers on the Chinese social media network Weibo, as well as a slew of Chinese sponsors, marketing partnerships, and documentary crews keeping tabs on her every move.
However, behind her achievement is the strong pressure of being both Chinese and American at a time of intense regional tensions; of representing her mother’s homeland, a nation under fire in the West for alleged human rights violations; and of attempting to be an athlete and nothing more during one of the most contentious Olympics in recent history.
She isn’t the only one walking this tightrope; the Beijing Olympics feature an unprecedented number of foreign-born athletes representing China, many of whom are from North America. Gu has become a poster child for an ambitious China eager to demonstrate its ability to attract foreign talent and shape a new type of Chinese athlete on the world stage.
However, as they straddle two countries and navigate the complexities of a dual identity in the public eye, these athletes, particularly those of Chinese descent, face an impossible balancing act.
