Eileen Gu is a unique product of the Bay Area and America. And she deserves more compassion and pride.
Unfortunately- the duality mentality (and understandable craving for identity and simplified archetypes behind it) leads us to a divisive and broken world… Why can’t we be both and see the best in both worlds through a lens of unity and non-duality?? Questions like these are everywhere. ”Is she a skier or a supermodel? A goofy teenager or a global icon? A bookish Stanford student (accepted, deferred admission for a year) or a social media influencer? Is she Chinese or American?”
Many of the comments below her NYT essay and other articles were so mean, making the worst assumptions that all her interests are with $$$ and that she was a puppet of her mom, a tiger Asian mom (and a successful career woman and a single parent).
Eileen Gu wrote eloquently and heartfelt about fear in her NYT essay. Still, unfortunately, the failure to see her beautiful minds and extreme drive for excellence and personal evolution for the better was also driven by fears. The fear for the rise of China, the fear for immigrants raising the bar for the competition. All very familiar. At age 18, she got everything. A rare combination of a beautiful mind, work ethic, and the status of a world-class athlete. Can’t we give her some blessings?
She got the best of both worlds, and she deserves some compassion and pride from her fellow Americans and Bay area residents. (although with highly curated efforts and expensive PR professionals it can be really hard to tell where the motivation for Gu and her family primarily lies, unity & bridge-building & women empowerment, or fame & commercial gains, and could be both)
This NYT piece got the nut graph spot on — “She flits into the Olympics with hopes of winning three gold medals. But her most difficult trick might be flying above the geopolitical fray of these Olympics … and coming down safely, straddling the growing rift of two superpowers.” .
However, the dilemma is that most people outside China (except for those Asian Americans with Chinese lineage) do NOT differentiate and are not keenly aware that Chinese culture and heritage is NOT the SAME THING as Chinese government and institution (look at Singapore and Taiwan). It does not help that the Chinese government (and the product of their censored media, Chinese nationalists which is to say most of those behind that Great Firewall) take control and own the narrative of the word “china” and “Chinese”. Making it challenging for those who are caught in between. Those fellow human beings who bear the American dream and strive to be better in this land of freedom also want to hold on to their own culture and heritage, their family and friends back in China.
And the irony, of course, is that this free-spirited gold medalist representing China today probably would never have been so free in expressing herself (through freestyle skiing or other endeavors) and be where she is today, had she spent 12 out of 12 months (vs. 1 out of 12) in China every year, and went w/ the exact training schedules her fellow athletes in china do.
There are so many dimensions of Eileen Gu’s story, one could look from the lens of sports and nationality, immigration and immigrants; education western vs Asian; or identity, women empowerment. or China’s turn for the darker. so many. But there is an angle of accessibility/equality and prestige as welll. While we pride Eileen Gu (and, for that matter, Chole Zhao of Nomad Land, who won the Oscar as a 1st generation American filmmaker) essential to note that both Zhao and Gu are from VERY prestigious families in Beijing. Still, that does not make their achievement less impressive. (they are both excellent human beings who happen to have the right nurturing environment. Zhao went to an exclusive private school in the UK at an early age, so did Gu from K to 12 in San Francisco) I only wish more equally brilliant human beings could have that as well. Either in China or here in the US.
