I Used to Feel Guilty Rooting for China. Olympian Eileen Gu Vindicated Me.
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“So who do you root for?” asked my boyfriend, as we watched skateboarders soar over a concrete skate park at the 2021 summer Olympics. “China or the US?”
The question seemed innocuous enough, yet the stakes felt high. Having emigrated at 8-years-old, I thought of my Chinese passport, specifically the corner of my passport that US immigration officials hacked off when I renounced my citizenship, becoming a naturalized American. Did my allegiances lie with the country of my birth and heritage, I wondered, or with the country of my home and precious autonomy?
“China?” I supposed, guiltily.
Time quieted this dissonance for several months. Then stories about world champion freestyle skier Eileen Gu began appearing on my social media news feeds, crystallizing this internal tension once more. Born in San Francisco to a Chinese mother and white American father, Gu had announced in 2019 that she would be competing for China in this year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, where she’s poised to win gold in slopestyle, big air and half-pipe. Her decision vindicated my decision to cheer for China as an American citizen.
“This was an incredibly tough decision for me to make. I am proud of my heritage, and equally proud of my American upbringing,” she wrote in an Instagram caption. “The opportunity to help inspire millions of young people where my mom was born, during the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help to promote the sport I love.”
Since her announcement, the 18-year-old star’s remarkable journey to the games has been mired in controversy. In social media posts and comment sections, Gu has been called a traitor, a commie rat, and a tool for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the same time, some of Eileen’s most vocal critics are fellow Chinese Americans. They argue that by competing for China, Gu condones the ongoing persecution of the minority Uighurs in western China, the violent 2019-2020 Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, and the mysterious detention of Peng Shuai, the three-time Olympian and tennis star who accused a former CCP official of sexual assault in 2021.
And I get it. Even though I root for Team China at the Olympics and am absolutely tickled when we’re ahead in the medals tally, I would never in a million years renounce my decision to become an American citizen. I can’t even fathom it.
But in this case, identity isn’t a matter of foreign policy. It’s a matter of the heart. For immigrants like me and first-generation Americans like Gu, the “China or America?” ultimatum poses a false dichotomy. This reaffirms the notion that expressing love for one’s Chinese culture is akin to signing a blood oath to the CCP, a logical fallacy perpetuated by mainstream media that stokes a vicious cycle of anti-Asian bias and racism, however inadvertent. Gu is not a pawn in some grand geopolitical strife. She’s a young woman who grew up straddling two worlds, a feat that I’ll bet is even more complicated than the gravity-defying flips she’ll be performing this week.
When I was Eileen’s age, still fumbling through adolescence as one of only three kids of color in my senior high school class, American was all I wanted to be. I imagined banishing my Chinese heritage—the kitchen slippers, my scolding parents, the endless ways to eat pork—to be reborn in the image of my adopted homeland: white, perfect, and normal. Even now in adulthood, I reckon with what it means to be Asian American. To be Asian in America is to be a goodlittlehardworking model minority, constantly reminded of your proximity to whiteness. Practically white, but not quite.
But the model minority is an illusion. We make up the most educated demographic in this country, with 54 percent of Asians 25 years and older having bachelor's degrees, compared to 33 percent among the general populace. And yet our community constitutes only 2.6 percent of leadership at Fortune 500 companies. Even when we are hardworking, doing everything white and right, the slanty-eye jokes and passive aggressive stereotypes persist. Even when we are stabbed, punched, and shoved into subway tracks, our suffering goes unnoticed among our peers, ignored in our history textbooks and civil rights discourses.
For so many years, I felt like an outsider with no choice but to alienate my heritage and culture. Age and experience have helped me course-correct. There’s also the added benefit of living in New York City, where I’m surrounded by Asian and Asian American communities, no longer one of three. That’s why I root for China. To be honest, I’ve never cared for skiing. I hadn’t even heard of freestyle skiing before Gu popped up on my radar. But I’ll be watching and rooting for her at this year’s games. Because her decision to ski for China is a validation that I didn’t know I had been yearning for. Finally, I’ve learned how to be proud again. And as an Asian American, pride is all we’ve got for now.
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