After main Staff USA to a silver medal within the group determine skating competitors and profitable his first Olympic gold within the males’s particular person occasion, Nathan Chen has been slammed on Weibo, the Chinese language equal of Twitter.
The 22-year-old Chinese language American was labeled a “traitor” on the social media platform for selecting to signify the US, and was even informed to “get out of China.” After his victory Thursday, some on Weibo complained that Chen was “too white” and Americanized, citing an extended checklist of examples the place they thought Chen was “insulting China” together with his actions.
Chen has beforehand refused to talk Chinese language in interviews, claiming that his Mandarin “isn’t superb.”
The Yale scholar put his help behind American ice dancer Evan Bates’ condemnation of China’s human rights abuses in an October interview. On the time, Bates got here down exhausting on China’s “terrible” therapy of the Uyghur folks. The US didn't ship any diplomats to the Winter Olympics in Beijing due to the host nation’s “egregious human rights abuses and atrocities.”
In line with Reuters, Bates mentioned, “We’re human beings, too, and once we learn and listen to in regards to the issues which might be occurring there, we completely hate that. We hate what’s occurring there,” throughout a US Olympic and Paralympic Committee occasion.
“I agree with what Evan was saying,” Chen added. “I feel that for a better change to happen, there have to be energy that's past the Olympics.”
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Pushback in opposition to Chen started throughout his first Olympics in 2018 when he carried out one in every of his routines to a music from the film “Mao’s Final Dance,” which is a retelling of a Chinese language dancer’s defection to the US in the course of the Eighties. Chen claims he had no information of the movie earlier than performing to the music.
“Perhaps naively, I didn’t perceive the entire system, the entire story behind it, simply that the music was very lovely,” he mentioned Friday, including that the music was chosen by his choreographer.
Chen has not responded to any of the vitriol towards him and has solely mentioned that he's pleased with being Chinese language American. He mentioned it hasn’t been tough to keep away from the web barrage as a result of he doesn’t have entry to the platforms in China.
“I don’t have social media right here. So I most likely have been very sheltered from that. And I don’t plan on social since generally social (media) could be a little poisonous,” he mentioned.
He has additionally mentioned the significance of Beijing, the place the place his dad and mom first met.
“It means the world to have the ability to be right here. My mother grew up in Beijing … And naturally, my dad spent a number of time in Beijing as nicely.”
Chen has been in comparison with fellow US-born athletes Eileen Gu and Zhu Yi, each of whom are competing for China on the Winter Video games. Gu, a freestyle skier, received gold in ladies’s massive air, and was lauded as a Chinese language nationwide hero. The 18-year-old, who plans to attend Stanford subsequent yr, has been labeled “Miss Good” on Weibo for her snowboarding abilities, modeling profession and ideal Mandarin.
Prior to now week, Gu has defended China’s web censorship, which was promptly criticized on Twitter and Instagram by those that thought her response was out of contact with the precise experiences of these residing in China.
Within the group determine skating occasion, Zhu faltered and fell twice, dropping China from third to fifth place. The hashtag “Zhu Yi has fallen” trended on Weibo after her stumble. Customers informed the 19-year-old to “return to America” and mentioned she introduced “disgrace” to China. Zhu, whose household relocated from California to Beijing, has been broadly criticized for her lack of fluency in Mandarin and for being what's deemed “too American.”
Zhu renounced her US citizenship to signify China, and whereas it's unknown whether or not Gu did the identical, it's historically a requirement to compete for China.
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