This Winter Olympics, many Chinese Americans are performing and attracting attention. Some compete for Team China, many more are competing for Team USA. The phenomenon of the rise of Chinese Americans in winter sports is described by New York Times: The Asian American Pipeline in Figure Skating:
For the second consecutive Winter Games, four of the six figure skaters who arrived to represent the United States in the singles events were Asian American: Karen Chen, Nathan Chen, Alysa Liu and Vincent Zhou. A fifth Asian American skater, Madison Chock, is competing in the ice dancing event.
Nathan Chen has been dominating the men’s figure skating for the last three years. He is called the “Quadruple King” because he can do all kinds of quadruples. He is 22 year old and he just won the gold medal. Here is a few photos of him on ice:
Black version:
And orange again:
Some say that his costume is designed by Vera Wang, a Chinese American fashion designer who is most famous for her wedding dresses. The above design makes Nathan looks like a lava lamp, some complains.
Nathan Chen has a Chinese name but he is not that fluent in Chinese. Despite being the first ethnic Chinese that wins this gold medal, he was not on top of the Chinese social media talking list. But in the USA, he is very much celebrated.
Why is he ignored by his parents’ birth country? Well, in normal time, Chinese people being Chinese, they would be very happy, because a Chinese anywhere belongs to China. I am not kidding. LOL.
But this is not normal time. China has approached Nathan to naturalize him so that he can compete for Team China. He said no.
So, now he is considered a traitor to China. When the Chinese media reported the men’s figure skating, they did not even mention the winner of the gold medal:
(rough translation): # Jin Boyang ranked number 9 # Men’s figure skating.Japanese Yuma Kagiyama got silver and Shoma Uno got bronze. Yuzuru Hanyu ranked number 4, Chinese athlete Jin Boyang got total score of 270.43 and ranked number 9. This is very good already. Thank you for your excellent performance.
There are a few more reasons than his refusal to compete for Team China.
First, he is not silent on human rights issues in China, he admitted to the US press that there is a grave violation of human rights.
Also, Chinese netizens found out that in the 2018 Olympic games, Nathan used music from Mao’s Last Dancer, which is a movie about a Chinese ballet dancer who defected to the USA in the 70s.
So, he indeed is a traitor.
So, if Chinese people don’t care much about Nathan Chen, who are they talking about? Yuzuru Hanyu.
Yuzu is an idol for Nathan as well. He has been on ice for a while (he is 27) and he has won two Olympic gold medals. This time he only got fourth place. But he has a very strong fan base in Asia, including China.
BTW, did you recognize his name? We talked about his love of Winnie the Pooh in our previous newsletter.
Here is a few photos of him on ice:
And this:
And this:
As you can see, Yuzu and Nathan have very different styles.
On Chinese social media, people can’t stop talking about him. How artistic and graceful his performances are. Even though he did not get any medal, he gives it all….. And who is Nathan? We hate the traitor more than we hate the Japanese….. I am just kidding.
If you like watch figure skating, it is probably worthwhile to find their videos on YouTube and see for yourself. The styles of the two men can not be more different, but both are delightful to watch.
Peace!