Beijing Olympics 2022: US born figure skater Zhu Yi under attack after fall

Zhu Yi, a California native who made her Olympic debut for Team China, was keen to impress the Chinese fans.

Instead, after falling flat on the ice and finishing last in the women’s short programme team event on Sunday, the 19-year-old is facing a firestorm on Chinese social media.

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The hashtag “Zhu Yi has fallen” got 200 million views in just a few hours on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform. Many people questioned why Zhu, an American-born skater, was chosen to represent China over a Chinese athlete.

“This is such a disgrace,” said a comment with 11,000 upvotes.

The hashtag appeared to be banned by Sunday evening. It’s not clear why.

On the second day of the figure skating team event, Zhu was the first to compete, gliding into the ice rink to the enthusiasm of the largely Chinese crowd at Beijing’s Capital Indoor Stadium.

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However, following a failed jump in the first combination, she tumbled and smashed against the wall, and later in the performance, she missed another jump, concluding with the lowest score of the competition.

As a result, China dropped from third to fifth place in the standings, just making it through to the next round of competition.

“I’m upset and a little embarrassed,” Zhu said after the race, wiping her tears.

“I guess I felt a lot of pressure because I know everybody in China was pretty surprised with the selection for ladies’ singles and I just really wanted to show them what I was able to do but unfortunately I didn’t.”

Medal counts have long been pushed by the Chinese government as a measure of national strength, thus Chinese athletes are under a lot of pressure to perform well at the Olympics. Many people have received blowback in the past due to bad performance.

At least a dozen foreign-born athletes have been recruited by China in recent years in an effort to boost the country’s medal total at the Winter Olympics. The attack on her, however, emphasises the strain that naturalised athletes feel when competing under the Chinese flag.

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Zhu, who was born in Los Angeles to a Chinese immigrant family, gave up her American citizenship to compete for China in 2018. Beverly Zhu became Zhu Yi, and she changed her name from Beverly Zhu to Zhu Yi.

In China, though, she has been chastised for not speaking the language fluently.

“Please let her learn Chinese first, before she talks about patriotism,” a Weibo user said on Sunday.

Others have criticised her for her allegedly privileged upbringing and familial links. Zhu Songchun, Zhu’s father, is a renowned artificial intelligence researcher. In 2020, he transferred to Peking University from the University of California, Los Angeles.

The attack on Zhu contrasts sharply with the enormous popularity of Eileen Gu, a freeskiing prodigy from California who is also competing for China.

With her perfect Mandarin and acquaintance with Chinese culture, the 18-year-old has charmed the Chinese audience. She grew up spending summer vacations in Beijing. She has become the unofficial face of the Winter Olympics in China, appearing frequently in state-run media to promote winter sports and in advertising for Chinese companies.

Gu is set to compete in the women’s freeski big air qualification event on Monday morning. The hashtag “Eileen Gu’s first show” is trending on Weibo, where Gu has 1.9 million followers, with more than 300 million views as of Sunday night.