Posted on 02/07/2022 6:13:43 PM PST by nickcarraway
US-born figure skater Zhu Yi has come under fire from Chinese fans on social media after a fall on her Winter Olympics debut for Team China.
The 19-year-old Californian fell flat on the ice during her routine on Sunday (Feb 6), finishing last in the Beijing 2022 women’s short programme team event.
The hashtag “Zhu Yi has fallen” quickly became a top trending topic on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform, gaining 200 million views in just a few hours, before it was later seemingly censored.
Zhu’s selection for the Games had already been a controversial topic, after she was picked at the expense of a China-born athlete.
Born in Los Angeles to a Chinese immigrant family, she reportedly came close to opting to represent the US, but gave up her American citizenship to represent China in 2018, and changed her name from Beverly Zhu.
“Shame on Zhu Yi,” one netizen wrote on Weibo after her routine on Sunday.
“Zhu Yi, how ridiculous your performance is!” another user said. “How dare you skate for China? You cannot even hold a candle to an amateur!”
Another comment, with 11,000 upvotes, said “this is such a disgrace”.
Zhu was cheered by the Chinese crowd at Beijing’s Capital Indoor Stadium, on what was the second day of competition for the figure skating team event.
But she crashed into the wall after messing up a jump in her opening combination, and then failed another jump to finish with the lowest score — which knocked China down from third to fifth in the team standings.
“I’m upset and a little embarrassed,” Zhu said after her performance, as she wiped away 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.”
Zhu cannot speak fluent Chinese, something which has also drawn criticism on Weibo.
“Please let her learn Chinese first, before she talks about patriotism,” one Weibo user said.
Other fans also insisted her selection was down to her family ties. Her father Zhu Songchun is an award-winning artificial intelligence scientist, who joined Peking University in 2020 from the University of California, Los Angeles.
“I just felt very sad that I couldn’t do better and help [China] during this team event but I’m very grateful to have them, and have them cheering for me,” Zhu added.
Zhu’s treatment by Chinese fans is in stark contrast to that of Eileen Gu, another US-born athlete represent China at these Games.
The 18-year-old freestyle skier Gu has fluent Mandarin and spent summer holidays in Beijing as a child.
Gu has 1.9 million followers on Weibo, and has become the face of these Olympics for China, with her debut in Monday’s freeski big air qualifications highly-anticipated on Chinese social media.
What a shame.
I always enjoy a nice cup of Schadenfreude.
Operation “Fried Ice” worked!
Natural born citizen?
Not everybody born here is.
The children of foreigners are who the founders were excluding with the natural born citizen clause.
Her father is a renowned computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence and previously taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, before transferring to Peking University in Beijing.
She may have been made in the USA but . . . .
Gotta love Google Translate
How else can you translate ‘Schadenfreude’ into Chinese:
惡意的喜悅
I feel sorry for the girl, Chinese people are arrogant and hard to please. We have plenty of U.S. citizens who speak English quite well but are not patriotic at all (including our "leaders"). Should have nothing to do with patriotism. The girl gave up her U.S. citizenship a bit early, shame on her.
And she's off to joing the Uighur slave labor.
I think she’s in real danger. Chinese, and especially the CCP, do not like to lose face. I bet Xi is pissed.
It pissed me off for the Tokyo Games, that tennis player who hadn’t lived in Japan since she was 3 and couldn’t speak the language, not only competed for Japan, but lit the Olympic Flame.
Send her to the work camps Xi!
惡意的喜悅
Wouldn’t this make a nice t-shirt??
Someone should send her one. Of course, with all of Slo Joes supply chain crap going on, she wouldn’t get it in time for the next Olympics.
Who has got first dibs on her harvested organs? The ChiComs are running low on Uighurs so an American-raised, failed traitor should be a good substitute source.
If her parents are Chinese immigrants, you would think they would speak Chinese to her growing up. If not, then she is Americanized. So what's the deal?
The CCP will likely subject her to twice-daily anal swab COVID testing.
She still gives China a shot at beating Japan at cosplay.
Nobody loves a traitor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.