Writer / Little Tiger Knife & Flower Nagging
Chen Wei and Gu Ailing, who can better represent the Chinese community in the United States?
In the highly watched figure skating men's singles event at the Beijing Winter Olympics, 22-year-old Chinese-American chen Wei won the championship for the American team, setting a new world record.
A few days ago, Gu Ailing just won a gold medal for China in the freestyle ski women's big jump event.
Chen Wei and Gu Ailing have similar backgrounds, both were born in the United States, both are all-round "Hua Second Generation", both are academic champions + Olympic champions, and they are also admitted to the Fujian University.
The two were treated completely differently in the two public opinion fields in China and the United States.
Chen Wei won the championship for the United States, the American media and many Chinese Americans are very happy, at the same time, many Chinese netizens are cold, even ironic.
For Gu Ailing, there are many sour and slippery sarcasm on American social media, and the love of Chinese netizens for her is overflowing.
The US media claimed that the attitude of Chinese netizens towards Chen Wei and Gu Ailing was in stark contrast, alluding to the "nationalism" and "careful eyes" of the Chinese public.
There is also the highest jumping "Gao Hua" group, who claim that Chen Wei is the representative of the Chinese in the United States, and Gu Ailing shows "privileged arrogance."
This makes people have to sigh that China is really strong. With the same talent, China is likely to have a much greater opportunity and space than the United States.
This is also the root cause of the "acid" of those people.
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Chen Wei's success is in part a microcosm of the elite second-generation families of Chinese immigrants to the United States.
In the post-match interview, Chen Wei thanked his mother for the first time. Chen Wei said that without his mother's support, he would not be able to go today.
This is not an empty phrase.
Chen Wei's mother, Wang He, like most Chinese parents who hope to have jackie chan, has paid great attention to the education of her children since she was a child, and has also paid a lot for the growth of her children.
Chen Wei recalls previous training, saying that when he was a child, figure skating training was expensive, and his parents could only afford to train once a week or every two weeks. It was the mother who accompanied herself in every class at that time, and the coach taught while she took notes;
Later, Chen Wei's coach was in Southern California, and it took 12 to 15 hours to drive from Salt Lake City to Southern California, and her mother also drove back and forth.
Since childhood, Chen Wei's costumes have been mostly made by his mother. In the profile of the American team representative, Chen Wei's mother's name also appeared many times and was listed as a costume design.
Born on May 5, 1999, Chen Wei is the fifth child in the family, and has two older brothers, who now work in finance and aerospace, two older sisters, one at Apple and the other as co-founder of a biotechnology company.
Chen Wei's relationship with ice sports began in 2002, when the Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City. Chen Wei, 3, went to the scene with his parents to watch the figure skating game, when he and his two older brothers also played hockey together, but his mother was afraid that he was too young to be injured, so she let him transfer to figure skating.
Later, Chen Wei quickly showed talent in the sport. He began to participate in figure skating competitions at the age of 4, and won the rookie group championship in the National Figure Skating Competition at the age of 10, becoming the smallest national champion in the history of figure skating competitions in the United States at that time, and won his first world championship medal when he participated in the World Figure Skating Championships in Milan at the age of 18.
In 2018, Chen Wei was admitted to Yale University with a score of 800 in SAT mathematics in the US college entrance examination, majoring in statistics. Yale offered conditions that would allow him to work as a professional athlete and a student at the same time: an ice rink for the school's hockey team; classes in the afternoon that could be adjusted at any time; and a professional training rehabilitation program made up of members of the U.S. Olympic Committee awaited his addition.
In this successful immigrant family, Chen Wei's father, Chen Zhidong, is the main source of income.
Chen Zhidong, from Guangxi, was admitted to Guangxi Medical College after the college entrance examination was resumed, entered the Chinese Military Medical College in 1982 for graduate school, and stayed in Beijing to do medical technology research after graduation. In 1987, he was admitted to Southern Illinois University through the TOEFL and received a full scholarship. In 1988, he officially went abroad on a visa, and after completing his master's degree in the United States, he transferred to the University of Utah to pursue a doctorate. After he went to the United States, although Wang He did not understand English, he followed him to the United States to work as a translator in the hospital.
In 1999, the year Chen Zhidong received his Ph.D. in pharmacy from the University of Utah, he and his supervisor partnered to open a pharmaceutical technology research company, and a few years later, they sold the company on track and made a lot of money. In 2003, Chen Zhidong invested the funds he received to open a second pharmaceutical technology research company. Because the research results have great market potential, investors are optimistic, and the second company built with an investment of $1 million sold for $40 million.
With his previous experience and capital accumulation, in 2005, Chen Zhidong opened his own company, owned his own laboratory, and turned his years of research into medical products and put them on the market.
It should be said that this family has been integrated into American society, and it can also be said to be successful in the education of children, but unlike Gu Ailing, who thinks of herself as a "Beijing girl", Chen Wei will not say a word of Chinese.
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Chinese teenagers won gold for the American team at the Beijing Winter Olympics, but many Chinese netizens had a cold attitude, which attracted the attention of foreign media.
A netizen on Weibo left a message saying: Compared with Chen Wei, I prefer the tessa of the American ski team, she is warm and polite, coming to China to participate in the Winter Olympics looks very happy and full of goodwill, Chen Wei's "insulting China" black history really makes me down.
Some netizens summed up Chen Wei's controversial remarks in the past, saying that I just hated as a person who wanted to take advantage of his Chinese identity as a political speculator, and did not have the spirit of sportsmanship and wanted to take advantage of rule loopholes and nationality moisture athletes.
As a result, the US media quickly reported that "Chinese figure skater Chen Wei won the championship and was coldly treated in China."
Is Chen Wei "coldly treated" because he played for the American team?
Apparently not.
At a news conference after the victory, Chen Wei simply refused to use Chinese to answer questions from local reporters, insisting that his Mandarin was "not very good."
However, in addition to being "not very good" in Mandarin, Chen Wei also seems to be "not very good" when expressing himself in English.
In July last year, Chen Wei caused an uproar over discriminatory remarks on a podcast.
In the show, he admitted that figure skating is more feminine and feminine than the masculine sport of hockey, and he often feels degraded as a straight male athlete, and the words imply a sense of unfairness.
It's hard to imagine that this stereotypical statement about figure skating comes from a figure skater.
Then, under the pressure of the surging criticism, Chen Wei reacted quickly and quickly posted a video of his apology on Twitter.
When it comes to China, Chen Wei reacts more like an "American."
Last October, Chen Wei was asked to respond to remarks by American figure skater Evan Bates, who replied to the so-called "human rights question" about China's Xinjiang, "It's terrible... We hate what happens there."
Chen Wei said at the time: "I agree with Evan, I think if there is to be a bigger change, there must be power beyond the Olympics. ...... Now that people are already talking about it and the Olympics are exposing it, it's already a step in the right direction. ”
Chen Wei's teammate, Zhou Zhifang, who is also Chinese-American, also said: "We agree with Evan' point of view, but we still want to focus on our own game. ”
In contrast, another of Chen's teammates, Madison Joker, who also has Chinese ancestry, said all of his past experiences in China have been very positive.
Although Chen Wei does not have a high degree of identification with his Chinese identity, he chose a highly controversial background music at the last Winter Olympics that is considered to be provocative to China's political system.
He later explained that the music was chosen by the choreography team, and he himself didn't know the story, but just thought the music was beautiful.
Unlike Chen Wei's previous response to a quick apology in the face of criticism on Twitter, Chen Wei obviously doesn't care much about the criticism of him on Chinese social media. He just shrugged in an interview after the Gold Medal, saying, "I don't have a Weibo account, I don't care about that, social media is toxic at times." ”
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In stark contrast to Chen Wei is the Sunshine Maiden Gu Ailing.
Their growth experience is very similar: they were all born in the United States, they are all all-round "Hua Second Generation", they are all academic champions + Olympic champions, and they are also admitted to the Ivy League.
The difference is that Gu Ailing chose to fight for China, while for Chen Wei, he is an American.
Today, Gu Ailing has won the endorsement of more than 30 well-known brands, and is the darling of the sports and fashion industry, while Chen Wei's aura is much weaker in comparison.
Regardless of the attitude of Gu and Chen toward China, this comparison shows at least one thing, that is, with China's rapid development, the same talent can be obtained in China no less opportunities than the United States, or even far greater than the United States.
Such a contrast obviously makes it difficult for some people to adapt. In addition to the Western media that has been wearing colored glasses, there is another group that dances the highest, that is, the "Gao Hua".
The so-called "Gao Hua" refers to the "high-level Chinese" group that left China for Europe and the United States in the early years and believed that they had integrated into the Western elite.
They claim that Chen Wei is the role model for Chinese Americans, and Gu Ailing represents "the arrogance of privilege."
This is the fragile and narrow self-esteem at work - they can't see their own country of origin, as if the worse China is, the more it can reflect the correct choice they made.
Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s, some people even borrowed usurious loans to go to the United States to brush dishes, which was a true portrayal of the strength of China and the United States at that time, and it was understandable to make such a choice. But as China grew with a new wave of change, the days of Chinese became better and better, and those who claimed to be "superior" began to lose.
The new generation of young people, who do not carry the shackles of the Cold War and ideology, do not have the "I must be better than you" competition, they are not seeing a hostile bipolar world, but a new change brought about by globalization. This means a broader perspective and more room for personal development for them. Gu Ailing is one of the representatives.
With the development of China, this sour energy of the "Gaohua" will slowly become history, just like their past experiences.
Chen Wei and Gu Ailing represent two very different paths. As an individual, there is nothing wrong with life choices. But the imprint they left behind will surely be a different footnote to the great history, and when they look back in a few decades, it will be clearer.
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