{"id":208049,"date":"2026-03-06T23:01:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T23:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/208049\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T23:01:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T23:01:40","slug":"on-social-media-eileen-gus-called-a-traitor-in-chinatown-shes-welcomed-as-a-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/208049\/","title":{"rendered":"On social media, Eileen Gu\u2019s called a traitor. In Chinatown, she\u2019s welcomed as a daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

When six-time Olympic medalist Eileen Gu rides atop an open convertible Saturday as grand marshal of San Francisco\u2019s Chinese New Year Parade, she\u2019ll be representing her family, her community, and the city of her birth. But she\u2019ll also be embodying what it means to be American at a time of warring narratives over nationalism, loyalty, and identity.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot for one freestyle skier to bear.<\/p>\n

Gu, 22, is one of San Francisco\u2019s most decorated athletes. She is also one of its most hated, having rejected Team USA to compete for her mother\u2019s native China for the past seven years. As Gu collected one medal (opens in new tab)<\/a> after another (opens in new tab)<\/a> after another (opens in new tab)<\/a> at the Winter Olympics in February, she faced a cascade of criticism from everyone from Vice President JD Vance to members of Congress to former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The social media attacks on Gu were made more vicious by comparisons to fellow Bay Area gold medalist Alysa Liu, who competed for Team USA in figure skating and whose Chinese heritage carries its own symbolism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Liu is the daughter of a single father who fled China as a dissident after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Gu, by contrast, was raised by a single mother who worked as a venture capitalist specializing in Chinese investments and brought her Mandarin-speaking daughter home to Beijing every summer. Memes, some shared by U.S. politicians (opens in new tab)<\/a>, juxtaposed photos of the two athletes next to the message, \u201cBe an Alysa Liu,\u201d casting them as moral opposites in a clash of civilizations.<\/p>\n

But in Gu\u2019s native San Francisco, that ire and contempt softens. Accusations that she is a traitor carry far less weight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t bother us a bit,\u201d said San Francisco Chinatown community organizer David Ho.<\/p>\n

Ho, born in Macao and raised in the Sunset, said parade organizers approved Gu as grand marshal more than six months ago, before this Olympic cycle pushed her back into the spotlight as a political lightning rod.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted her in 2023, 2024, or 2025,\u201d Ho said. \u201cIt just happened that this year the Lunar New Year fell after the Winter Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Gu\u2019s choice to compete for China has made her a geopolitical Rorschach test, in San Francisco\u2019s Chinese American community, her success is seen less as betrayal than as affirmation. The community has largely rallied to her cause and closed ranks around a woman most see as one of their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s dozens of athletes who are American but represent other countries, and so what\u2019s the big deal about her?\u201d asked San Francisco State University sociologist Russell Jeung, a fifth-generation Chinese American and cofounder of Stop AAPI Hate. \u201cIt\u2019s because she\u2019s representing China and because she\u2019s so good. I think what we need to do is go beyond this exclusive allegiance to America in this sort of xenophobic patriotism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gu was raised in the Sea Cliff neighborhood and attended Katherine Delmar Burke School, San Francisco University High School, and Stanford University. She grew up attending the Lunar New Year parade, which draws as many as 200,000 spectators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A\u201cThere\u2019s dozens of athletes who are American but represent other countries,\u201d said San Francisco State University sociologist Russell Jeung, \u201dand so what\u2019s the big deal about her?\u201d\u200b | Source: Hector Vivas<\/p>\n

The parade was created by early Chinese immigrants to share their culture with the wider community. The city\u2019s Chinatown, the oldest in North America, now hosts one of the largest Lunar New Year celebrations outside of Asia. Ho said organizers don\u2019t ask if participants are U.S. citizens, nor do they care if anyone\u2019s a Chinese citizen. Social media posts across Facebook and Nextdoor have called on people to boycott the celebration due to Gu\u2019s presence, but that hasn\u2019t deterred Ho.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, we understand the uproar around Eileen Gu,\u201d Ho said. \u201cBut she was born and raised here, and we want to celebrate her. We\u2019re not going to make her a martyr over geopolitics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The outrage toward Gu cannot be disentangled from broader tensions between the U.S. and China.\u00a0Tennessee Republican Rep. Andy Ogles wrote on X (opens in new tab)<\/a> that Gu was \u201cworking for Communist China,\u201d and there \u201cmust be consequences\u201d for Americans who support adversaries.<\/p>\n

The debate has taken on symbolic overtones with the rise of Liu as a newly minted, all-American hero, her frenulum piercing and striped hair standing as representations of her nonconformity and individuality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt creates this dynamic of the good immigrant\/bad immigrant, or the good minority\/bad minority,\u201d Jeung said. \u201cIt creates an us-versus-them dynamic that has led to a lot of the polarization and demonization of other immigrants in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s this sort of cancel-culture, political vitriol that\u2019s actually sort of authoritarian and fascist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gu was reportedly the highest-paid athlete at the Milan Cortina Games, earning $23.1 million annually, according to Forbes, though only about $100,000 came directly from skiing. Records from the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau indicate that Gu and U.S.-born figure skater Zhu Yi were paid a combined $6.6 million in 2025 as part of a reported $14 million over three years to support training for the Milan Cortina Games.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t get to enjoy the freedoms of U.S. citizenship while acting as a global PR asset for the Chinese Communist Party,\u201d Kanter Freedom wrote on X (opens in new tab)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"ASpectators wave to politicians participating in the 2025 Chinese New Year Parade. | Source: Magali Gauthier for The Standard<\/p>\n

For some Chinese Americans, the scrutiny aimed at Gu fits into a broader climate of suspicion and bias aimed at Asians. Anti-immigrant enforcement has heightened these concerns, especially in immigrant-dense neighborhoods like Chinatown. According to research from UCLA (opens in new tab)<\/a>, the number of Asian people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement more than tripled since President Donald Trump took office, rising from 1,054 in February to July 2024 to 3,705 during the same months in 2025. Around 30% of Asian people arrested were from China.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Vance recently said he roots for athletes who \u201cidentify as Americans,\u201d the subtext was clear. But his comments rallied some members of the Chinese American community closer to Gu.<\/p>\n

Today<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

2 days ago<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

6 days ago<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like this idea of not being totally American, or where do Chinese Americans sit within American society and culture?\u201d said Jenny Leung, executive director of the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco. \u201cHow does American society in general view immigrants and diversity? I think we feel immigrants and our community in Chinatown and Chinese Americans really add to the beauty and diversity of America. I think Eileen as a public figure really just adds to that conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gu has largely refused to engage in geopolitical debates, saying repeatedly, \u201cWhen I\u2019m in the U.S., I\u2019m American, but when I\u2019m in China, I\u2019m Chinese.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet Gu\u2019s silence on matters ranging from China\u2019s oppression of the Uyghur people to the imprisonment of Hong Kong free-speech advocate Jimmy Lai has been interpreted by some as complicity \u2014 a standard that community leaders say reflects broader suspicion toward China and, by extension, Chinese Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cSadly, she\u2019s faced unfair hate online,\u201d said Jonathan Wen of the San Francisco-based anti-hate group Dear Community. \u201cSome haters seem obsessed with her precisely because she\u2019s intelligent, talented, and beautiful. The intensity isn\u2019t really about her choices; it\u2019s tied to resentment toward China as a global power. Other American athletes who\u2019ve competed for different countries haven\u2019t faced anything close to this vitriol.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ho didn\u2019t know if Gu\u2019s team would have extra security Saturday, but noted that private security and SFPD officers are always on hand for the parade. The SFPD said in a statement, \u201cWe will have additional officers working in and around the parade route as we do every year to address any public safety issue to ensure the safety of all those participating and attending the event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ho has received hate mail about Gu\u2019s role but said it came primarily from \u201cghost accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gu might not get the kind of hero\u2019s welcome Liu received when she landed at SFO, nor will her face be scrawled across a mural in Oakland, even as it\u2019s plastered on billboards around China. But for one day at least, Chinatown intends to celebrate Gu\u2019s success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all in on her,\u201d Ho said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When six-time Olympic medalist Eileen Gu rides atop an open convertible Saturday as grand marshal of San Francisco\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[13005,61032,10012,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-208049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-chinatown","9":"tag-lunar-new-year","10":"tag-olympics","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}