Da Hsuan Feng: My Reaction to the saga of Zhu Yi
February 16 , 2022
By Da Hsuan Feng, academic advisor of Center for China and Globalization (CCG) and former Vice President for Research at the University of Texas at Dallas.
The competition was so exciting, and the accompanying human stories so heartwarming, so much so that from the United States, we (and I am not an exception) have forgotten that there is an unfortunate story of another US born Chinese participant Ms. Zhu Yi in the women figure skating competition. The story of Ms. Zhu deserves no less of our attention and empathy!
Well, thanks to the Western media, who seems to have the propensity that whenever there is the slightest opportunity to denigrate the entire Beijing Olympics, and in Zhu Yi’s case certainly the opportunity presented itself and immediately did what the Chinese proverb says,见缝插针, or see a seam and stick a needle into it! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsEUSrpodTA The Zhu Yi Olympic Figure Skater Fiasco Explained.)
What this video reported is the unfortunate situation where because Zhu Yi had a fall in her performance and thus knocked her out of having any medal possibility, it instigated a massive number of the Chinese netizens to severely criticized her. Without the slightest knowledge and based entirely by hearsay, the netizens “accused” her of leveraging her father’s influence
to get her to become a member of team-China. I presume de facto what the netizens were saying was that the fact that she fell (which can happen to the best in such competitions, like Nathan Chen did in the last Olympics) and therefore she must not be as good as she says, that she had taken the place of someone more skillful than her to be on team-China, and thus by extrapolation prevented China winning a medal, “probably” a gold medal.
If one would only give a moment of reflection on what the netizens said, to say that it is filled with “stupidity” is already being generous to them.
Fortunately, there are people in this world who knew and can speak the truth. The following video, which carries the title 朱易回国来龙去脉:网暴朱易的喷子们,于个人为无良,于国家为祸害 (google translation: The ins and outs of Zhu Yi’s return to China: The trolls who attacked Zhu Yi on the Internet are considered unscrupulous for individuals and a scourge for the country) https://v.ixigua.com/LnGjoUA/is one of them.
What this video said was that Zhu Yi’s father Professor Zhu Song-Chun(朱松纯) a world-renowned computer vision, cognitive, artificial intelligence and robotics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song-Chun_Zhu) “utilized” his influence to get Zhu Yi to become a member of Team-China.
In fact, nothing can be further from the truth.
To the above video, in reality, it was Zhu Yi who first decided to relinquish her US citizenship and with her extremely high-level ability in figure skating, was able to become a member of team-China for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Only after she joined team-China that Peking University and Tsinghua University, the two twin-towers of higher education of China who had intention of building a joint world-class artificial intelligence institute, saw the opportunity to recruit her father Zhu Song-Chun(朱松纯) who was a distinguished and Chairman of the computer science department of UCLA before he was recruited back to China.
Being an academic myself, I really like a comment in this video which I paraphrase as follows: “It is laughable to think that an academic, no matter how good, would have influence in the sports world in China!”
Ironically in this scenario, according to this video, it was because Zhu Song?Chun loved his daughter so much and wanted to be with her, that it was Zhu Yi who is “responsible” for recruiting her father back to China, and not the other way around!
The information carried in this video probably is far more accurate than 99.999% of the accusations made by the netizens.
It is a natural human tendency that when one sees a winner, especially for the Olympics when it places such supreme importance in winning and nationalistic fervor, one tends to gravitate towards him/her. Indeed, in watching these athletes performing actions which very few humans could do so, and adding on our respective national aspirations, it gives us an unusual and profound sense of inner sensation. This was certainly the case in watching Eileen Gu and Nathan Chen, who both won the extremely touted individual gold medals, and gives us a sense of deep disappointment when we saw Zhu Yi fell!
With the above as the preamble, we must remember and recognize that however much we as individuals or nations attach premier importance in winning in the Olympics, it is still a portsmanship, however ultimate it is.
Indeed, the fact that any athlete can compete in such an arena means that he/she is already a winner. Winning any medal in a competition is an icing on the cake, although sometimes the icing seems to vastly overwhelmed the cake!
As for Zhu Yi, I truly wish that she has sufficient mental strength to realize these criticisms will pass, they always do, and that in her she will forever carry the Olympian accolade. In addition, being only a mere 20-year-old youngster, there is bright future awaits her, and that future may even include additional Olympics competitions.
Go Zhu Yi!