2022.02.03 谷爱凌为何抛弃美国队而为中国滑雪？

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Cold warrior: why Eileen Gu ditched Team USA to ski for China
At the Beijing Olympics the superpower rivalry will be played out on the slopes

Feb 3rd 2022 (Updated Feb 16th 2022)

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By Brook Larmer

Eileen Gu had one chance left. It was January 2019, and the newest and youngest member of the us freestyle ski team stared down the Italian mountain course that had foiled her on her first two runs in the World Cup final. In fourth place behind two American teammates, the 15-year-old California schoolgirl needed a dazzling finish to move closer to the goal she’d promised herself – and her mother – since she was a nine-year-old daredevil: competing in the 2022 Winter Olympics, now slated to take place in her mother’s birthplace, Beijing.

In a blur of black and red, Gu sped down the slope. After her final jump – two and a half turns in mid-air to a perfect backward landing – the pixels on the leaderboard rearranged and Gu’s name suddenly appeared in first place, next to the American flag. “It’s unreal!” she screamed. On the podium, sporting her first World Cup gold medal, Gu placed her hand over her heart as the American national anthem began to play. And she sang: “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave. O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”


There was little time to celebrate. As most of her American teammates raced home for the World Championships in Utah, Gu and her mother, Gu Yan, flew off in the opposite direction – to China. Gu spends part of every summer in Beijing, but this detour was unusual. It was hardly the fastest route back to high school in San Francisco. Nor was it, as Gu wrote cryptically six days later on Instagram, “a quick #hongkong pit stop before going home (finally)”. The newly crowned world number-one freestyle skier was going below the radar for a few days because she had a very special meeting to attend.

On February 1st 2019, less than a week after singing the “Star-Spangled Banner”, Gu reappeared in Beijing at an audience with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. The American teenager was now wearing a red-and-white Team China uniform, her bleached-blonde hair falling over the red five-star flag stitched on its front. Among the assembled athletes at the national winter-sports training centre, Gu stood in the front row, just a few feet from Xi, listening intently as he urged them to win honour for the motherland when it hosted its first Winter Olympics. “This is a once-in-a-century opportunity,” Xi told them. Their success, he said, was vital to “the nation’s great rejuvenation”.

“When I’m in the US, I’m American. When I’m in China, I’m Chinese”

Gu has never mentioned this encounter. Nor does it appear in any of the detailed reports and documentaries that Chinese media and Western sponsors have made about her life. But there, among the dozens of state-media photographs of Xi’s visit that day, Eileen Gu appeared, standing next to one of the most powerful men on Earth. After the speech, Xi posed with the athletes under a Chinese flag. It was a typical group photo except that front and centre, two over from Xi, was one of America’s top skiers. Gu’s hair made her stand out, as did her footwear. Whereas the Chinese athletes all wore trainers, Gu’s heavy winter boots peeked out from under her uniform. It was almost as if she wasn’t fully prepared for this invitation – or the decision she faced.


Over the next four months, as her classmates fretted over sophomore prom and physics tests, Gu agonised about which superpower to represent in the 2022 Olympics. It was, in part, a question of identity for the American girl raised in San Francisco by two strong Chinese women, her mother and grandmother, in the absence of her American father. Gu had always lived happily on the hyphen. “When I’m in the US, I’m American,” she has said. “When I’m in China, I’m Chinese.” But the 15-year-old now felt that she had to choose between her two identities, and between two countries locked in a trade war and an ideological struggle.

Finally, on June 6th 2019, Gu posted an announcement on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. “I am proud to represent China in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics,” she wrote. “I hope the pursuit of extreme sports can be a means through which people in China and the United States can enhance their communication, understanding and friendship…Beijing I am coming!” Less than an hour later, she wrote again, deploying a verb used for soldiers called up for duty. The post said simply: “Chinese freestyle skier Gu Ailing reporting.”

Two and a half years on from that decision, Eileen Gu is the face of the Beijing Winter Olympics, a giant projection of Chinese soft power at a time when the government has been widely criticised for wielding far more of the harder type. Now 18 and three inches taller, Gu is dominating freestyle skiing, an acrobatic sport largely unknown in China which nonetheless offers a multitude of medals. China won only one Olympic gold in 2018, a humbling tally for a rising superpower. Gu by herself could win three in 2022.


Her influence extends far beyond the slopes. A fearless skier who moonlights as a fashion model, a top student who preaches female empowerment in both English and Mandarin, Gu has emerged as one of the world’s hottest marketing phenomena. Over the past year, she has appeared on the cover of Chinese editions of Vogue and gq, Elle and Marie Claire, and signed lucrative contracts with dozens of companies, including Adidas, Tiffany and Louis Vuitton. Gu’s commercial success owes a lot to her talent, beauty and daring. Many brands also hope to exploit her newfound popularity to reach a market of 1.4bn people. Gu’s mother may have been envisaging just such a windfall: weeks before her daughter’s change in allegiance she set up a new company in America, DreamComeGu.

Nobody has pursued and promoted the young star more avidly than the Chinese government. Tasked with building an Olympic team worthy of a superpower, Chinese sports officials identified Gu as a possible centrepiece for a “naturalisation project” designed to recruit top athletes of Chinese heritage based overseas. China has no well-known winter athletes. So when the world champion freestyle skier Gu chose China over America, she became the darling of an increasingly nationalistic population, a symbol of the country’s growing strength and the perceived decline of its arch-rival.

A recent documentary on her was entitled: “A Wonderful Life of Infinite Freedom”

The Chinese media have gushed over Gu in endless reports that highlight her free spirit and love of the motherland. (A recent documentary was entitled: “A Wonderful Life of Infinite Freedom”.) In October she starred in a lavish short film celebrating the Olympic torch relay alongside China’s top pop idol, Jackson Yee. The film’s opening scenes unfold in the mountains of Xinjiang province, where China claims skiing was invented more than 10,000 years ago – and where the government has interned more than a million members of the local Muslim population, the Uyghurs, in re-education camps. The film ignores the thorny setting to create, instead, a gauzy love story in which Gu seems to embody China itself.


Gu portrays her move to Team China as a kind of love story, too, an attempt to heal the rift between two countries by bringing her sport and her inspiring story to the Chinese masses, especially young girls. Switching the flag next to her name wasn’t meant to be a political act; it was a personal choice. Gu’s decision hasn’t changed her identity or her peripatetic life. The bubbly teenager still lives in America, travels the world in a community of free-skiing nomads and, on visits to China, hangs out with friends who are as stylish, savvy and free-spirited as her buddies back home. “I feel that I am competing in skiing to unite two nations, both of which are my home,” Gu told Inkstone, a website based in Hong Kong. “I hope to break the divide between nations with passion and love.”

But here’s the rub: China is a far darker place today – and its relations with the West far more contentious – than when Gu changed her affiliation in 2019. It’s not just the shadow of covid-19, which has led the Chinese government to ban Olympic spectators and keep athletes in sealed bubbles. In the two and half years since Gu made her decision, China has crushed civil liberties in Hong Kong, imprisoned journalists for reporting on covid-19 and expanded the systematic oppression of the Uyghurs. The American government says the brutal crackdown in Xinjiang amounts to genocide. When Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008, the Chinese Communist Party paid lip service to becoming more responsive to international norms. This time, all pretence has been dropped: China, ascendant and unapologetic, expects the world to bend to its rules.

Her grandmother taught her to fear nothing – except second place

For all the selfless motives that Gu says drove her decision to leave Team usa, China’s dark turn has thrown the moral implications of her choice into relief. Gu is an individual going for gold. Yet she also, in some ways, embodies the Faustian bargain China has made with its people. Gu’s decision to represent China has amplified her fame and wealth, but it has also made her a showpiece for an increasingly repressive government that requires one thing in return: silence.

Gu and her mother declined requests for an interview for this story. Through Gu’s American agent, Tom Yaps, Gu Yan said the family would not take part unless they could review the entire article before publication – to guarantee that no criticism of China appeared in the text. “I understand how unconventional a request that is,” Yaps said, but political sensitivities were making them “very cautious”. Gu Yan, he told me, feared that “if [Eileen] participates in an article that has two paragraphs critical of China and human rights, that would put her in jeopardy over there. One thing and a career is ruined.”


All it takes is one thing. Just four months after Gu switched her allegiance to Team China, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, a basketball team, retweeted a message supporting civil-rights protesters in Hong Kong: “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong”. China’s furious reaction to a single retweet from a foreigner halfway round the world cost the National Basketball Association hundreds of millions of dollars: tv broadcasts in China were cancelled; nba stores removed all Rockets merchandise. Chinese censors even scrubbed the Rockets from daily sports reports. It was as if the team never existed.

Again and again, the Chinese government forces countries, companies and individuals to make a choice: you’re either with us or against us. To preserve their access to the country, institutions from Apple and Hollywood to the International Olympic Committee (ioc) remain silent on all matters sensitive to the Communist Party. The Women’s Tennis Association is a rare outlier: in December, it severed its long, lucrative relationship with China to protest against the government’s silencing of the tennis star Peng Shuai after she made allegations of sexual abuse against a retired, high-ranking Communist Party official.

The pressure to stay quiet has only intensified ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Corporate sponsors banking on their business in China have gone out of their way to avoid answering questions about human rights. In January, the Chinese government even warned participating foreign athletes that “any behaviour or speech” that goes against Chinese laws and regulations would be “subject to certain punishment”.

Chinese citizens can face far worse consequences for crossing the invisible lines. (Peng Shuai’s fame and success could not protect her.) Gu seems acutely aware of the potential dangers. In America, she has made impassioned pleas about Black Lives Matter and anti-Asian violence, but she has avoided making any comments about social and political issues in China. That discrepancy is a reminder that the official narrative of Eileen Gu is not the whole story. On the surface, her life seems exhaustively documented on Facebook, Instagram and Weibo; Gu lets loose with edgier humour on TikTok. (She now has 1.4m Weibo followers, compared with 250,000 on Instagram.) Film crews from Chinese state television, corporate sponsors and fashion houses accompany Gu nearly everywhere. Yet these choreographed narratives can obscure as much as they reveal.

China won only one gold medal in 2018, a humbling tally for a rising superpower

China’s state-run media trumpeted Gu’s “conversion” from American to Chinese nationality. By choosing to represent China, she has taken the exceedingly rare step of naturalising as a Chinese citizen. (Consider: China had only 1,448 naturalised citizens in its entire 1.3bn population in 2010, the latest year for which there are figures. America naturalised an average of 720,000 citizens each year in the past decade.)

China, unlike America, does not recognise dual nationality after the age of 18. Under Chinese law, Gu would have had to give up her American passport by her 18th birthday, which fell last September 3rd. So far, Gu has avoided addressing questions about her citizenship. If she has not relinquished her American passport, is that a rare concession from the Chinese government or an act of passive resistance from Gu? We may never know.


Eileen Gu was 12 years old when she gave her first speech about female empowerment. Dressed in a blue skirt and white sailor’s shirt – the uniform of her $41,000-a-year all-girls’ school in San Francisco – she told the student assembly about her journey into the male-dominated world of freestyle skiing. As a seven-year-old, Gu bombed down ski runs with such reckless speed that her mother, looking for a safer alternative, enrolled her in a freestyle school. Only later did she realise that the sport’s aerial stunts were even more dangerous than racing. For years, Gu was the only girl on the freestyle team (the only non-Caucasian, too); at first the boys wouldn’t even share her ski lift. “Sexism still exists,” she told her female classmates. “Life is going to be a bumpy road for all of us, and building resiliency early on is important.”

As an only child raised primarily by her Chinese mother and grandmother, Gu grew up in a cocoon of strong women who encouraged her to break barriers and to battle through adversity. Their resolve was steeled by a tragedy that preceded Gu’s birth: in November 2002, Gu Yan’s sister, Ling, died from injuries sustained in a car crash while driving Gu Yan’s bmw convertible. Less than ten months later, Eileen was born, and Gu Yan bequeathed her a name that seemed to honour her sister: Eileen in English, Ailing (爱凌) in Chinese, meaning “Love Ling”.


The name of Gu’s father doesn’t seem to appear in any records: Gu never mentions him and Gu Yan has said only that he is an American graduate of Harvard University. Looming larger in Gu’s childhood was her grandfather, Gu Zhenguang, a retired engineer who moved to San Francisco before Gu was born. A former football player who taught himself to ski at the age of 75, Grandpa Gu saw himself as “the big tree” protecting his family. Her grandmother, Feng Guozhen, a former university basketball player, taught Gu to fear nothing – except second place. At 86, Feng still runs a mile each day. “My grandma gave me that drive and desire to win,” Gu said last year, “and my mom gave me the tools to do so.”

Her mother, Gu Yan, grew up during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution in a sprawling Soviet-style housing compound west of Tiananmen Square. The family enjoyed relative privilege as part of the Communist Party elite and Gu Yan joined one of the early cohorts at Peking University, known as “the Harvard of China”, after the Cultural Revolution.

It’s not clear exactly when she arrived in America, but according to her cv on LinkedIn, she began a research fellowship in molecular genetics at Rockefeller University in New York in 1989, just as thousands of students and activists fleeing the Tiananmen Square crackdown were flooding into the us under newly relaxed visa rules. Gu Yan sought not political asylum but economic opportunity, however. She soon left the lab to pursue an mba at Stanford, followed by derivatives trading on Wall Street, then venture capital in Silicon Valley and China.

Weeks before Gu’s change in allegiance, Gu’s mother set up a company: DreamComeGu

In the late 1990s, as China’s economic expansion began to accelerate, Gu Yan returned to China to help finance a joint venture in the nascent high-tech sector. An article in 1998 in Guangming Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, praised Gu Yan for creating a “golden bridge” and giving up a high-flying Wall Street job “to serve the great cause of reform and opening up in the motherland”. Building bridges to China would become the family business.

When Eileen was born, Gu Yan had a new mission. In China, many parents funnel their children into an activity and then force them to study or practice until they burn out. (The Chinese athletics system practises an even more extreme version, assigning children to sports based on bone measurements and muscle flexibility.) Gu Yan later told a Chinese documentary that she wanted to stoke Gu’s passions. Schoolwork was important but Gu Yan also introduced her daughter to running and horseback riding, soccer and surfing, singing – and skiing. Along the way, Gu Yan tried to build up her daughter’s toughness, discipline and self-confidence.

It was an all-American upbringing, but Gu Yan made sure Gu also appreciated her Chinese heritage. “No matter where we are in the world,” she said, “we Chinese cannot forget our roots.” Gu’s grandmother, who speaks no English, taught her three-digit multiplication at age four; she mastered Chinese tongue-twisters and Tang Dynasty poetry. Each year, the family returned to Beijing, exploring hidden alleyways, eating candied haws and Peking duck, and playing hide-and-seek with neighbourhood kids. One summer they arrived in Beijing to find her friends had disappeared. “Where’d they all go?” she asked. The kids had enrolled in a cram school. Gu started taking maths and science classes too, helping her to speed ahead of American friends back home.

But nothing fired Gu’s imagination more than freestyle skiing, a sport for acrobatic outlaws – essentially skateboarding on skis – that got its start in the 1970s on the hippie fringes of North American winter sports (back then it was known as “hot-dogging”). “It feels just like flying,” she said. The Chinese sports system is geared to produce technical mastery and repetition, but Gu relished the creative element in freestyle. “This is a sport where you can express your personality, you can have your own style,” she told a Chinese reporter in 2015. “You don’t necessarily have to do what everybody else does. You can invent it yourself.”

It was on a summer trip to Beijing that Gu, aged nine, met the man who would shape her future – the godfather of Chinese skiing. Lu Jian was an Oxford-educated economist who once served as an adviser to the State Council, China’s cabinet. He left China in 1992 to make his fortune trading futures in Chicago. Inspired by a ski trip to Canada, he returned to China a few years later, pockets full, and built the country’s first ski resort in northern Heilongjiang province. “At that time, there were probably no more than 500 skiers in all of China,” Lu told a Chinese interviewer, “so it was like trying to boil water from zero degrees.”


Lu himself became one of China’s first aficionados of freestyle skiing, introducing the sport at the next resort he developed near Beijing. In the summer of 2013, Lu heard that a young American freestyle champion was visiting and invited her to a “ski-off” at an indoor ski dome. A grainy video captures the first encounter between the two, half a century apart in age. Eileen Gu, in baggy yellow trousers and a red hat, takes off over a small jump, grabbing the edge of her skis in mid-air. Lu follows behind, mimicking her action. A week later, they had another ski session: the girl he called “Captain America” led the way.

Lu became her mentor and sponsor. The financial deal he made with her and her mother was modest, but Lu was also offering guidance and guanxi – the relationships that would bind Gu to China. Soon, the nine-year-old and her mother were signing contracts with several of Lu’s friends: a ski manufacturer, a clothing company, his ski resort. Since that first encounter, Lu has appeared at nearly every step in Gu’s evolution from America’s rising star to China’s Olympic hope. He even helped her set up a Weibo account using a nickname, “Frog Princess Ailing”, inspired by a green frog helmet she wore. (Lu’s own handle is “Drunken Snow”.) In the videos she posted on Weibo, Gu never failed to thank her Chinese sponsors, singling out one man with an honorific: “Sir Lu”.

China is a far darker place today than when Gu changed her affiliation in 2019

In the summer of 2015, Gu and her mother gathered with friends in Beijing to watch a live broadcast of the ioc vote for the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics. (Almaty in Kazakhstan was Beijing’s lone competition.) Even before ioc chairman Thomas Bach finished the word “Bei…,” the group erupted in cheers. “I was super excited,” said Gu, “but my mom was even more excited. She even cried.” Gu was only 11. Yet even then, the hope in the room was that Captain America would compete in Beijing seven years later – wearing a Chinese uniform. As a Chinese sponsor wrote on Weibo: “Come on, Eileen! The future of the motherland depends on you!”


In all its history, China has won only 13 Winter Olympics gold medals, compared with the 262 golds it has amassed in the summer games. Its gold-medal count has actually declined in each of the past three winter games. National pride was on the line. Xi Jinping spoke of this at the meeting of winter athletes in 2015: “If sports are strong, a nation is strong. If a nation is strong, it is strong in sports.” The party produced a blueprint for getting 300m people on the ice and snow, turning winter sports into a $155bn industry and developing a gold-medal-winning corps of winter athletes.

In 2018, around 80 Chinese athletes participated in only half of the Olympic events; this time, the mandate was to build a team more than twice that size to compete in nearly all of the 109 events. The problem: China had no experience in many of them. Chinese sports officials took the unusual step of bringing in more than 170 foreign coaches and also scoured the country for girls and boys who might be turned into curlers and bobsledders, snowboarders and skiers. Many freestyle skiers came from other sports; 16-year-old He Jinbo was a kung-fu student at a Shaolin academy before trading in his flying kicks for aerial spins with planks strapped to his feet.

“Two paragraphs critical of China would put Eileen in jeopardy. One thing and a career is ruined”

To speed things up, China added a “naturalisation project” to recruit overseas athletes. Many countries give out citizenship to improve their medal chances, but Olympic officials in Beijing looked mainly to the children of Chinese immigrants. China’s hockey team broke the ice with a slew of naturalised players, including its top scorer, Canadian-American Spencer Foo (though even with 15 foreign-born players the team is still terrible). Figure skating proved more fertile ground. The best female prospect was Alysa Liu, a 16-year-old, two-time American national champion who grew up across the bay from Eileen Gu. Her father, however, was a former dissident who fled persecution in 1989: he was not open to persuasion. (Two less talented but less political candidates were eventually enticed.)

No overseas athlete offered more potential glory than Eileen Gu. And though she spent only one month each year in China, after 2015 she seemed to be shadowed by the motherland wherever she went. In mid-2016, when Gu was 12, her mother gave China Central Television (cctv), the state broadcaster, full access to their lives; a few months later, a cctv film crew began following Gu around for almost a year from China and America to New Zealand and Europe. That year, Lu Jian even lived with Gu’s family in California for three months.


cctv’s first long documentary about Gu aired in China during the 2018 Winter Olympics – and served as Gu’s coming-out party in China. The documentary’s main purpose, it seemed, was to present Gu as an authentic Chinese patriot. In the opening scene, the 13-year-old and her mother are driven through Tiananmen Square, the historic plaza where Mao once revved up the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution – and where pro-democracy protests were crushed in 1989. As they ride through the square, Gu Yan urges her daughter to read the characters on the wall. “Long live the People’s Republic of China,” Gu recites in Chinese. Her mother then asks her to identify the man in the giant portrait above the gate. Gu turns to her and beams: “Mao Zedong!” They laugh together. Then, on cue, they gaze out with radiant smiles across the vast expanse of Tiananmen Square. “So beautiful,” says Gu Yan.

The late-afternoon sun dropped below the mountain ridge in Chongli in northern China, making the snow icy and treacherous. It was December 2018 and on Gu’s first day on the future Olympic course, cctv cameramen followed her as she sped through a practice run. Jumping off the final rail, Gu lost her balance and crashed backwards, hitting her head on the ground. Sliding to a stop, she lay still, legs akimbo. When her mother reached her, Gu looked up in confusion. “I’m having a hard time remembering things,” she said, starting to cry. “Why are we in China? Why are we in China?”

The apparent concussion forced Gu to pull out of a World Cup event two days later. Still, her question echoes. Less than a month before, in Austria, Gu had shared a Thanksgiving dinner with her new teammates on the American freestyle ski team. A month later, she would sing the American national anthem in Italy after winning her first World Cup gold medal – before reappearing days later in a Chinese uniform with Xi Jinping. Toggling back and forth between China and America had always been fun for Gu. Now she faced an uncomfortable choice.

We don’t know what swayed her decision. Whose idea was it to suddenly fly off to Beijing after her World Cup victory? What deals were cut or pressures brought to bear behind closed doors? What was the emotional landscape of a teenager facing fundamental questions of love and loyalty – to the coaches who had trained her, the mentors who had believed in her, to a mother as well as two motherlands? It’s still not clear how much power the 15-year-old had over the decision that would shape her future. “Gu Yan didn’t push,” insists a family acquaintance. “She wanted Eileen to make the decision for herself.”

Building bridges to China would become the family business

As Gu went silent on social media in the spring of 2019, US-China relations worsened. China’s government threatened retaliation for American tariffs on Chinese goods. On June 2nd, which happened to be two days before the 30th anniversary of the massacre near Tiananmen Square, Gu posed for a photo in San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. Dressed in a grey “usa” hoodie, she stood in front of Andy Warhol’s brightly hued series of portraits of Chairman Mao. She is smiling, with both thumbs up – poised, as always, between America and China.

When Gu announced her decision on June 6th, the Chinese internet reacted with excitement. “Welcome home to win glory for China!” one commenter wrote. “So many excellent people have left for the United States,” wrote another. “To have one finally come back makes me cry!” (In 2019 alone, nearly 40,000 Chinese became naturalised American citizens.) On Weibo, Gu thanked her Chinese sponsors, starting with “Boss Lu”. Lu repaid the compliment: “Like the wind, the beautiful girl Ailing returns across the waves from the other side of the Pacific Ocean.”

Gu’s English-language announcement on Instagram was more calibrated. “This was an incredibly tough decision for me to make,” she wrote. “I am proud of my heritage, and equally proud of my American upbringings.” The Beijing Olympics offered “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to promote the sport I love”, she explained, “to help inspire millions of young people where my mom was born.” Her decision, she suggested, went beyond sports or business; it was an act of diplomacy in a troubled world. Her message ended with three emojis: the American and Chinese flags, and a red heart.


In America, some applauded her “brave decision”. The us Ski & Snowboard Association graciously wished her “the best of luck in all her endeavours”. Other online commentators couldn’t contain their contempt. “Traitor!” yelled one. “Don’t you know there are concentration camps in China?” asked another. Martin Wiesiolek, a cross-country ski coach in Colorado who fled Communist Poland in 1984, minced no words: “You will end up serving as a political tool of the Chinese totalitarian regime.” The vitriol left the high-school sophomore shaken. “The thing that really caught me off guard was the amount of hate I had,” she told the South China Morning Post last year. “I was 15 years old and had death threats.”

After becoming a Chinese citizen, Gu didn’t move to China or start bunking down with her new teammates at their training camp in China’s mountainous north-east. She still lived with her mother and grandmother in their multi-million-dollar home in San Francisco’s swanky Sea Cliff neighbourhood, a world away from her Chinese teammates: classes at an exclusive high school, courtside seats at an nba game, a bedroom nook overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. China’s sports officials are known for ruling their domains with military-style control, and Chinese athletes have long been required to give the bulk of their earnings to the sports system. But Gu freely followed her own training regimen and pursued every commercial opportunity.

Interest in Gu intensified after her announcement. The owner of a Chinese sports brand flew her to Paris Fashion Week. Chinese photographers swarmed her when she visited a Beijing mall, and a new commercial sponsor, Kiehl’s, whisked her off to Alaska for a photo shoot. On her 16th birthday, Gu received a video message from David Beckham welcoming her to the Adidas family.

Her skiing, meanwhile, only became more sublime. In the first year after changing affiliation, Gu earned seven gold medals in international competitions. Gu began to dominate two of freestyle skiing’s three Olympic events, slopestyle (a sloping course of rails, jumps and other obstacles) and halfpipe (tricks and flips going down on a 22-foot-high u-shaped ramp). It was a rare combination, akin to a footballer being equally adept as a striker and in goal. In February 2020, Gu became the first freestyle skier to win both events in the same World Cup competition. The one discipline left for her to conquer was big air (a single acrobatic jump off a 45-foot tall ramp), which debuts as an Olympic discipline this year.

“Come on, Eileen! The future of the motherland depends on you!”

Gu was one of the few professional skiers who followed a long day on the mountain with hours of homework. She was racing to finish her final two years of high school in a single year so she could train full-time for the Olympics. Covid-19 halted the ski season in the spring of 2020, but Gu kept to her school schedule and graduated early in June 2020. Going to Stanford University, her mother’s alma mater, was “the only dream I’ve held even longer than becoming a professional skier”, she said. That autumn she took a day off from training in Switzerland to take her college aptitude tests: she scored an almost perfect 1580 out of 1600. In December 2020, she posted on Instagram a video of herself sitting on her bed clicking the link that would reveal if Stanford had accepted her. The answer, of course, was yes. Gu raised her arms and screamed.

Like any engaged American teenager, Gu also began speaking out on social issues. Her political awakening seemed to come during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed George Floyd’s death in May 2020 at the hands of a white police officer. That summer, the 16-year-old blacked out her Instagram screen in solidarity with the movement. Raising awareness is “not enough”, she wrote. “To make a greater impact, I encourage everyone to…write to your local leaders or senators, join a peaceful protest.” Neither peaceful protests nor pressuring political leaders into action is encouraged in China, to put it mildly. (Chinese officials called racism “a chronic disease of American society”, but they did not allow their own citizens to show solidarity with a rights movement that aimed at police accountability.)


The rise in anti-Asian bigotry hit closer to home. Last year, after an elderly Asian man in San Francisco died following a racist attack, Gu and her grandmother were in a shop when a man started screaming obscenities about Asians infecting America with covid-19. Gu hurried her granny out of the store. “The fact that my very own Chinese grandmother could have been a victim of a hate crime…genuinely terrifies me,” she wrote on Instagram. San Francisco “is widely regarded as a liberal haven, and yet violence and hatred are on our doorsteps”. Gu has said nothing about the persecution of minority groups in China.

Gu and her mother have been tight-lipped about her commercial windfall, too. A year after setting up DreamComeGu Inc, with headquarters in the family home, her mother – who was chief executive of the company – also set up a limited-liability company, DreamComeGu llc, in Nevada, a low-tax haven where the family has established a second home. As endorsements poured in, Gu’s fast-expanding Weibo account turned into a procession of commercial ads, from local Olympic sponsors like Mengniu Dairy and Three Trees Paints to top names in global luxury: iwc, Cadillac, Estée Lauder.


One of Gu’s main Chinese sponsors is Anta, the world’s third-largest sportswear company after Nike and Adidas. Last year, Anta set up an interactive Eileen Gu theme park in a Shanghai mall, with giant screens and a larger-than-life plastic cartoon figure of a wide-eyed Gu in Anta ski gear. (Anta also supplies the ioc and the Chinese Olympic team.) Just as the park was opening last March, Anta was defiantly pulling out of the Better Cotton Initiative, a global watchdog that stopped licensing companies using materials from Xinjiang province because of worries about forced labour.

As Chinese consumers angrily revolted against Western brands, including Nike and Adidas, which joined the Xinjiang cotton boycott, Anta doubled down on its pledge to use Xinjiang cotton. Investors sent Anta stock soaring. The ioc has refused to answer questions about its relationship with Anta. Gu, for her part, has stayed as quiet as the wide-eyed cartoon figure in her theme park.

Eileen Gu is now everywhere. There she is at a Beijing bus stop, wearing a snow-white ski outfit on a billboard for China Mobile. Down the road, she appears in red lipstick and a traditional Chinese dress in a display for tech giant jd.com. In the mall, she’s carrying skis and a cup of coffee on posters for Luckin Coffee. At the newsstands, her face peers out from almost every fashion magazine, including the latest edition of Vogue China, which she guest-edited. At night Gu’s image looms even larger – lit up on a massive screen above a city plaza, working out in her Anta gear.

It would have been hard to imagine three years ago, when 15-year-old Gu stood next to Xi Jinping on that secretive visit to Beijing, that she would share top billing at these Olympics with him. These are Xi’s games, after all. And, as Xi looks to become China’s strongest leader since Mao by securing a third term as president later this year, he dominates the nation’s media. Still, Gu has become what the Chinese media call a “marketing supernova”. Her two dozen corporate sponsorships dwarf the total number held by all other Chinese winter-sports athletes, according to Beijing News, and each skiing victory pushes her endorsement fee higher, to more than $2m today. According to the newspaper, she probably earned more than $15m in 2021, which would make her the world’s third-highest-earning female athlete behind Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams. It’s a stunning outcome for someone in a niche sport where the prize money for winning a world championship event is just $12,000.

“I was 15 years old and had death threats”

It has been far from a normal childhood. In September, she celebrated her 18th birthday week on three continents: at a photo shoot in Beijing, on a billionaire’s mega-yacht in Dubai and on the glacier where she trains in the Austrian Alps. A few days later, she broke off her training to fly to the Met Gala in New York as one of the new faces of Victoria’s Secret. Wearing a polka-dotted Carolina Herrera dress and a necklace with 39 carats of Tiffany diamonds, Gu wobbled down the red carpet in five-inch red stilettos – looking like a novice skier on the bunny slope. By the time the evening was over, Gu was on more solid footing, posing for a selfie with Rihanna at the after-party.

Even with the whirlwind of commercial distractions, Gu was focused on the Olympics. In early November, she posted a sultry photo of herself with two Tiffany necklaces, noting cheekily: “guess u could say I like gold hard(wear) around my neck”. A few days later she put up a video of herself in Austria becoming the first woman in history to pull off a jaw-dropping jump called the double cork 1440 (four spins, two off-axis flips, more than 70 feet in the air). “lil #worldsfirst today,” Gu wrote on Instagram. (Three weeks later, Gu unleashed the double cork 1440 to win her first World Cup big-air gold.) Gu’s video got rave reviews from skiers and fans – and from China’s diplomatic corps. “It’s whole another level,” wrote foreign-affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying, a phrase other diplomats tweeted in unison. “Looking forward to her performance in #Beijing2022 Olympics!”

The video of Gu went viral only days after another Chinese Olympian, tennis star Peng Shuai, posted on Weibo shocking allegations of sexual assault and coercion by a former top Communist Party official. “Even if I court disaster like an egg against stone or a moth to a flame, I will tell the truth about you and me,” she wrote. The post vanished in less than an hour, and censors scrubbed the Chinese internet of all references to the allegations, blocking hundreds of search terms, even the word “tennis”. Peng was not seen for more than two weeks, reappearing in staged meetings that only deepened the alarm among women’s rights activists and tennis authorities. Serena Williams and dozens of top tennis players added their voices of concern. Gu remained silent. She promotes female empowerment, yet she seemed powerless to speak up for her fellow Chinese Olympian. “Where is Eileen Gu?” one Twitter commenter asked. “Want to inspire Chinese girls?!? Here’s your chance.”


Peng’s case reinvigorated calls for a boycott of the games from human-rights organisations. When one of Gu Yan’s Facebook friends warned of a boycott, she responded: “Won’t happen. The president of ioc said that Olympics should not be political.” In December, America and three other countries announced a “diplomatic boycott” – they would send athletes, but no top officials – citing the continuing crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. (At least six other countries followed suit.) China’s foreign-ministry spokesman swatted away the symbolic gesture with a gibe: “US politicians keep hyping a ‘diplomatic boycott’ without even being invited to the games.”

When Eileen Gu arrived in Beijing for the Olympics in January, one of her first acts was to post a photo of herself on Weibo polishing off a plate of pork-and-leek dumplings. Her Chinese fans loved it. But they will have little chance to see her in person. China’s “closed-loop” anti-covid restrictions seal off all Olympic athletes and venues from the outside world. The extreme measures may make for a ghostly games, but they could help Gu avoid questions from fans and reporters, especially about her legal status. When she turned 18 in September, under Chinese law Gu was required to renounce her American citizenship. One of Gu’s big sponsors, Red Bull, noted on its website: “Gu decided to give up her American passport and naturalise as a Chinese citizen in order to compete for China.” Yet when a Wall Street Journal reporter called Red Bull to confirm, the passage was removed.

“US politicians keep hyping a ‘diplomatic boycott’ without even being invited to the games”

Did Gu really relinquish her passport? Her name has never appeared on the us Treasury Department’s list of expatriated individuals. In January 2021, she became a candidate for a us Presidential Scholars Programme that is open only to us citizens or permanent residents. Gu still spends far more time in America than in China, and will return to attend Stanford in the autumn. Yet she has never commented on her citizenship status. In late December, Gu won the World Cup halfpipe in Calgary, a victory that was particularly gratifying, she said, because a “lost passport” had caused her to arrive at the competition late. Gu did not clarify whether the missing document was American or Chinese.

With her carefully chosen words and silences, Gu shows a diplomat’s gift for dancing on a tightrope. She never criticises China – ”one thing” would risk it all – but she also doesn’t offer patriotic soundbites about winning honour for the motherland (as Chinese athletes often do). The government still uses her as a showpiece, but Gu is focused on promoting her sport – and herself. ​​At age 18, she is no longer a simple vessel for other people’s dreams. “My vision”, as she often labels it, is based not on patriotism but a boundless individualism. “We’re all in this together, pushing human limits,” she said last year, “and that is really something that transcends nationality.” In Gu, China may have found an answer to its gold-medal dreams. But her brand of success – freely pursuing her passions, revelling in her individual feats – doesn’t reflect China’s nationalist goals so much as the free-flowing, hot-dogging American sport Gu fell in love with as a little girl.

When Gu competes, she rarely mentions China or gives a shout-out to her Chinese teammates. She talks more about the need “to prove myself to myself”. Recently, Gu recalled crashing badly on her first big-air jump in one of her first competitions as a Chinese athlete in 2020, when she succumbed to the pressure of the crowds, the media, the sponsors. Narrowing her focus to the smallest of details – a lucky cat she had drawn with eyeliner on her hand – she then pulled off two almost perfect jumps to win the gold. “That actually taught me that I didn’t want to win for other people,” she said. “I wanted to win for myself.”

Gu has stayed as quiet as the wide-eyed cartoon figure in her theme park

From the time Gu began freestyle skiing, her mother couldn’t bear to watch her perform the riskiest tricks. “During a competition, I would only ask the coach ‘Has she landed safely?’” she told a Chinese newspaper. The Beijing games represent a far more perilous jump. Gu has been preparing to compete in the Olympics for half her life, and now all of China – and much of the world – will be watching.

On February 7th, finally, Gu will be perched in full ski gear at the top of an undulating tower in west Beijing, 200 feet above the ground. The Winter Olympics’ big-air ramp, built on top of an old steel mill, stands next to the very training centre where Gu met China’s leader exactly three years ago. Pushing her skis over the edge, Gu will be poised to careen down the ramp and launch herself into a soaring corkscrew.

Gu is more than just an athlete now. Ever since she made her choice, she has tried to keep a balance between China and America, between corporate advertisers and human-rights activists, between her dreams of a borderless world and the hard nationalism of the country she has chosen to represent. There is no perfect equilibrium. But riding along the razor’s edge, Eileen Gu has managed to make it to the precipice. Now it’s time to leap.■

CORRECTION: Shortly after publication we realised that some of the images in this article were inappropriate. We removed them and we apologise for the error. Nothing else was changed and we stand by our fair-minded and rigorous journalism.

Brook Larmer is a freelance writer in Bangkok and author of “Operation Yao Ming: The Chinese Sports Empire, American Big Business, and the Making of an nba Superstar”

ILLUSTRATIONS: MARI FOUZ

additional images: red bull, christian anwander, martin ruslch, getty, reuters, eyevine, alamy, ocog



冷酷的战士：谷爱凌为何抛弃美国队而为中国滑雪？
在北京奥运会上，超级大国之间的竞争将在滑雪场上上演。

2022年2月3日 (2022年2月16日更新)


作者：布鲁克-拉默

谷爱凌只剩下一个机会。那是2019年1月，美国自由式滑雪队最新、最年轻的成员盯着意大利的山地赛道，在世界杯决赛中，她的前两次比赛都受挫。在两名美国队友身后的第四名，这位15岁的加利福尼亚女学生需要一个令人眼花缭乱的结局来接近她从9岁时就向自己--以及她的母亲--承诺的目标：参加2022年冬奥会，现在计划在她母亲的出生地北京举行。

在一片黑色和红色的模糊中，顾雏军从斜坡上飞驰而下。在她的最后一跳--在半空中转了两个半圈，然后完美地向后落地--排行榜上的像素重新排列，谷爱凌的名字突然出现在第一位，旁边是美国国旗。"这太不真实了！"她尖叫起来。在领奖台上，带着她的第一块世界杯金牌，当美国国歌开始播放时，谷爱凌将手放在自己的心上。她唱道。"O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave. 在自由的土地和勇敢者的家园上。


庆祝的时间并不多。当她的大多数美国队友为在犹他州举行的世界锦标赛赛跑回家时，谷爱凌和她的母亲谷燕飞向了相反的方向--中国。谷爱凌每年夏天都有一部分时间在北京度过，但这次绕道是不寻常的。这几乎是回到旧金山高中的最快路线。也不是像谷爱凌六天后在Instagram上隐晦地写的那样，"在回家之前的一个快速#hongkong pit stop（最后）"。这位新加冕的世界第一自由式滑雪运动员要在雷达下呆上几天，因为她要参加一个非常特别的会议。

2019年2月1日，在唱完 "星条旗 "后不到一周，谷爱凌重新出现在北京，参加了中国领导人习近平的接见。这位美国少女现在穿着红白相间的中国队队服，她漂白的蓝发散落在队服前面缝制的红色五星旗上。在国家冬季运动训练中心聚集的运动员中，谷爱凌站在前排，离习近平只有几步之遥，当习近平敦促他们在举办首届冬奥会时为祖国赢得荣誉时，他认真地倾听。"习近平告诉他们："这是一个百年一遇的机会。他说，他们的成功对 "国家的伟大复兴 "至关重要。

"当我在美国的时候，我是美国人。当我在中国时，我是中国人"

谷爱凌从未提及这一遭遇。它也没有出现在中国媒体和西方赞助商关于她生活的任何详细报道和纪录片中。但是，在国家媒体关于习近平当天访问的几十张照片中，谷爱凌出现了，她站在地球上最有权力的人之一身边。演讲结束后，习近平在中国国旗下与运动员们合影。这是一张典型的合影，除了前面和中间，在习近平身边的两个人，是美国的一位顶级滑雪运动员。谷爱凌的头发和她的鞋子一样，使她脱颖而出。中国运动员都穿着运动鞋，而谷爱凌的厚重冬靴从她的制服下探出头来。几乎可以说，她对这次邀请--或她所面临的决定--并没有充分准备。


在接下来的四个月里，当她的同学们为大二的舞会和物理测试而焦头烂额时，谷爱凌为在2022年奥运会上代表哪个超级大国而苦恼。对于这个在旧金山由两位强势的中国女性（她的母亲和祖母）抚养长大的美国女孩来说，这在某种程度上是一个身份问题，而她的美国父亲却不在身边。谷爱凌一直快乐地生活在连字符上。"她说："当我在美国的时候，我就是美国人。"当我在中国时，我是中国人。" 但是，这个15岁的孩子现在觉得她必须在她的两个身份之间做出选择，在锁定在贸易战和意识形态斗争中的两个国家之间做出选择。

最后，在2019年6月6日，谷爱凌在微博（中国版的Twitter）上发布了一条公告。"我很自豪能代表中国参加2022年北京冬奥会，"她写道。"我希望对极限运动的追求能够成为一种手段，通过这种手段，中美两国人民能够加强交流、理解和友谊......北京我来了！" 不到一个小时后，她又写道，使用了一个用于征召士兵服役的动词。该帖子简单地说："中国自由式滑雪运动员谷爱凌报道"。

这一决定过去两年半了，谷爱凌是北京冬奥会的形象代言人，在政府因挥舞更多硬实力而受到广泛批评的时候，她是中国软实力的巨大投影。现在18岁，身高3英寸，谷爱凌正在主导自由式滑雪，这是一项在中国基本不为人知的杂技运动，但却能提供大量的奖牌。中国在2018年只赢得了一枚奥运金牌，对于一个正在崛起的超级大国来说，这是一个令人惭愧的数字。谷爱凌一个人就可以在2022年赢得三枚。


她的影响远远超出了滑雪场的范围。作为一名兼职时装模特的无畏的滑雪者，一名用英语和普通话宣扬女性权力的优秀学生，谷爱凌已经成为世界上最热门的营销现象之一。在过去的一年里，她出现在《Vogue》和《gq》中文版、《Elle》和《Marie Claire》的封面上，并与几十家公司签订了利润丰厚的合同，包括阿迪达斯、蒂芙尼和路易威登。顾雏军的商业成功很大程度上归功于她的才华、美丽和大胆。许多品牌也希望利用她新发现的人气，以进入14亿人的市场。顾雏军的母亲可能已经预见到了这样的意外收获：在她女儿改变效忠对象的几周前，她在美国成立了一家新公司，DreamComeGu。

没有人比中国政府更热衷于追求和推广这位年轻的明星。中国体育官员的任务是建立一支与超级大国相称的奥运队伍，他们将谷爱凌作为 "归化项目 "的可能核心，旨在招募海外的中国顶级运动员。中国没有知名的冬季运动员。因此，当自由式滑雪世界冠军谷爱凌选择中国而不是美国时，她成了越来越多民族主义民众的宠儿，成为中国日益强大的象征，并被认为是其主要对手的衰落。

最近一部关于她的纪录片题为："无限自由的精彩人生"

中国媒体在无休止的报道中对顾雏军大加赞赏，强调她的自由精神和对祖国的热爱。(最近的一部纪录片名为："无限自由的精彩人生"。）10月，她与中国顶级偶像歌手余文乐一起出演了一部庆祝奥运火炬传递的豪华短片。影片的开场戏在新疆省的山区展开，中国声称滑雪运动是在一万多年前发明的--政府在那里的再教育营中关押了一百多万当地的穆斯林成员--维吾尔族。这部电影忽略了棘手的背景，而是创造了一个朦胧的爱情故事，其中谷爱凌似乎体现了中国本身。


谷爱凌把她加入中国队也描绘成一种爱情故事，试图通过把她的运动和她鼓舞人心的故事带给中国大众，特别是年轻女孩，来弥合两个国家之间的裂痕。换掉她名字旁边的国旗并不意味着是一种政治行为；这是一种个人选择。谷爱凌的决定并没有改变她的身份和她漂泊的生活。这个活泼的少年仍然生活在美国，在一个自由滑雪的游牧民族社区中环游世界，在访问中国时，与那些和她在国内的朋友一样时尚、精明和自由奔放的朋友们混在一起。"我觉得我参加滑雪比赛是为了团结两个国家，这两个国家都是我的家，"谷爱凌告诉总部在香港的网站Inkstone。"我希望用热情和爱来打破国家之间的鸿沟。"

但问题是：今天的中国远比2019年谷爱凌改变归属时更黑暗--它与西方的关系也更有争议。这不仅仅是covid-19的阴影，它导致中国政府禁止奥运观众并将运动员关在密封的气泡中。在谷爱凌做出决定后的两年半时间里，中国粉碎了香港的公民自由，监禁了报道covid-19的记者，并扩大了对维吾尔人的系统压迫。美国政府说，新疆的残酷镇压相当于种族灭绝。2008年北京举办夏季奥运会时，中国共产党口口声声说要对国际规范作出更多反应。这一次，所有的伪装都被打破了。上升中的中国，毫不掩饰地期待着世界对其规则的屈服。

她的祖母教导她什么都不要怕--除了第二名。

谷爱凌说，促使她决定离开美国队的所有无私动机，中国的黑暗转变使她的选择的道德含义得到了缓解。顾雏军是一个追求金牌的人。然而，在某些方面，她也体现了中国与人民之间的浮士德式交易。谷爱凌代表中国的决定扩大了她的名气和财富，但这也使她成为一个日益压抑的政府的展示品，而这个政府需要的回报是：沉默。

谷爱凌和她的母亲拒绝了接受本报采访的请求。通过谷爱凌的美国经纪人汤姆-亚普斯，谷爱凌说，除非他们能在发表前审阅整篇文章--以保证文中没有出现对中国的批评，否则家人不会参与。亚普斯说："我明白这是一个非常规的要求，"但政治敏感性使他们 "非常谨慎"。他告诉我，顾炎担心，"如果[爱凌]参与的文章中有两段批评中国和人权的内容，这将使她在那边处于危险之中。一件事，事业就毁了"。


所需要的就是一件事。就在谷爱凌转而效忠中国队的四个月后，休斯顿火箭队（一支篮球队）的总经理转发了一条支持香港民权抗议者的信息："为自由而战，与香港站在一起"。中国对一个在地球另一端的外国人转发的一条微博的愤怒反应，使美国国家篮球协会损失了数亿美元：在中国的电视转播被取消；美国国家篮球协会的商店撤下了所有火箭队的商品。中国的审查员甚至将火箭队从日常体育报道中删除。就好像这支球队从未存在过一样。

中国政府一次又一次地迫使国家、公司和个人做出选择：你要么和我们在一起，要么反对我们。为了保持与国家的联系，从苹果、好莱坞到国际奥林匹克委员会（ioc）等机构对所有对共产党敏感的事务保持沉默。女子网球协会是一个罕见的例外：12月，它断绝了与中国的长期有利可图的关系，以抗议政府在网球明星彭帅对一名退休的共产党高官提出性虐待指控后对她的沉默。

在北京奥运会之前，保持沉默的压力只会加剧。以中国业务为基础的企业赞助商不遗余力地避免回答有关人权的问题。1月，中国政府甚至警告参赛的外国运动员，违反中国法律和法规的 "任何行为或言论 "都将 "受到一定的惩罚"。

中国公民可能会因为越过无形的界限而面临更严重的后果。(彭帅的名气和成功无法保护她。)谷爱凌似乎敏锐地意识到了潜在的危险。在美国，她对 "黑人生活事件 "和反亚裔暴力事件提出了慷慨激昂的请求，但她一直避免对中国的社会和政治问题发表任何评论。这种差异提醒我们，官方对顾秀莲的叙述并不是故事的全部。表面上看，她的生活似乎在Facebook、Instagram和微博上有详尽的记录；谷爱凌在TikTok上释放出更多的幽默。(她现在有140万微博粉丝，而Instagram上有25万粉丝。）来自中国国家电视台、企业赞助商和时装公司的摄制组几乎无处不在地陪伴着顾雏军。然而，这些编排好的叙述可以掩盖很多东西，就像它们所揭示的一样。

中国在2018年只赢得了一枚金牌，对于一个正在崛起的超级大国来说，这是一个令人惭愧的数字。

中国的国营媒体大肆宣扬谷爱凌从美国国籍 "转换 "为中国国籍。通过选择代表中国，她迈出了归化为中国公民这一极为罕见的一步。(想想看。考虑到：2010年，中国的13亿人口中只有1,448名入籍公民，这是有数据的最近一年。在过去十年中，美国平均每年有72万名公民入籍）。

与美国不同，中国不承认18岁以后的双重国籍。根据中国法律，顾雏军必须在她的18岁生日之前放弃美国护照，去年9月3日是她的生日。到目前为止，顾雏军一直避免回答有关其公民身份的问题。如果她没有放弃她的美国护照，这是中国政府罕见的让步还是顾雏军的消极抵抗行为？我们可能永远不会知道。


谷爱凌第一次发表关于女性权力的演讲时，她才12岁。她穿着蓝色的裙子和白色的水手服--这是她在旧金山的年薪4.1万美元的女子学校的制服--她在学生大会上讲述了她进入男性主导的自由式滑雪世界的旅程。在7岁的时候，谷爱凌以如此鲁莽的速度在滑雪道上狂奔，她的母亲为了寻找一个更安全的选择，为她报名参加了自由式滑雪学校。后来她才意识到，这项运动的空中特技甚至比赛车更危险。多年来，谷爱凌是自由式滑雪队中唯一的女孩（也是唯一的非高加索人）；起初，男孩们甚至不愿意和她共用滑雪缆车。"性别歧视仍然存在，"她告诉她的女同学。"生活对我们所有人来说都将是一条崎岖不平的道路，尽早建立弹性是很重要的。"

作为一个主要由她的中国母亲和祖母抚养的独生子女，顾雏军在一群坚强的女性中长大，她们鼓励她打破障碍，在逆境中奋斗。他们的决心被谷爱凌出生前的一场悲剧所磨砺：2002年11月，谷燕的妹妹谷凌在驾驶顾谷燕的BMW敞篷车时因车祸受伤而死亡。不到十个月后，艾琳出生了，谷燕给她取了一个似乎是为了纪念她姐姐的名字。英文是Eileen，中文是Ailing（爱凌），意思是 "爱凌"。


谷爱凌的父亲的名字似乎并没有出现在任何记录中。谷爱凌从未提到过他，而顾燕也只说过他是哈佛大学的美国毕业生。在谷爱凌的童年里，她的祖父谷振光是一个退休的工程师，在谷爱凌出生前就搬到了旧金山。谷爷爷曾是一名足球运动员，在75岁时自学滑雪，他把自己看作是保护家庭的 "大树"。她的祖母冯国珍(Feng Guozhen)是一名前大学篮球运动员，她教导顾雏军什么都不怕--除了第二名。86岁的冯国珍仍然每天跑一英里。"我的祖母给了我这种动力和获胜的欲望，"谷爱凌去年说，"我的妈妈给了我这样做的工具。"

她的母亲谷燕在文化大革命的混乱时期，在天安门广场以西的一个庞大的苏式住房院落中长大。作为共产党精英的一部分，这个家庭享有相对的特权，顾燕在文化大革命后加入了被称为 "中国的哈佛 "的北京大学的早期班级之一。

她何时到达美国并不清楚，但根据她在LinkedIn上的简历，她于1989年开始在纽约洛克菲勒大学进行分子遗传学研究，当时正值成千上万逃离天安门广场镇压的学生和活动人士根据新的宽松签证规则涌入美国。然而，顾燕寻求的不是政治庇护而是经济机会。她很快离开实验室，在斯坦福大学攻读硕士学位，随后在华尔街进行衍生品交易，然后在硅谷和中国进行风险投资。

在顾燕改变效忠对象的几周前，顾燕的母亲成立了一家公司。谷爱凌梦想成真

20世纪90年代末，随着中国的经济扩张开始加速，顾炎回到中国，帮助在新兴的高科技领域为一家合资企业融资。1998年，共产党的喉舌《光明日报》的一篇文章称赞顾燕创造了一座 "金桥"，放弃了华尔街的高薪工作，"为祖国的改革开放大业服务"。为中国架设桥梁将成为家族事业。

谷爱凌出生后，顾燕有了一个新的使命。在中国，许多父母将他们的孩子输送到某项活动中，然后强迫他们学习或练习，直到他们倦怠。(中国的体育系统实行更极端的做法，根据骨骼的尺寸和肌肉的灵活性将孩子分配到运动项目中。） 顾燕后来告诉一部中国纪录片，她想激起顾的激情。学校功课很重要，但顾燕也向她的女儿介绍了跑步和骑马、足球和冲浪、唱歌-以及滑雪。在这一过程中，顾炎试图培养女儿的坚韧、纪律和自信。

这是一个全美式的成长环境，但顾燕确保顾也欣赏她的中国传统。"她说："无论我们身处世界何处，我们中国人都不能忘记我们的根。" 谷的祖母不会说英语，在她四岁时就教她三位数的乘法；她掌握了中国的绕口令和唐朝的诗歌。每年，他们一家人都会回到北京，探索隐藏的小巷，吃蜜饯和北京烤鸭，和邻居的孩子玩捉迷藏。有一年夏天，他们来到北京，发现她的朋友们都不见了。她问："他们都去哪儿了？"。孩子们进入了一所补习班。谷爱凌也开始上数学和科学课，帮助她在美国的朋友面前快速成长。

但是，没有什么比自由式滑雪更能激发顾的想象力了，这是一项不守规矩的杂技运动--基本上是在滑雪板上玩滑板--于20世纪70年代在北美冬季运动的嬉皮士边缘开始的（当时它被称为 "热狗"）。"她说："这感觉就像飞一样。中国的体育体系旨在培养技术的掌握和重复，但谷爱凌很喜欢自由泳中的创造性元素。"这是一项你可以表达自己个性的运动，你可以有自己的风格，"她在2015年告诉一位中国记者。"你不一定要做别人做的事。你可以自己发明它。"

正是在一次前往北京的夏季旅行中，9岁的谷爱凌遇到了塑造她未来的人--中国滑雪运动的教父。卢建是一位受过牛津大学教育的经济学家，曾经担任过中国内阁国务院的顾问。他于1992年离开中国，在芝加哥从事期货交易发了财。在加拿大滑雪之旅的启发下，几年后他满载而归，回到中国，在黑龙江省北部建立了中国第一个滑雪场。"当时，全中国的滑雪者可能不超过500人，"卢建告诉一位中国采访者，"所以这就像试图从零度开始烧水一样。"


卢建本人也成为中国最早的自由式滑雪爱好者之一，在他在北京附近开发的下一个度假村中引入了这项运动。2013年夏天，卢建听说一位年轻的美国自由式滑雪冠军正在访问，并邀请她参加在一个室内滑雪场举行的 "滑雪比赛"。一段颗粒状的视频记录了年龄相差半个世纪的两人之间的第一次相遇。谷爱凌穿着宽松的黄色长裤，戴着一顶红帽子，在一个小跳台上起飞，在半空中抓住滑雪板的边缘。卢建跟在后面，模仿着她的动作。一周后，他们又进行了一次滑雪训练：这个被他称为 "美国队长 "的女孩在前面带路。

卢建成为她的导师和赞助商。他与她和她的母亲所做的经济交易是适度的，但卢建也在提供指导和关系--将谷爱凌与中国联系在一起的关系。很快，这个9岁的孩子和她的母亲就与卢建的几个朋友签订了合同：一家滑雪场制造商、一家服装公司和他的滑雪场。自从第一次接触以来，卢建几乎出现在顾爱凌从美国的新星到中国的奥运希望的每一步发展中。他甚至帮助她建立了一个微博账户，使用的昵称是 "青蛙公主爱凌"，灵感来自于她戴的绿色青蛙头盔。 在她发布在微博上的视频中，谷爱凌从未忘记感谢她的中国赞助商，特别提到了一个人的尊称："卢先生"。

今天的中国比顾雏军在2019年改变归属时要黑暗得多

2015年夏天，谷爱凌和她的母亲与朋友们聚集在北京，观看国际奥委会对2022年冬奥会主办权投票的直播。(哈萨克斯坦的阿拉木图是北京唯一的竞争对手。)甚至在国际奥委会主席托马斯-巴赫说完 "Bei... "这个词之前，大家就爆发出了欢呼声。"我超级兴奋，"顾说，"但我妈妈更兴奋。她甚至哭了。" 顾晓明当时只有11岁。然而，即使在那时，房间里的希望是，美国队长将在七年后在北京参赛--穿着中国的制服。正如一位中国赞助商在微博上写的那样。"来吧，爱凌! 祖国的未来就靠你了！"


在其所有的历史中，中国只赢得了13枚冬奥会金牌，而它在夏季奥运会上积累了262枚金牌。在过去的三届冬奥会中，中国的金牌数实际上都在下降。民族自豪感岌岌可危。习近平在2015年的冬季运动员会议上谈到了这一点。"体育强则国家强。如果一个国家强大了，它就会在体育方面强大。" 党制定了一个蓝图，让3亿人踏上冰雪，将冬季运动变成一个1550亿美元的产业，并培养一支冬季运动员的金牌队伍。

2018年，大约80名中国运动员只参加了一半的奥运项目；这一次，任务是建立一支规模超过两倍的队伍，参加几乎所有109个项目的比赛。问题是：中国在其中许多项目上没有经验。中国体育官员采取了不同寻常的措施，引进了170多名外国教练，并在全国范围内寻找可能成为冰壶运动员和雪橇运动员、单板滑雪运动员的女孩和男孩。许多自由式滑雪运动员来自其他运动；16岁的何金波曾是少林寺武术学院的学生，后来他把飞踢换成了脚上绑着木板的空中旋转。

"两段批评中国的文章会让爱凌陷入困境。一件事，事业就毁了"

为了加快进度，中国增加了一个 "入籍项目 "来招募海外运动员。许多国家发放公民身份，以提高他们获得奖牌的机会，但北京的奥运官员主要着眼于中国移民的子女。中国冰球队以一众归化球员破冰，包括其最佳射手、加拿大裔美国人斯宾塞-福（尽管即使有15名外国出生的球员，该队仍然很糟糕）。花样滑冰被证明是更肥沃的土地。最好的女选手是16岁的Alysa Liu，她是两届美国全国冠军，在海湾对面的谷爱凌家长大。然而，她的父亲是一名在1989年逃离迫害的前持不同政见者：他不愿意接受劝说。(两位天赋较低但政治性较弱的候选人最终被吸引过来）。

没有哪个海外运动员能比谷爱凌提供更多潜在的荣耀。尽管她每年只在中国呆一个月，但2015年后，无论她走到哪里，似乎都会被祖国的阴影所笼罩。2016年年中，当谷爱凌12岁时，她的母亲让国家广播公司中国中央电视台(cctv)完全了解他们的生活；几个月后，cctv的一个摄制组开始跟随谷爱凌，从中国和美国到新西兰和欧洲，将近一年时间。这一年，卢健甚至和谷爱凌的家人在加州住了三个月。


cctv关于谷爱凌的第一部长篇纪录片在2018年冬奥会期间在中国播出--并作为谷爱凌在中国的出场晚会。这部纪录片的主要目的似乎是将谷爱凌作为一个真正的中国爱国者。在开头的一幕中，这个13岁的孩子和她的母亲被驱赶到天安门广场，这个历史悠久的广场是毛泽东在文化大革命期间曾经给红卫兵打气的地方，也是1989年民主抗议活动被镇压的地方。当他们骑车穿过广场时，谷燕敦促她的女儿阅读墙上的字。"中华人民共和国万岁"，谷燕用中文念道。然后，她的母亲让她辨认大门上方的巨幅画像中的人。谷士转过身来，笑着说。"毛泽东！" 他们一起大笑。然后，根据提示，他们带着灿烂的笑容注视着广袤的天安门广场。"太美了，"谷燕说。

午后的太阳落在中国北部崇礼的山脊下，使雪地变得冰冷而险恶。那是2018年12月，谷爱凌在未来的奥运赛场上的第一天，cctv摄像师跟随她在练习场上飞奔。在跳下最后一个栏杆时，顾雏军失去了平衡，向后撞去，头撞在了地上。滑落到一个地方，她静静地躺着，双腿张开。当她的母亲走到她身边时，谷爱凌困惑地抬起头。"我很难记住事情，"她说，开始哭起来。"我们为什么在中国？我们为什么会在中国？"

明显的脑震荡迫使谷爱凌在两天后退出了一场世界杯赛事。然而，她的问题仍在回响。不到一个月前，在奥地利，谷爱凌与她在美国自由式滑雪队的新队友们共进感恩节晚餐。一个月后，她在意大利赢得她的第一块世界杯金牌后，将唱起美国国歌--几天后，她穿着中国的制服与习近平一起再次出现。在中国和美国之间来回切换，对谷爱凌来说一直很有趣。现在，她面临着一个令人不舒服的选择。

我们不知道是什么动摇了她的决定。在她赢得世界杯后突然飞往北京是谁的主意？有什么交易或压力是闭门造车所造成的？一个面临爱和忠诚的基本问题的青少年的情感状况如何--对训练她的教练，对相信她的导师，对母亲和两个祖国？现在还不清楚这个15岁的孩子对这个将决定她未来的决定有多大的权力。"顾炎没有催促，"一位家族熟人坚称。"她希望艾琳为自己做决定。"

建立通往中国的桥梁将成为家族事业

随着2019年春天顾炎在社交媒体上的沉默，美中关系恶化。中国政府威胁要对美国的中国商品征收关税进行报复。6月2日，恰好是天安门广场附近大屠杀30周年的前两天，谷爱凌在旧金山的现代艺术博物馆摆出了一张照片。她穿着灰色的 "美国 "连帽衫，站在安迪-沃霍尔色彩鲜艳的毛主席系列画像前。她微笑着，竖起两个大拇指--像往常一样，在美国和中国之间蓄势待发。

当谷爱凌在6月6日宣布她的决定时，中国互联网的反应是兴奋的。"欢迎回家，为中国赢得荣耀！"一位评论者写道。"这么多优秀的人都去了美国，"另一位写道。"终于有一个人回来了，让我哭了！" (仅在2019年，就有近4万名中国人入籍美国。）在微博上，谷爱凌感谢了她的中国赞助商，首先是 "卢老板"。卢建也回报了这一赞美。"像风一样，美丽的爱凌姑娘从太平洋的另一边乘风破浪而来。"

谷爱凌在Instagram上的英文公告更有分寸。"这对我来说是一个极其艰难的决定，"她写道。"我为我的遗产感到骄傲，也同样为我的美国成长经历感到骄傲。" 北京奥运会提供了 "一个千载难逢的机会来促进我所热爱的运动"，她解释说，"以帮助激励我母亲出生地的数百万年轻人。" 她表示，她的决定超出了体育或商业范畴；这是在一个动荡的世界中的外交行为。她的信息以三个表情符号结束：美国和中国国旗，以及一颗红心。


在美国，一些人对她 "勇敢的决定 "表示赞赏。美国滑雪和滑雪板协会亲切地祝愿她 "在她的所有努力中取得最好的运气"。其他在线评论员则无法抑制他们的蔑视。"叛徒！"一个人嚷道。"你不知道中国有集中营吗？"另一位问道。1984年逃离共产主义波兰的科罗拉多州越野滑雪教练马丁-维西奥莱克(Martin Wiesiolek)毫不吝啬地说道。"你最终会成为中国极权主义政权的政治工具。" 这种尖刻的言辞让这位高中二年级学生感到震惊。"她去年告诉《南华早报》："真正让我措手不及的是我的仇恨量。"我当时才15岁，就受到了死亡威胁。"

成为中国公民后，顾雏军并没有搬到中国，也没有开始与她的新队友在中国东北山区的训练营中打地铺。她仍然与母亲和祖母住在旧金山豪华的海崖社区价值数百万美元的房子里，与她的中国队友们有着天壤之别：在一所高级中学上课，在NBA比赛的场边座位，在卧室的角落里俯瞰金门大桥。中国的体育官员以军事化管理他们的领域而闻名，中国运动员长期被要求将他们的大部分收入交给体育系统。但顾雏军自由地遵循她自己的训练计划，并追求各种商业机会。

谷爱凌的消息公布后，人们对她的兴趣更浓了。一个中国运动品牌的老板让她飞往巴黎时装周。当她参观北京的一家商场时，中国摄影师蜂拥而至，一个新的商业赞助商科颜氏将她带到阿拉斯加拍摄照片。在她16岁生日时，谷爱凌收到了大卫-贝克汉姆的视频信息，欢迎她加入阿迪达斯家族。

与此同时，她的滑雪运动也变得更加出色。在改变隶属关系后的第一年，谷爱凌在国际比赛中获得了七枚金牌。顾雏军开始主宰自由式滑雪三个奥运项目中的两个，即坡道（由栏杆、跳跃和其他障碍物组成的倾斜赛道）和半管（在22英尺高的U形坡道上进行技巧和翻转）。这是一个罕见的组合，类似于一个足球运动员既能当前锋又能守门。2020年2月，顾雏军成为第一位在同一世界杯比赛中赢得两个项目的自由式滑雪运动员。留给她征服的一个项目是大空翻（从45英尺高的坡道上跳下的单人杂技），这在今年首次作为奥运项目出现。

"来吧，爱凌! 祖国的未来就靠你了！"

谷爱凌是为数不多的专业滑雪运动员之一，在山上度过漫长的一天之后，还要做几个小时的家庭作业。她正在争分夺秒地在一年内完成她最后两年的高中学业，这样她就可以为奥运会进行全职训练。Covid-19在2020年春天停止了滑雪季节，但谷爱凌坚持了她的学校时间表，并在2020年6月提前毕业。去斯坦福大学，她母亲的母校，是 "我唯一的梦想，甚至比成为一名职业滑雪运动员更久"，她说。那年秋天，她从瑞士的训练中抽出一天时间参加了大学能力测试：她在1600分中取得了几乎完美的1580分。2020年12月，她在Instagram上发布了一段自己坐在床上点击链接的视频，该链接将显示斯坦福大学是否录取她。答案当然是肯定的。谷爱凌举起手臂，尖叫起来。

像所有参与的美国青少年一样，谷爱凌也开始对社会问题发表意见。她的政治觉醒似乎是在2020年5月乔治-弗洛伊德(George Floyd)死于一名白人警察之手后举行的 "黑人的生活"(Black Lives Matter)抗议活动中出现的。那年夏天，这个16岁的女孩将她的Instagram屏幕涂黑，以声援这一运动。提高认识是 "不够的"，她写道。"为了产生更大的影响，我鼓励大家......给你的地方领导或参议员写信，参加和平抗议"。不客气地说，中国不鼓励和平抗议，也不鼓励向政治领导人施压，让他们采取行动。(中国官员称种族主义是 "美国社会的痼疾"，但他们不允许自己的公民声援一场旨在追究警察责任的权利运动）。


反亚裔偏见的兴起更贴近家庭。去年，旧金山的一位亚裔老人在一次种族主义袭击中死亡后，谷爱凌和她的祖母在一家商店里，一名男子开始大喊大叫，说亚洲人在美国感染了covid-19。谷爱凌催促她的祖母离开商店。"她在Instagram上写道："我自己的中国祖母可能成为仇恨犯罪的受害者......这真的让我感到害怕。旧金山 "被广泛认为是一个自由的天堂，然而暴力和仇恨就在我们的门口"。谷爱凌对中国少数民族群体受到的迫害只字未提。

谷爱凌和她的母亲对她的商业暴利也一直讳莫如深。在成立总部设在家中的谷爱凌公司一年后，她的母亲--她是公司的首席执行官--也在内华达州成立了一家有限责任公司DreamComeGu llc，这是一个低税率的天堂，他们家在那里建立了第二个家。随着代言人的涌入，谷爱凌快速扩大的微博账户变成了商业广告的队伍，从蒙牛乳业和三棵树涂料等本地奥运赞助商到全球奢侈品的顶级品牌：iwc、凯迪拉克、雅诗兰黛。


谷爱凌的主要中国赞助商之一是安踏，这是仅次于耐克和阿迪达斯的世界第三大体育用品公司。去年，安踏在上海一家商场建立了一个互动的谷爱凌主题公园，有巨大的屏幕和一个比生命还大的塑料卡通形象，这个形象是穿着安踏滑雪装备的谷爱凌。(安踏也为国际奥委会和中国奥运队供货。)就在去年3月公园开幕时，安踏轻蔑地退出了 "更好棉花计划"，该计划是一个全球监督机构，因为担心强迫劳动，所以停止向使用来自新疆省材料的公司发放许可证。

随着中国消费者愤怒地反对西方品牌，包括加入抵制新疆棉的耐克和阿迪达斯，安踏加倍坚持其使用新疆棉的承诺。投资者让安踏的股票飙升。国际商会拒绝回答有关其与安踏关系的问题。谷爱凌则像她的主题公园里那个睁大眼睛的卡通人物一样保持沉默。

谷爱凌现在无处不在。她出现在北京的一个公交车站，穿着雪白的滑雪服出现在中国移动的广告牌上。在路上，她涂着红色唇膏，穿着传统的中国服装出现在科技巨头jd.com的显示屏上。在商场里，她带着滑雪板和一杯咖啡出现在乐金咖啡的海报上。在报摊上，她的脸几乎从每一本时尚杂志上都能看到，包括她客串编辑的最新版《Vogue China》。到了晚上，谷爱凌的形象就更大了--在一个城市广场上的巨大屏幕上亮起，她穿着安踏的装备在锻炼。

三年前，当15岁的谷爱凌在对北京的秘密访问中站在习近平身边时，很难想象她会在这届奥运会上与习近平分享最高荣誉。这毕竟是习近平的比赛。而且，由于习近平希望通过今年晚些时候获得第三个总统任期而成为中国自毛泽东以来最强大的领导人，他主导着国家的媒体。不过，谷爱凌已经成为中国媒体所说的 "营销超新星"。据《新京报》报道，她的二十几个企业赞助使所有其他中国冬季运动运动员的赞助总数相形见绌，而每一次滑雪比赛的胜利都会使她的代言费增加，目前已超过200万美元。据该报报道，她在2021年的收入可能超过1500万美元，这将使她成为世界上收入第三高的女运动员，仅次于大坂直美和塞雷娜-威廉姆斯。对于从事一项小众运动的人来说，这是一个令人震惊的结果，在这项运动中，赢得世界锦标赛的奖金只有12,000美元。

"我15岁的时候受到了死亡威胁"

这远远不是一个正常的童年。9月，她在三大洲庆祝了她的18岁生日周：在北京拍摄照片，在迪拜一个亿万富翁的巨型游艇上，在奥地利阿尔卑斯山她训练的冰川上。几天后，她中断了训练，作为维多利亚的秘密的新面孔之一飞往纽约的Met Gala。顾雏军穿着一件波点的卡罗莱纳-埃雷拉（Carolina Herrera）连衣裙和一条镶有39克拉蒂芙尼钻石的项链，穿着五英寸的红色高跟鞋在红地毯上摇摇晃晃--看起来就像一个在兔子坡上滑雪的新手。当晚会结束时，谷爱凌的脚步更加稳健，在会后派对上与蕾哈娜合影留念。

即使在商业干扰的旋风中，谷爱凌仍专注于奥运会。11月初，她发布了一张自己戴着两条蒂芙尼项链的闷热照片，并厚颜无耻地指出。"我想你可以说我喜欢在我的脖子上硬（戴）着金子"。几天后，她上传了一段自己在奥地利的视频，成为历史上第一位完成令人瞠目结舌的双叉1440跳的女性（四个旋转，两个离轴空翻，在空中超过70英尺）。"今天我#世界第一，"谷爱凌在Instagram上写道。(三周后，顾雏军释放了双叉1440，赢得了她的第一个世界杯大空翻金牌）。顾雏军的视频得到了滑雪者和粉丝--以及中国外交使团的一致好评。外交部发言人华春莹写道："这完全是另一个层次，"其他外交官也在推特上齐声说。"期待着她在#北京2022年奥运会上的表现！"

谷爱凌的视频在另一位中国奥运选手、网球明星彭帅在微博上发布了令人震惊的关于一名前共产党高官的性侵犯和胁迫的指控后仅几天就传开了。"她写道："即使我像鸡蛋碰石头或飞蛾扑火一样遭遇灾难，我也会说出你我的真相。这个帖子在不到一个小时内就消失了，审查人员在中国互联网上清除了所有与这些指控有关的内容，屏蔽了数百个搜索词，甚至 "网球 "一词。在两个多星期的时间里，彭帅没有露面，重新出现在上演的会议中，这只是加深了女权活动家和网球当局的恐慌。塞雷娜-威廉姆斯和几十位顶级网球运动员也表达了他们的担忧。谷爱凌保持了沉默。她提倡赋予女性权力，但她似乎无力为她的中国奥运同伴说话。"顾秀莲在哪里？"一位Twitter评论者问道。"想激励中国女孩吗？这是你的机会。"


彭帅的案件重新激发了人权组织对抵制奥运会的呼吁。当谷燕的一个Facebook朋友警告说要抵制时，她回应说。"不会发生的。国际奥委会主席说，奥运会不应该是政治性的。" 12月，美国和其他三个国家宣布 "外交抵制"--他们将派出运动员，但不派高级官员--理由是新疆持续存在反人类罪行。(至少还有六个国家效仿。）中国外交部发言人以嘲讽的口吻打消了这一象征性姿态。"美国政客甚至在没有被邀请参加奥运会的情况下，就一直吹嘘'外交抵制'。"

当谷爱凌在1月抵达北京参加奥运会时，她的第一个举动是在微博上发布了一张自己吃完一盘猪肉和韭菜饺子的照片。她的中国粉丝很喜欢这一点。但他们将很少有机会看到她本人。中国的 "闭环 "反病毒限制措施将所有奥运运动员和场馆与外界隔绝。这种极端的措施可能会使比赛变得鬼魅，但它们可以帮助顾雏军避免粉丝和记者的提问，特别是关于她的法律地位。当她在9月年满18岁时，根据中国法律，谷爱凌需要放弃她的美国公民身份。谷爱凌的大赞助商之一红牛公司在其网站上指出。"谷爱凌决定放弃她的美国护照，归化为中国公民，以便为中国参赛。" 然而，当《华尔街日报》记者致电红牛公司确认时，这段话被删除了。

"美国政客甚至在没有被邀请参加比赛的情况下就一直在炒作'外交抵制'"

谷爱凌真的放弃了她的护照吗？她的名字从未出现在美国财政部的外派人员名单上。2021年1月，她成为美国总统学者项目的候选人，该项目只对美国公民或永久居民开放。顾雏军在美国的时间仍然远远多于在中国的时间，并将在秋季返回斯坦福大学学习。但她从未对她的公民身份发表过评论。12月下旬，谷爱凌在卡尔加里的世界杯半管赛中获胜，她说，这场胜利特别令人高兴，因为一本 "丢失的护照 "导致她在比赛中迟到。谷爱凌没有澄清丢失的文件是美国的还是中国的。

通过她精心选择的话语和沉默，谷爱凌展现了外交官在钢丝上跳舞的天赋。她从不批评中国--"一件事 "就会使一切陷入险境--但她也不像中国运动员那样发表为祖国赢得荣誉的爱国主义言论。政府仍然将她作为一个展示品，但谷爱凌专注于推广她的运动--以及她自己。在18岁时，她不再是其他人梦想的简单容器。她常说的 "我的愿景"，不是基于爱国主义，而是基于无限的个人主义。"她去年说："我们都在一起，挑战人类的极限，"这确实是超越国籍的事情。在顾雏军身上，中国可能已经找到了实现其金牌梦想的答案。但她的成功品牌--自由地追求她的激情，陶醉于她的个人成就--并不反映中国的民族主义目标，而是反映了谷爱凌在小时候爱上的自由自在、热火朝天的美国运动。

当谷爱凌参加比赛时，她很少提到中国，也很少向她的中国队友们喊话。她更多谈论的是 "向自己证明自己 "的需要。最近，谷爱凌回忆说，在2020年她作为中国运动员参加的第一次比赛中，她在第一次大跳中严重坠落，当时她屈服于人群、媒体和赞助商的压力。她把注意力集中在最小的细节上--她用眼线笔在手上画了一只幸运猫--然后她完成了两次几乎完美的跳跃，赢得了金牌。她说："这实际上教会了我，我不想为别人而赢，"她说。"我想为自己赢得胜利。"

顾雏军一直像她的主题公园里那个睁大眼睛的卡通人物一样保持沉默

从谷爱凌开始自由式滑雪的时候，她的母亲就不忍心看她表演最危险的技巧。"她告诉一家中国报纸："在比赛中，我只会问教练'她安全着陆了吗？北京奥运会代表着更加危险的跳跃。谷爱凌为参加奥运会已经准备了半辈子，现在整个中国--以及世界上大部分地区--都在关注。

最终在2月7日，谷爱凌将身着全套滑雪装备，站在北京西部一座高低起伏的塔顶，距离地面200英尺。冬奥会的大空气坡道建在一个旧钢铁厂的顶部，旁边就是三年前顾雏军与中国领导人会面的训练中心。将她的滑雪板推到边缘，顾雏军将准备好从坡道上冲下来，并将自己抛向一个高耸的开瓶器。

谷爱凌现在不仅仅是一名运动员。自从她做出选择以来，她一直试图在中国和美国之间，在企业广告商和人权活动家之间，在她对一个无国界世界的梦想和她选择代表的国家的强硬民族主义之间保持一种平衡。没有完美的平衡。但是，沿着剃刀的边缘，顾爱玲已经成功地走到了悬崖边上。现在是跳下去的时候了。

更正：发表后不久，我们意识到这篇文章中的一些图片是不恰当的。我们删除了这些图片，并对这一错误表示歉意。其他方面没有改变，我们坚持我们公正的和严谨的新闻报道。

布鲁克-拉默是曼谷的一名自由撰稿人，也是《姚明行动》的作者。中国的体育帝国，美国的大企业，以及一个NBA超级巨星的诞生》的作者。

插图。MARI FOUZ

其他图片：Red Bull, christian Anwander, Martin Ruslch, getty, reuters, eyevine, alamy, ocog