She is a Beijing girl: an examination of how Eileen Gu’s Chinese identity was constructed in Chinese media during the Beijing 2022 Olympics

Abstract

Eileen Gu received a widespread public attention as an American-born snowboarder that won 3 medals in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics representing China. Building on the conceptual and historical frameworks of sports and nation-building, and taking Eileen Gu as a case-study, this article analyzes through critical discourse analysis how Chinese mainstream media portrayed Eileen Gu’s image and her Chinese identity. The results show that during the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Chinese media constructed Eileen Gu’s Chinese identity through a pluralistic approach: her success is connected with national pride, Chinese food, family relations and kinship, friendship, excellence in study and Chinese totems. We conclude that in the context of sport being an important vehicle for China’s nation-building, this country is expanding the boundaries of Chinese/China through sports storytelling and the naturalization of athletes, linking sporting success to the ‘rejuvenation of China’.

Keywords:

• Athlete naturalization
• sport nationalism
• discourse analysis
• Eileen Gu
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘Bejing Girl’ is a translation from ‘Beijing Da Niu’ (北京大妞), which expresses a sense of identity in the Chinese context and without gender disrespect. ‘妞Niu’ is a diminutive of ‘girl’, expressing intimacy and familiarity, often used as a nickname (Long 2016).

2 The expression “New China” symbolizes the purpose of the Chinese Communists, stated even before they came to power, to modernize China, freeing the country from the Century of Humiliation, starting the path of a new China, “politically free and economically prosperous” (Mao 1940).