Day after day, Chinese skier Gu Ailing, 18, born in the United States as Eileen Gu, two gold medals and one silver medal, remained among the most popular topics on the social network Sina Weibo throughout the Winter Olympics, which end this Sunday (20).
On Friday, it was because she spoke in an interview that she reserved a spot for the medals “a few years ago.” On Thursday, because she called her mother ten times. Before, it was because she ate a box of leeks to replenish her energy. Even earlier, because she saw a bag emblazoned with a publicity photo of her on the next table in the cafeteria.
Underscoring its Weibo presence, the Wall Street Journal noted that it has contracts with around 30 brands, “from Visa to Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com.”
In the first gold, a hashtag with his name was viewed more than 1 billion times in a single day on the Chinese platform. For the WSJ’s Rachel Bachman, speaking on video, “she’s the big thing in sports, the biggest in the two biggest economies, there’s no one like her, so dominant in her sport and truly multinational.”
The South China Morning Post, from Hong Kong, also highlighted its advertising strength, illustrating with ads for Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Carolina Herrera, Tiffany & Co.
The skier’s impact led Hu Xijin, a columnist for Beijing’s Global Times, to also write on Weibo, with repercussions on Bloomberg, that “Gu’s propaganda should not be exaggerated” as “glory to the country”, because it “has ended turning 18”, he is going to study at Stanford and it is not known what his “future nationality” will be.
But Gu Ailing kept winning and, at the same time, showing signs of his close relationship with China. She posed next to her grandmother and placed one of her medals on her, for example.
More importantly, on her also popular Instagram account, the skier was asked about using the American social network when millions of Chinese cannot. She then defended China, on the platform: “Anyone can download a VPN. It’s literally free [livre ou gratuito] on the App Store”, Apple’s app store.
It is understandable why it appeared at the top of the home page of Diário do Povo, the main newspaper of the PC and the country.
HISTORICAL LEAPS
On the Renmin Ribao or People’s Daily website throughout Friday (above), Gu’s new victory shared the spotlight with Xi Jinping and a headline about “The Historic Leaps of the Great Era.”
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