Just minutes after Alysa Liu won a historic Olympic figure skating gold for the U.S., her story as the child of a Chinese American immigrant who fled communism spread like wildfire across social media. Almost immediately, that discourse evolved, in many circles, into comparisons against another Chinese American superstar who has dominated headlines in Milan Cortina — American-born Team China skier Eileen Gu.”Alysa Liu > Eileen Gu” wrote Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy in a post on X, writing earlier, “The triumph of America over China!” CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COMOther pundits were quick to point out the contrast between Liu’s story, a tale of American loyalty among an immigrant’s child, and Gu, who chose to compete for Team China when she was 15 years old, despite living her life in California. “Eileen Gu is unlucky that Alysa Liu’s patriotism stands in stark contrast to Gu’s betrayal of her country,” American lawyer and political analyst Gordon Chang told Fox News Digital.Just how different, and how similar, are the two Olympic superstars?Liu’s father, Arthur Liu, was there in Tiananmen Square in the spring and summer of 1989. The Tiananmen Square protests, also known as the Tiananmen Square massacre, proved to be a life-changing moment for Arthur, and a history-changing moment for everyone else. Hundreds of Chinese students and residents in the capital city of Beijing were killed by the country’s military for protesting the communist government. Arthur was later summoned to report to the Office of Chinese Communist Party Youth League for his presence that day. “I refused to provide them any more names of students who had participated in the organization of the demonstrations. … I was going to take full responsibility for everything that had happened since at one time I was elected the President of the Guangzhou Autonomous Student Union of Universities,” Arthur Liu told USA Today. “Going to prison for me was a matter of time.” He had to sneak onto a boat to Hong Kong, risking up to three years in prison or a labor camp. The boat took an extended detour to avoid military detection. He later fled to California from there. “His persistence, and he’s brave too,” Alysa told Fox News Digital of her father during a roundtable interview at the USOPC media summit in October. “We all knew about it, he had some stories for us, but we also found out from our other relatives, they would tell us as well.”Meanwhile, in the 1980s, Gu’s mother, Yan Gu, was a student at Peking University studying chemistry and biochemistry, according to The New York Times. She came to the United States to earn a master’s degree, eventually earning it from Stanford. At age 40, Yan gave birth to Eileen, and raised her as a single parent, per Olympics.com. Not much is known about Gu’s father. Eileen has not publicly commented on him, and declined questions about him to The New York Times.And Liu doesn’t even know her own mother.
Alysa Liu vs Eileen Gu — How two Chinese American stars wound up on opposite sides of an Olympic proxy war
