Go ahead and embrace Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao, Chairman Mao, Jackie Chan and the giant panda Ling Ling as part of our long list of nationalistic icons. But would all Chinese, just for the sake of a moment of common sense, leave Jeremy Lin to America?
The newborn NBA heartthrob, born in Los Angeles to a Christian Taiwanese family, has been smothered in emotional outcries from China, where the identity of a Chinese national is being forced upon him, despite his being indisputably an American citizen. This verdict—driven by hysterical, collective wishful thinking—is based solely on Lin’s ethnic origin and the color of his skin, and has been reached without any prior consultation with his parents.
Mauling Lin into pieces is understandable. Not only is there a big crowd of single Chinese women who want to marry a US citizen for a green card, but the nation badly needs an image-cleaner. There has been a stable spate of negative press coverage of China over the past 10 years, from the outbreak of SARS and its subsequent cover-up extending to the contaminated milk powder scandal, the sudden angry fuss of the dog-labeling of the Hong Kong Chinese by a Peking University professor and the recent veto of the United Nations resolution for Syria. China seems to be spoon-feeding the world with one surprise after another, some arousing disbelief and, in other cases, ridicule and contempt.
Bruce Lee has been over-consumed like a long-chewed piece of gum. Chinese cuisine is losing its market appeal as environmentalists are calling for a ban on shark’s fin and boiled tortoises. Yao Ming has retired. To counter an increasingly culturally hostile global PR campaign led by the cynical Western media (and supported by some Republican candidates in the US presidential election), the nativity of Jeremy Lin, the hope and the glory of all Chinese people, so it seems, came at a historical moment as timely as the birth of Christ in Bethlehem in the year 0 AD. Attaching themselves to the new superstar of the New York Knicks would add a score to the much-wounded hearts of many emotional Chinese. It is also a fantastic, patriotic window-shopping opportunity for those who have never had the fortune to visit Disneyland in Los Angeles, let alone witness an NBA match live on the spot with a US tourist visa.
But this one-way kisses-pouring and gate-crashing cuddling could prove an embarrassment for Lin. At a time when most Americans see China as a potential threat, Lin would have to be extremely discreet to emphasize to the people of the United States on which side his loyalty lies. Lin should also feel grateful to his parents for making the pivotal decision of moving to the United States in the 1970s, thus choosing to play on the right court and for the right team, as much as his parents should feel grateful for their parents for leaving the Chinese mainland, rightly switching sides, in 1949. For Lin, those were the two greatest goals they had scored.