Despite opting to represent China over the US in competitions two years ago, Chinese-American freeski sensation Eileen Gu will never forget her mixed-race heritage. The US-born 17-year-old, who collected another pair of gold medals at the FIS Snowboard and Freeski World Championships half-pipe and slopestyle events in Aspen this month, recalled an identity-defining moment during an annual family trip to Beijing as a child. “When I was five, I was in the back seat of a taxi and the driver was poking fun at me for being a hunxue’er , a mixed kid, and I didn’t understand the connotation,” the Aspen Snowmass athlete said, letting slip her thick Beijing accent. “Looking back it was super lighthearted and most of it was probably a compliment, but he was saying I looked different or whatever. I got so mad I cried and told my mum to xia che [get out the car], that we needed to leave because this guy was being so disrespectful. My mum and the taxi driver were both just laughing. “I thought: ‘this isn’t funny, I’m Chinese’. I’ve always had that. I’m so proud of both [my cultures]. There’s no part of me that would ever hide my identity. It makes me unique and allows me to be more open to learning about new cultures. I’m really grateful I grew up in that environment.” Gu, who is known as Gu Ailing in China, is fluent in Mandarin, having been brought up in San Francisco by her Beijing-born mother, Yan, and grandmother, Guo Zhenseng. She said she had never taken a Chinese class or schooling but has been travelling to and from China since the age of two. Last year’s Covid-19-impacted summer was the first in memory that she did not return. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Eileen Gu :) (@eileen_gu_) The two-time X-Games and Youth Olympics gold medallist oozes with confidence when addressing both English- and Chinese-speaking media, much to the delight of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games organisers. With major followings in both the East and West – and simmering political tensions between the hemispheres – it comes as no surprise that the “triple medal threat” is rumoured to be on the shortlist for China’s Olympic flag-bearer. But it is not Gu’s remarkably speedy and successful ascent to the top of her sport that gave her such poise on and off the snow. The teen attributes almost all of it to the women in her family. “My mum emigrated from China for graduate school, then my grandma came to the US in the ’90s. We all lived together and my grandmother doesn’t speak any English so we speak Chinese. They’re by far the two biggest influences in my life,” Gu said. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Eileen Gu :) (@eileen_gu_) “Both of them are the definition of empowered women – to the max. My grandma is the fiercest woman on the planet. I’ve never seen her encounter anything that she’s remotely afraid of or is intimidated by. She’s also super competitive and I definitely learned that from her. My mum is a little less hot-headed – emphasis on little – and she taught me about judgment and work ethic. My grandma gave me that drive and desire to win while my mum gave me the tools to do so.” It perhaps explains why Gu has never felt the perennial “out-of-place” rhetoric that many mixed-raced athletes have grappled with. Rather, she simply considers herself American in America, and Chinese in China. “I think too often there’s this narrative of rejecting your Asian – or whatever other race mix – side, in an attempt to fit into American society. What’s beautiful about American society is its diversity. I’m fully American and look and speak the way I do. Nobody can deny I’m American. When I go to China, nobody can deny I’m Chinese because I’m fluent in the language and culture and completely identify as such. It allows me to navigate and adapt. It’s a beautiful thing,” said Gu, who on the other hand did not hesitate to speak out about the rise in anti-Asian-American “hate crimes” in the US. During her summer visits to China, Gu often tried to impress certain values that she had learned from her all-girls primary and secondary school education upon her peers. It was the much-needed foundation on which she now builds bigger goals, such as helping to get 300 million Chinese people “on the ice” by the start of Beijing 2022. “Our school motto was ‘educate, encourage and empower women’, so we were all taught about equality and felt we had the ability to anything we wanted to. It was so valuable and I almost took it for granted because I was always like ‘of course I can, why would I not be able to do it?’ Now I realise not everybody has that mindset and that has single-handedly caused me to be more outspoken and want to spread what I was so fortunate to [learn],” Gu said. “In China, that means a lot of things. First, to introduce sports to girls in general. I remember over the summers there would be kids in China doing summer school so I had to do that to become friends. It didn’t make any sense – most people were studying for the gaokao [National College Entrance Examination], which I didn’t have to do. After class, I went to this basketball programme. I was the only girl but it didn’t really bother me because I was also the only girl in my basketball team back in the US. “I met a bunch of friends – all girls – in the day programme and asked if they wanted to come to the basketball. They said, ‘No, why would we want to do that?’. I told them there was no pressure and it wasn’t as if we were going to go pro. By the end, there were about five or six girls and we could make our own team. It was just a fun time to build confidence and for them to feel more secure of themselves. “Now in skiing I get so many messages on Instagram and Weibo saying I’ve inspired girls to try skiing, or do their first 360, which makes it all worth it. To be able to see that come to fruition as opposed to being some faraway dream is definitely the most rewarding part of the job.” Gu is now known on Chinese social media as “the ice princess” or “genius girl skier”. She has become the Chinese winter sports role model that she did not have as a child – though she had plenty of American ones – and has become the face of the country’s push to build 800 ski resorts and 650 skating rinks by 2022. Having graduated high school a year early in preparation for the Games, Gu is fully focused on Beijing. She has a private coach and therefore trains separately from the Chinese national team, but will meet up with them when respective borders ease. As she recovers from a broken metacarpal and torn ulnar collateral ligament sustained during her competition blitz at the top of the year, the Stanford University-bound Gu can finally catch a breath and do what people her age do best. “I try not to think of myself as ‘famous’ or above anyone else,” she said when asked about interacting with young Chinese fans. “I’m a teenager – I’m 17 – and worry about things teenagers do, like what party I’ll be going to on the weekend or how many hours I’m going to get before a big test … or prom. I don’t want to create any kind of separation because I want that camaraderie – that normal social life – because it can be really lonely if you put yourself in that box. I don’t want to think that I have fans, but friends who want to hear what I have to say. It’s a tricky balance.”