There has been a lot of drama recently with the Winter Olympics happening in Beijing. A lot of people are furious that several Chinese Americans are competing for China instead of the U.S., but this is their life, so why is everyone judging them so harshly?

Zhu Yi (a.k.a. Beverley Zu), a 19-year-old figure skater, is one of the victims. Born and raised in San Francisco, she decided to compete for China and all she’s gotten back is backlash from the Chinese media. After she fell in her first jump during her routine and slammed into a wall, people are saying that she’s a disgrace for not even being fluent in her mother tongue.

I have to say though, people are being super rude and this girl does not deserve any of this hate. If she has the right to choose who to compete for, let her. If she wants to give up her American citizen, let her too. This is her career, why are we controlling her like a puppet?

She obviously has the talent if she’s gotten this far. In my opinion, I think she only fell because of all the pressure everyone’s been putting on her. Not only does she have injuries to deal with now, but Yi also has to carry the burden of being a “failure”.

Eileen Wu, who is 18 and another Chinese American, is also getting tons of negativity on her decision of competing for China during the skiing events. She is now being labeled to be “ungrateful” to the country that raised her and trained her to become so successful.

Sure, her American coaches had a part of her success, but if it wasn’t for HER hard work and perseverance, she definitely wouldn’t have gotten this far. People have been saying she did this for the money, but with the fact that she comes from a somewhat privileged background, I personally don’t think that was her purpose for switching over. I mean it makes sense for someone to want to compete and represent their mother country. She even said that her only goal in doing this was to promote her sport to the younger generations.

Being a Chinese American myself, it hurts to see this happen. These innocent people are getting attacked and who knows what they are going through now. But also, why aren’t we talking about the fact that there are other athletes competing for countries they weren’t raised in. I mean they’re not being bullied and bashed online, so why should Yi and Wu?