Tiger mum vs Rabbit mum: the parenting style that produced a champion
For parents in China, Eileen Gu is a lesson in masterful parenting by her mother Gu Yan: one deserving close study.
It is China’s new national obsession: the “rabbit mum” parenting strategy that made freestyle skier Eileen Gu an Ivy league-attending Olympic champion.
The 18-year-old Gu is the star of the Beijing 2022 Games.
Fittingly for the most political Olympics since the fall of the Soviet Union, she is also hugely divisive.
Born in California – where she still lives with her Chinese-born mother and grandmother — there is a furious conversation in the US about her decision to compete for China.
Meanwhile in China (where she is known as Gu Ailing), the athlete and model is an inspiration to millions.
“She’s like a genius!” one of them tells The Australian inside the Beijing Olympics bubble.
“How can she balance her skiing and her study so well?” asks the 20-year-old fan, a university student in China’s capital, in awe.
For many parents around the country, Gu is a lesson in masterful parenting by her mother Gu Yan: one deserving close study.
Some have clamoured for the elder Gu to write a book on child-raising, a long running fixation in the world’s most populous country.
In the book’s absence, Chinese social media users are sharing parental tips gleaned from the mother and daughter’s various media interviews.
Some say the key ingredient was that the teenager was raised by a respectful “rabbit mum”, rather than a controlling “tiger mum”.
Others praise the role of her hyper competitive grandmother Feng Guozhen, a frequent presence in the part-time model’s Chinese social media feed.
The teenager’s sleeping habits are closely analysed. Posts about her more than 10 hours sleep a night have been viewed hundreds of millions of times.
Then there are the dissenting voices. They note that a few of the key ingredients that contributed to the young skier are not available to most kids in China.
Firstly, there’s the fact that the face of the Chinese Winter Olympics team was born, raised and school in America.
And it wasn’t exactly middle America.
Her bedroom in San Francisco’s wealthy Sea Cliff neighbourhood had a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. The annual fees at her school were $US54,000 ($75,000).
The total bill for her schooling and ski lessons are estimated at well over $US1m.
“Every individual family has its own conditions. You cannot simply copy others,” says Zheng Jian, who has a son in the fifth grade of a Beijing primary school.
As Mr Zheng tells The Australian, Gu’s American passport, wealth and family roots in China “allows her to travel freely between China and America and take advantage of both countries.”
That’s not a path open to many of the young skier’s fans.
Mr Zheng, a travel agent, doesn’t begrudge her success. Like many middle class urban Chinese, he would love to be able to fund such a cosmopolitan lifestyle for his child.
But he says the presentation of Gu – a wealthy Californian teenager – as a model Chinese youth is far-fetched.
Wizened figures in China’s propaganda machine are alert to this.
Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, recently advised China’s propagandists to temper their tributes.
He worried that Gu, who after the Olympics will begin her university studies at Stanford, may rethink her national identity in the coming years.
“She herself says, ‘I am American when I am in America and Chinese when I am in China.’ I believe this is her honest feeling and that she hopes very much to do things this way,” Hu said.
“The real world may not allow her to do as she wishes,” he warned. “The deterioration in Sino-American relations has turned this road into a dead end … Gu Ailing will very likely face a difficult choice.”
For now, her young Chinese fans are swept up in the euphoria of seeing their idol win gold, silver and, this Friday, compete for gold again in her final event.
An Olympics volunteer, a university student at Gu’s mother’s prestigious alma mater Peking University, tells The Australian he is still buzzing after seeing her win gold.
“She’s the people’s champion,” he beams.
Time will tell what he and other patriotic youth think of Gu by the time the Winter Olympics carnival pulls into Italy for the 2026 Games in Milan.
Four years is a long time to keep on the right side of Chinese public opinion.