Inteviewer: What was it like to find yourself in the center of all this political discourse?
Liu: Ooh, am I?
Interviewer: I don't know if you feel you are, but there is all of this discourse around you and Eileen Gu. China and America are viewing you as like a liability or a hero.
Liu: Yes, I've seen that. I've known Eileen since I was 13 or something. We're from the Bay Area. She's super nice, and her mom is from China. I think people are hypocritical for shaming her for representing China. So in my head it's a bit hypocritical, because her mom is an immigrant. Y'all would have told her to go back to China. Now that they're back in China, you're mad. [Laughs] And it's sport, it doesn't matter what country we represent. Sport is sport, and she has a love for competition, she has love for the game. I think that's all that matters. There's no shame in going to where opportunity is.
The kicker is that Alyssa is really popular on Chinese social media too, they thought that despite the fact the degree of difficulty of the moves she pulled off in her routine didn't approach those of the Russians, that the choreography and energy far surpassed them. There's no salt from the Chinese side afaict
Nice to know, Kuro.