The Olympics Is The Proudest I’ve Been to Be an American
Why watching athletes compete makes me feel like I found a home
In Chinese, the word for “traitor” (叛徒) sounds like the word for “fat.” The first character is pronounced the same way. In 2012, I visited my extended family in China with uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. They talked about how they were cheering for China in sports like swimming and ping pong in the 2012 Olympics.
I, on the other hand, was cheering for America in all sports, particularly track and field. In swimming, why would I cheer for all these Chinese people whose names I didn’t know and could barely pronounce when I had Michael Phelps?
“Traitor!” My cousin called me.
“What does that mean?” I asked. I didn’t understand the word in Chinese. “Does it mean someone is really fat?”
For a minute, my misunderstanding was the subject of raucous laughter. My uncles, who knew some, but not a lot of English, struggled to explain the word to me. It was someone who was on one side but went to another — a traitor. It was a lighthearted joke that I’m now overanalyzing, but the insinuation was that I was supposed to be cheering for China. After all, I had Chinese blood, Chinese skin, and spoke the Chinese language. More people recognize me as…
