Spotlight shines on ‘confident’ grandma

An 85-year-old woman has suddenly become well-known online thanks to her talented granddaughter.

When Gu Ailing, also known as Eileen Gu, won the women’s freeski Big Air event at the Beijing Winter Olympics on Feb 8, her grandmother Feng Guozhen also tasted a degree of fame.

A social media post from the Ministry of Transport, where Feng worked as a senior engineer before retiring, received more than 100,000 hits as it proudly celebrated Gu’s success.

Gu, a versatile skier born in the United States but competing at the Winter Olympics for China, her mother’s native country, has been questioned about her decision to compete for the nation.

She has said several times in public that she is a Beijinger and loves China. She competes for the nation to inspire more Chinese children to learn about and take up sports.

Her affection for China and Beijing may come from her maternal family, which raised her.

Gu has a strong relationship with her grandmother, a native of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, and a sports lover and a member of the women’s soccer and track teams at college. Feng graduated from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 1955.

She went to the US to take care of Gu after the girl was born, and became actively involved in her life.

Gu has never made any secret of the affection she holds for her grandmother. In 2015, when she was 11, she posted photos of herself teaching Feng to use WeChat.

In a post featuring several photos of herself practicing freestyle skiing, Gu wrote, “Thanks, gran, for taking me to watch Ne Zha when I was a little girl.” In Chinese mythology, Ne Zha is a rebellious child with a flaming chariot that resembles a skiboard.

On her Instagram account, Gu describes Feng as a “fiercely confident grandma who instilled in me my competitive nature”.

She also states that Feng is one of the two strongest women in her life, the other being her mother, Gu Yan.