{"id":55,"date":"2008-08-19T16:18:28","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T20:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bitc.bme.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/?p=55"},"modified":"2008-08-19T16:18:28","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T20:18:28","slug":"kexin-he-age-eligibility-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/?p=55","title":{"rendered":"Kexin He age-eligibility controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A controversy was rised about the age of Kexin He, the uneven-bar gold medal winner of 2008 Beijing Olympics, summarized on a Wiki page<\/a>.\u00a0 A set of old newspapers and web posts of China were digged out by Chinese bloggers and then translated in English, like this<\/a>, as proof that she is actually 2 years younger that what her recent passport stated, which was used as legal proof of her registration at FIG (F\u00e9d\u00e9ration Internationale de Gymnastique<\/a>).<\/p>\n

However, due to the samely bad reputation of the current Chinese newspapers and web media, it is evenly possible that all of those old news were based on a same wrong source, and the latter just copied from the first appearance and did not pay any effort on varifying it.<\/p>\n

Media have tried to lure Miss He herself of speaking not self-justifying things about her age controversy but failed.\u00a0 But this cannot prove anything since this would be the top most training if her age were mocked.<\/p>\n

However, there is one thing that can never be covered if her announced age were not true.<\/p>\n

Everybody has to have elementary school enrollment before one can be discovered to be a future star of gymnastics.\u00a0 Her parents and early school enrollment have been exposed to public.\u00a0 Why not a serious media reporter just pay them, He’s parents and\/or her elementary school teachers, an interview, congradulate of her success, and not asking her age, but ask for a few contacts of her elementary school classmates for further interview.<\/p>\n

Then the thing is clear.\u00a0 If most of her elementary school classmates are still in 8th grade in middle school (Chinese school system, Grade 1-6 for elementary, 7-9 for middle school), Miss He must be only 14 years old.\u00a0 However, if it is found that most of her elementary school classmates have been enrolled in high school, you know that Miss He is already 16 years old, not even needed to ask for their ages.<\/p>\n

This should be one of the most simple and effective test about her age controversy.\u00a0\u00a0 The question is who would do it first.\u00a0 I do not believe that all reporters over the world would be so dump that nobody would try this simple detective trick.<\/p>\n

Let’s wait for the follow ups of this issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A controversy was rised about the age of Kexin He, the uneven-bar gold medal winner of 2008 Beijing Olympics, summarized on a Wiki page.\u00a0 A set of old newspapers and web posts of China were digged out by Chinese bloggers and then translated in English, like this, as proof that she is actually 2 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-and-beyond-the-world","post-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csic.som.emory.edu\/~lzhou\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}