He is the latest in a tradition:

Englishmen that established the Virgina Colony, Plymouth, then others,

Africans brought against their will, but now much more than they were intended by their masters,

People of Chinese ancestry that came to the West Coast and labored in the mines and on the railroads,

Natives that were nearly eliminated by bigotry and pride, and yet endured and now take their rightful place,

No one forgets where they came from. All embrace what they are now.



Jeremy Lin is an American. That's the strength of this nation.

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"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong". (Knight's Oath, Kingdom of Heaven)

Which is similar to your skin?
Sheer Nonsense. Period.

Jeremy Lin is a US Citizen From LA graduate of the Palo Alto Schools and Harvard on one of only four Harvard player to ever get to the NBA. So Jeremy Lin is a Chinese American whose parent emigrated fro Taiwan.

林書豪 (thanks to Wikipedia) definitely has Chinese roots and those who like basketball probably love to see him playing this sport just like the Irish are proud that Barack Obama has, John F. Kennedy had drops of Irish blood running through their veins. Roosevelt and Van Buren Dutch and so forth. The real 100% native Americans from before the Italian Columbus still exist? Basically all 50 United States are melting pots, aren't they?

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Give a man a fish you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime - Chinese proverb

ClubFavolosa
I think you've hit the point. American is what it is now because it is a melting pot. It is inclusive, which is key to development, in my opinion.

http://www.wpix.com/news/wpix-linsanity-linflation-knicks-alfarone-story,0,4851417.story

Lin-Sanity Leads To "Lin-Flation" Of Knicks Ticket Prices As Knicks Beat Mavericks

NEW YORK (PIX11)—
Lin-Sanity took over Madison Square Garden Sunday, as the Knicks faced the team many say was their toughest opponent yet, the Dallas Mavericks -- and won. The Knicks topped the Mavericks 104-97, and ended the Mavericks 6-game winning streak.

The Garden was sold out. The crowd was pumped up. Former bench-warmer-turned-Knicks-powerhouse-playmaker Jeremy Lin scored 28 points and had a career-high 14 assists. Lin-Sanity Lin-spired Bronx-born rapper Drew Boogie to write rap lyrics about the Harvard-educated point maker, set to the band Cypress Hill's song, "Insane in the Membrane."

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

A blog titled 'Jeremy Lin, a Chinese or an American' maked me realize that my attempt to tag Lin as a Chinese is actually a kind of psychology trying to profit from association with a big shot. Whatever Lin dose, he is himself. He can inspire. But the honor he has earned through his hardship is his own and no one is to take it by claiming as being close to him. He can inspire anyone from any country. It is not important where he comes from and which country he belongs to. That is the spirit of sports-no border. Let's share the beauty of the moment of every shot.

I like sports and the players but I don't love it/them. I can appreciate the talent and skill it takes to be really good at any particular sport. Having said that I do believe that there is an awful lot about how sports and the men and women that play them is totally out of whack.

Paying anyone the sums of money that professional athletes are paid to play a game, any game, is way beyond reason. But reason has very little place in sports today.

I know that the teams are all important to their respective city, state, region, and the people within the city, state, region share with the team the victories that they produce.

I wish that teachers of our children could earn 1/10 of the salary of a major sports athlete.

Major sports are here to stay, but I still enjoy watching non-professional sport where the players are playing because they love to play; not because they're paid enormous sums of money to do so.

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Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. -Oscar Wilde

Bugdoctor,

I am glad you gave a reason for using the bold font.

As the OP gave us a heading that is quite narrow, I think it is acceptable to broaden the discussion.

I spent time in China teaching English. As part of the school's English course, set homework was given. Now, once the students had achieved a reasonable standard they were given subjects to research. One such topic was 'important Westerners'; they had to research and present an account of an important person's life and work.
So, who did they choose? Can you guess? Probably.
First was Michael Jackson. Then came various basketball players whose names escape me. Behind that came Obama. Very few students chose figures that had actually contributed to mankind's development (girls were more likely to do this).
When I asked why they had chosen the characters they had the reasons were 'money' and 'fame'. No doubt, the students are now presenting Lin.

So, Lin is ordinary; I only saw a brief, and rather unflattering interview. But the worrying point is that anything other than his celebrity status is irrelevant to the Chinese. He could be a serial rapist in his free time; it wouldn't matter. When I pointed out negative aspects of students' choices, they either said nothing or shrugged. So what? Never mind the person, never mind the value of his / her work, just feel the banknotes.

I hope this helps to explain my cynicism.

The original post concerning Lin Shuhao asks : ‘Do you regard him as Chinese or an American?’

One wonders what is behind the query.

A straight answer is that he is, by birth and citizenship, American. Genetically he is Chinese. Ethnically he is Taiwanese Chinese.

Is this a question of wanting to claim some reflected worth?

Would the Chinese be so keen to claim him as their own if he were a gangster? Are all the

Chinese American gangsters, Chinese or American?

Nationalism is a part and parcel of our world, as we know, and that will not, change will it. At best nationalism is ugly, and appeals to the lowest common denominator. Loving ones homeland is not the same as nationalism is it.

I agree with bugdoctor when he comments that Lin has done well.

That success is not a credit to America or to Taiwan; it is a credit to him as a fellow human. The same princple applies to a Chinese American gangster. The fault or otherwise, lies with the individual; not the state.

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle

I should have made a better job of explaining my thinking about the relative merits of Lin and my heroic rickshaw driver. The fact that you, Bugdoctor, seem only to focus on my perceptions of Lin, show me I have failed.
If I have offended anyone with my opinions, then it is too bad, but it was not my intention to insult Lin, but to show that he is a normal human being who has done nothing special. He is thus unworthy of mass adoration.

The rickshaw driver who built a hospital with his meagre life savings touched me more than I can say. Here is a humble man who valued hard work, and showed his commitment to help fellow human beings in distress. To suggest I don't value these qualities, Bugdoctor, is insane. It is a shame you didn't read all my posts before drawing your conclusions.

Well, I don't know about Lin's sacrifice. You insist he is a paragon; that is your right, Bugdoctor. I would be more inclined to believe in his 'goodness' if he donated - 'sacrificed' - some of his wealth to good causes. That would make him a better role model, in my opinion.

I would like to commend Aljazeera. They gave the same air time to the rickshaw driver as Lin. In fact, one news report followed the other, nicely contrasting the relative 'sacrifices' of the subjects.

Do you think JFK is an Irishman, or Henry Kissinger an Israeli? How you feel about him does not change the passport in Lin's pocket.

Bugdoctor,

I wish you well, too.
I would like to answer the question you asked me, but as you have withdrawn from the thread I would be wasting my time.
Perhaps the OP might respond to the thorny issue of how the Chinese view philanthropy / altruism, if he/she doesn't mind a little deviation from the main point of the thread.

My post was intended as a reply to the OP. I care very little about stars in professional sports or in any other field. If you are successful at something, good for you; but I am not self-important enough to rhapsodize about anyone who is not personally connected to me.

To do him justice, on re-reading his post, I think the OP was more likely to be expressing his emotional affinities to Lin than putting Lin on any kind of a pedestal.

Do we enjoy listening the music composed by Beethoven because he was Austrian, or Sibelius because he was a Finn?
Pele is Pele, no matter if he was Brazilian or Ukrainian; Muhammed Ali was a great boxer, were he American or not.

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Countryboy wrote: What I don't understand, and I'm sure I'm not alone, is WHY you feel the need to put down Jeremy Lin.

You are as unobservant as some others who have contributed to this thread.
I was not putting him down; I was saying he is merely ordinary. What I was putting down was the cult of celebrity and the sheep-like nature of those who follow people who have done nothing much. In my opinion Lin is one of those, but others who think dropping a ball into a net means something will disagree.

Do you understand now, Dude? I hope so, because I'm not saying it again.

I don't know, Epi, if I've misheard it. I'll give an example: If Andy Murray won, he'd be referred as a British tennis player. If he lost, he's a Scot.

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Because his name is Lin and has a Chinese looking, it's inevitable that his native homeland often get mentioned. It'd be different if his name was Gingrich, Martinez, Polanski, Krueger, Andersson, Giuliani,...

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And He it is Who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon, each gliding along in its orbit. (HQ. 21:34)