The message popped up on my phone at 3:17 AM: ‘Hey, can you screen record Zhang Ruoyang’s short program and send it to me? CCTV Sports is blocked here again.’
It was my cousin Lisa from Toronto – where it was 3:17 PM – watching yet another historic moment for Chinese sports through fragmented Weibo clips that kept buffering every ten seconds.
I remember watching Zhang Ruoyang’s performance myself earlier that day. The 17-year-old moved across the ice with this crazy combination of grace and power that made you forget to breathe. When she landed that final jump, the arena erupted, but all Lisa got was the spinning wheel of death on her streaming app.
‘The video freezes right before her triple lutz,’ she wrote, followed by three crying emojis. I could almost hear her frustration through the screen – that particular sigh she makes when technology fails her, the same one I heard when we tried to video call during last year’s Spring Festival gala.
What hit me hardest was her next message: ‘Mom called from Xi’an saying everyone’s talking about Zhang’s ‘relaxed yet steady’ performance. I had to pretend I saw it too.’
There’s something profoundly lonely about being the only Chinese person in your circle who hasn’t seen the thing everyone back home is discussing. It’s like missing inside jokes at a family reunion.
Zhang Ruoyang herself said something that stuck with me: ‘From junior to senior level, there are no big or small competitions – you need the same mindset for all.’
Ironically, that’s exactly how overseas Chinese approach content access. Whether it’s a major competition or just the latest variety show, every attempt to watch feels like an Olympic event itself – complete with technical difficulties and the constant fear of disqualification (aka the geo-block message).
When I finally sent Lisa the screen recording (after three failed attempts because the file was too large for WeChat), she replied: ‘Seeing her skate so smoothly while my video buffers every two seconds is the metaphor for my overseas life I didn’t know I needed.’
We both laughed, but there was truth in that joke. The constant buffering, the ‘this content is not available in your region’ messages, the desperate searches for workarounds – it all adds up to this subtle but constant reminder that you’re living between two worlds.
So to all my overseas friends refreshing Weibo videos at odd hours: I see you, I feel you, and I’ve got some tips that might help. Because you shouldn’t have to miss seeing a 17-year-old make history just because an internet line decided to get moody.
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