Who says working for the Communist Party of China doesn’t pay?
Eileen Gu, the American-born Olympian who shunned her home country to compete for communist China, showed up to Monday night’s 2026 Met Gala in New York wearing a dress with 15,000 glass bubbles that took 2,550 hours to make.
“I’m literally wearing art,” the 22-year-old gushed. “Today I am wearing Iras Van Herpen. This is so special. This look is all about bubbles, obviously. It’s a play on movement, on nature, and being fun and whimsy… There are 15,000 glass bubbles on me. They are made of glass, which is incredible. 2,500 hours of work, insane!”
Hidden technology within Gu’s gown produced real bubbles that floated around her as she walked.
While the dollar value of Gu’s dress has not been publicly revealed, most fashionistas estimate its value well into the tens of thousands.
How could a 22-year-old afford such a technological marvel?
Well, the slave-labor-loving People’s Republic of China has been more than helpful in providing Gu with the financial wherewithal to acquire such extravagance.
“However, their names were later ‘deleted from the budgets soon after they emerged,’ according to the outlet:
In 2025, the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau was set to pay Gu and another athlete a combined $6.6 million.
That figure emerged in a public budget that was released in early 2025. It accidentally included the names of Gu and figure skater Zhu Yi or Beverly Zhu, another U.S.-born Olympic athlete who competes for China. The document didn’t break down their individual payments, though it’s likely that Gu, a three-time Olympic medalist, received a larger share of the funding.
In total, Beijing’s sports bureau was set to pay Gu and Zhu nearly 100 million yuan, or $14 million over the past three years. The most recent allocation was for “striving for excellent results in qualifying for the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics,” according to the budget.
When questioned during the 2026 Winter Olympics about the ill-gotten gains from a Chinese government that is actively engaged in the genocidal enslavement of Uyghur Muslims, Gu was unbothered.
“I’m not an expert on this,” the 22-year-old Californian told TIME. “I haven’t done the research. I don’t think it’s my business. I’m not going to make big claims on my social media.”
To TIME’s credit, they didn’t let Gu off the hook that easily. Recognizing that the American-born Chinese Olympian is a Stanford international relations major, the interviewer asked Gu whether she should perhaps have done more research on the Uyghur genocide than she has.
“I’m just more of a skeptic when it comes to data in general,” Gu explained. “So it’s not like I can read an article and be like, ‘Oh, well, this must be the truth.’ I need to have a ton of evidence. I need to maybe go to the place, maybe talk to 10 primary-source people who are in a location and have experienced life there.
“Then I need to go see images. I need to listen to recordings. I need to think about how history affects it. Then I need to read books on how politics affects it. This is a lifelong search.”
Given her status as an Olympian and the fact that she is in China on a very frequent basis, one would think she could make the trip to Xinjiang to investigate the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs. However, there is no record of her doing so.
Or she could just read Breitbart.
In any event, Gu seems very selective about what she’s willing to “research.”
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