The story of He Kexin’s age has been told many times, but nearly always from the same vantage point. Western readers know the New York Times investigation, the deleted spreadsheets, and Béla Károlyi’s comments about baby teeth. What they do not know — because almost none of it has been translated or discussed in English — is how Chinese mainland media told the same story.
This essay traces that mainland narrative across a single year, from the first stray press mentions of He Kexin’s age in late 2007 through the International Gymnastics Federation’s formal resolution of the controversy in October 2008. It is not, primarily, a story about whether she was 14 or 16. It is a story about how the same events, covered by journalists working under different constraints and writing for different audiences, can produce such divergent accounts.
