[imagesource: Chris Pizzello / AFP / Getty Images]

Chloé Zhao has made Oscar history by becoming the first woman of colour, and the second woman ever (after Kathryn Bigelow’s win for The Hurt Locker in 2010) to win Best Director in the institution’s 93-year history for her film Nomadland.

Nomadland also won Best Picture and Best Actress for Frances McDormand.

Zhao was born in China and spoke a bit about growing up there during her acceptance speech. She also recited part of a poem called the Three Character Classic in Mandarin, with an excerpt translated as “people at birth are inherently good”.

Her win is incredibly important considering that Hollywood has a history of stereotyping, fetishising and excluding Asian women.

So, China should be proud. Zhao is a shining example of Chinese success, but that’s not how her win has been received.

Per TIME, instead of celebrating her success, reports of censorship and media silence emerged on Monday.

After her Best Director win at the Golden Globes last month, it seems China was initially proud, referring to Zhao as “the pride of China”.

But things went south when a 2013 interview with Filmmaker Magazine republished what Zhao had said about her childhood in China, describing it as “a place where there are lies everywhere”:

“A lot of info I received when I was younger was not true, and I became very rebellious toward my family and my background. I went to England suddenly and relearned my history,” said Zhao in the original version of the 2013 Filmmaker Magazine article, according to an archived version still available online.

“Studying political science in a liberal arts college was a way for me to figure out what is real. Arm yourself with information, and then challenge that too.”

Zhao has since been criticised and censored across social media and by major state-run media outlets in her home country.

The two biggest state-run media platforms, CCTV and Xinhua, didn’t mention Zhao’s win on Monday after the Oscars played out.

Hashtags related to Zhao were censored on the popular microblogging site Weibo, and searches for ‘Nomadland’ and ‘Zhao Ting’ (Zhao’s name in Chinese) were banned on the film app Douban.

There were also deleted news articles and a live stream of the event in Shanghai, organised for Monday morning was blocked.

But this is not the first time that the Chinese government has censored or sought to control media coming out of Hollywood:

As TIME reported in 2017, “pleasing Chinese audiences—and a Chinese central government hyperallergic to criticism—is now part of the Hollywood formula.”

Although Zhao also speaks fondly of China, referring to “my own people” and being “from China”, she says she often feels like an outsider.

This disposition has largely informed her creativity, though, with movies often depicting “people who live on the periphery, or don’t live mainstream lifestyles”.

Backstage at the Oscars, Zhao told reporters about what her parents always told her:

 “Who you are is enough, and who you are is your art.”

And, her art is incredible.

I’ll leave you with the trailer for Nomadland:

[source:time]