Eileen Gu fervor takes over China’s social media.

You know Eileen Gu is a hot topic in China when even the transportation ministry joins in the celebration of her gold medal.

In an article posted on its official account on the social media platform WeChat, the ministry gleefully noted that Gu’s grandmother, Feng Guozhen, had worked for the ministry as a senior engineer. The article credited her for instilling in her granddaughter a “profound feeling” for China.

“Everyone is proud of her!” it said.

The ministry’s statement was part of an extraordinary outpouring of adulation for Gu, the 18-year-old Californian who has become a star of the Winter Olympics.

So intense was the reaction online to her victory in the freeski big air competition on Tuesday that traffic briefly overwhelmed the servers of Weibo, the popular Twitter-like platform, according to an article by iFeng, a site owned by Phoenix New Media.

Various stories about her were among the hottest topics on the platform, including seven of the top 10. The hashtag #EileenGugoldmedal had been viewed more than two billion times by Wednesday afternoon.

For Gu’s fans, no detail about her life was too obscure.

There were posts about her attending a summer math camp in Beijing and getting 10 hours of sleep a day, prompting debates among users about whether that was too much or too little. A video interview on China’s state television in which she said she ate pork and leek dumplings after winning the gold drew 2.5 million viewers.

Even before the gold, Gu was a phenomenon. As an athlete and a model, her image is everywhere in China — on television, billboards, apps and video platforms. According to Chinese media reports, she has partnered with more than 20 brands, including Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Company, far more than other A-list celebrities in China.

Not everyone was positive. Like other athletes from abroad who are competing under China’s flag, she has faced questions of whether she had changed citizenship to compete for China rather than the United States, where she grew up.

“Why doesn’t she dare to answer the question directly?” one comment said after the news conference where she was asked repeatedly. “It’s not hard to say that she has given up her American citizenship, and now she only has Chinese nationality, right?”

Doubters, for now, are definitely in the minority online. “This is the positive energy idol that young people should pursue today, an all-around lady, practically flawless!” read a far more typical post.

The celebration is not over. Gu has two more events: slopestyle on Sunday and Monday, and halfpipe on Feb. 17 and 18.

Claire Fu contributed research.