The California Golf Resort Photo in the Alleged Chinese Spy Story

In the outdoor portrait, Jensen Huang stands beside a close-cut patch of turf. A pale path follows the green’s curve. Just beyond it, a timber pergola has glass panels between its square posts. Any one of those features could be found at another golf resort. Their placement next to one another is what points to Oak Terrace at CordeValle in San Martin, California. Mothership published the outdoor portrait as an image of Jensen Huang and Alice Huang. It appeared amid coverage of reporting by The New York Times that U.S. intelligence officials suspected Alice Huang of passing information to Beijing. China denied the allegation. The location match rests on the visible features of the terrace. CordeValle describes Oak Terrace as an event space overlooking its course. Its venue photographs show the putting green and the terrace in relation to the clubhouse. Visit Morgan Hill publishes a view from a different angle. In the wider views, the green wraps around a paved seating area, and the pergola runs along its edge. Those relationships give the portrait a plausible position near the clubhouse. The date of the image is unknown, and the pin represents the terrace area rather than a camera position. A separate photo contains what looks like a more direct clue. A plaque beside an orange wall identifies John Kennedy’s Friendship Bench. A named artwork is searchable in a way that a stretch of turf generally isn’t, and CordeValle says it displays Kennedy’s work. Placing the bench would still require a venue record or a photograph that shows this particular cast with the same wall. The available resort photographs establish the golf terrace and leave the bench unresolved. The difference between the two photos is in what can be matched around the subject. At Oak Terrace, the path, the green and the pergola can be checked together in wider views of the same space. In the bench frame, the plaque identifies the work, while the wall behind it has yet to be tied to a particular site.