Jan 26, 2020

Second Day of the Lunar New Year

Drizzles

Though I read three days ago that services at the county (see endnote 1) bus station would be suspended, I didn’t feel trapped. It’s probably because I spent most of last year in a state of isolation anyways, doing some writing and translation at home. Besides, I wasn’t expected to go back to work right after the Lunar New Year holiday.

I heard from my cousin yesterday that people in his village were already initiating a roadblock, and that a lot of other villages are organizing roadblocks as well. In our village’s WeChat group, a few are questioning why we are not doing the same, while some claimed that the road to the county was already blocked. It was not until then that I got nervous. When we got back to the village from the county for the Lunar New Year, my wife and I had only planned to stay till the third day after New Year’s Eve. We didn’t bring enough diapers and milk powder for the baby, and the shops in the county remain closed. We decided to return to the county one day earlier than planned, and we hastily packed and got in our neighbor’s van.

For more, see https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/HQqtTO3T79-BcVaT75TDDQ.

"If the situation then was as severe as it is now, you would probably be locked up for a month!"

G: I’m Guo Jing. I had just recently moved to Wuhan in November 2019, a month before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus started in December. By January it got much worse, and the city was locked down on the 23rd. This measure was rare and didn’t have many precedents in history.

X: What were your thoughts when you first heard about this pneumonia with an unknown cause?

G: I first heard about it on December 30th. Some said there was a pneumonia outbreak that originated from the Huanan Seafood Market. My eyes were bothering me so I went to Tongji Hospital for a check-up. My friend sent me a message that same night, saying that some infected people were being sent to Tongji Hospital. But I’m not a cautious person; plus there were so many people in the hospital, the probability of me getting infected was very low. So I didn’t pay much attention. For a long period, there were no new confirmed cases, and the official information at the time was that it was a curable disease, so I wasn’t really worried. I even went out on a business trip in January.

For more, see https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/03ABjjnieLuoH7GTQZqCoA.

I live in Wuhan with my family.

My boyfriend, who works in another city, had planned to come back to Wuhan right on the afternoon of Wuhan’s lockdown day – we didn’t know it would happen back then. But he wanted to come back earlier, because he couldn’t wait to see his family, especially his parents. Another reason was that we had agreed to meet each other’s parents and have dinner together in our homes.

So, fortunately, he was able to change the train ticket to an early morning train prior to the quarantine announcement, when a lot of people were canceling their tickets. He managed to get on that early train. At around 2:30 am (on January 23), when he was halfway through, the government released the first announcement from the Command Center that no one would be allowed to leave or enter Wuhan anymore, meaning that the city borders would be closed tight.

We had planned to visit each other’s parents on the third and fourth day of the Lunar New Year. However, at around 4 pm on Lunar New Year’s Day, the government announced another order that from the next morning, the use of vehicles would be strictly controlled in the central urban area. My boyfriend told me that since we probably wouldn’t be able to see each other afterwards, he would come to my house on the Lunar New Year’s evening and bring us some new purchases for the Spring Festival. He said he wouldn’t stay for dinner as he didn’t want to make everybody nervous, especially my parents. Upon my persuasion, however, he stayed after all. He had met my parents before, but had never really sat down with them to have a real meal together. Finally, we made a formal introduction!

For more, see https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/sPt0b8kD54V9fznYYE7D9g

Catering to the male gaze, the misfortune suffered by women has become a metaphor for the unfortunate fate of the nation and its people in this epidemic.

— Qijiang Hou

Editor’s Note:

In the past three issues, we have been featuring personal narratives from individuals who are experiencing and affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. This issue will be somewhat different. For the first time, we are presenting you not a personal story but an opinion piece.

In this article, journalist and commentator Hou Qijiang analyzes how the mainstream media in China portray female medical workers in the current epidemic. In particular, she asks the following questions: How have women’s bodies been staged and misappropriated in the media coverage? How are they being used as a tool to direct public opinion? On the one hand, female medical workers’ physical traits and their “sacrifice” in the epidemic are highlighted. On the other hand, female workers are overlooked in terms of their needs, their professional values, and even their existence among the workforce. Analyzing the origin of gender discrimination in the media, Hou points out the inequality caused by the intersection between social status and gender, and the grand nationalist narrative that blurs the images of ordinary female workers.

On the evening of February 17th, a video spread throughout the Chinese Internet of female medical workers from Gansu province collectively having their heads shaved before departing to assist with COVID-19 treatment and containment efforts in Hubei province. In the video, 15 young female staff members sat under a spotlight, wearing masks, to have their heads shaved in order to “make work more convenient.” Many had reddened eyes and furrowed brows from holding back tears before their long locks fell to the ground.

In the media, they were called “the most beautiful warriors to go on undeterred by the dangers ahead.” Just a few days prior, a nine-months-pregnant medical worker and another who had recently suffered a miscarriage also went to the front line. The two were portrayed by the mainstream party newspaper as “heroines” who are “loyal to their posts,” aiming to evoke a touching and positive image.

Female medical workers make up the majority of the front lines (endnote 1). While women have become the protagonists in many media reports, the media narratives covering female medical workers are often patriarchal, and even sexually humiliating. The featured images of women as girlfriends and mothers cater to the male aesthetic. Meanwhile, the pressing reality of female medical workers not receiving proper physiological protection and care during this epidemic continues to be largely ignored.

The Misappropriation of the Female Body

Before the extreme event of head-shaving mentioned above, stories of female medical workers cutting off their hair had already been repeatedly told.

For example, in a January 31st news article by Chinanews.com (endnote 2), 18 nurses from the Infection Division of Jianyang People’s Hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan province, cut their long hair for the convenience of work. The article described the women going home to have their hair cut by their husbands, and also emphasized that two of the young women had “no boyfriends yet.” In another piece on Chinanews.com (endnote 3), a female nurse was reported to have postponed her engagement because of the epidemic, a decision which was supported by her boyfriend. Articles of a similar nature can also be found on other Chinese news sites (endnote 4).

All of these articles pinpoint one theme: A woman’s sacrifice for work is a sacrifice of her appearance, which depreciates her value in the marriage market.

Negligence and absence from the family is also a popular theme in news articles about female workers fighting the virus. For example, in a video posted on January 28th by Chengdu Business Daily, the medical team from Guangyuan city were departing to assist in Wuhan. A husband shouted to his wife sitting by the window of the bus, “When you return home safely, I will cover all the housework for a year.” In the follow-up video, the female doctor shouted to her husband in response, “I will supervise your one year of housework after I get home.”

What lurks behind this conversation is the entrenched default rule in society: women should undertake all household chores. Doing housework, therefore, has become a husband’s reward to his wife.

Mothers are faced with a contradictory form of critique, as they are both criticized for neglecting maternal duties at home, yet celebrated for their loyalty to their work. For example, take guancha.cn’s story on February 12th (endnote 5): a nurse at Wuhan Central Hospital named Huang Shan was going to be a mother. However, she unfortunately experienced a spontaneous miscarriage. Ten days later, she overcame the “pain of losing her baby,” wiped away her tears, “picked up her sword” and became an “epidemic warrior.”

In another article by cjn.cn, seven nursing mothers from the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital in Jiangxia District took weaning medicine in order to make themselves more available to work at the front line (endnote 6). What’s particularly striking is that one nurse’s choice to wean received her entire family’s understanding and support. “After weaning, her breasts were often swollen, stiff, and painful. She had to wait until after her shift to take off the hazmat suit and go to the bathroom to empty the excess milk by hand. It was very tough for her.”

The deliberate focus and filter of the media cobbles together a group portrait of women working in the field during the epidemic. Their feminine traits are emphasized along with the gender-based violence and sacrifices they have experienced. The creators of these news articles fail to give proper attention to the women’s professional skills and qualifications. Instead, they focus on the women’s “body shape,” “looks,” “duty as a mother” and “duty as a wife.”

No matter how much it is the women’s initiative to work on the front line, the media never fails to mention that their efforts and sacrifices are approved by their boyfriends, husbands and family members. This dissolves women’s agency at the societal level and ignores their social value, merely defining them within the familial structure.

With head-shaving and haircuts, the accounts of breast and vaginal pain, and the bruising facial imprints from wearing masks, the female body has become an ideal place for men to construct mainstream values in public opinion. This, in turn, can powerfully stimulate viewers, bringing out the maximum level of sympathy. Catering to the male gaze, the misfortune suffered by women has become a metaphor for the unfortunate fate of the nation and its people in this epidemic.During this discourse, the value of women has been surreptitiously substituted: a citizen who contributes professional values settles into the second sex under the patriarchal framework.

During this discourse, the value of women has been surreptitiously substituted: a citizen who contributes professional values settles into the second sex under the patriarchal framework.

The Neglected Needs

Female medical workers are subject to discrimination due to possible infection, and they shoulder another layer of discrimination due to their gender. According to Liang Yu (梁钰) who initiated a campaign collecting and donating supplies for female medical workers, many women on the front line could only temporarily cover their menstrual bleeding with plastic wrap. Sanitary napkins were not available during times when protective equipment was scarce. Some had period blood on their hazmat suits, and some even had “a mixture of blood and urine.” When Liang informed the leadership at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital (the first designated hospital to treat COVID-19 patients in Wuhan) that she had arranged for donations of sanitary napkins and other supplies, she was rejected as the leadership did not consider the supplies to be “important protective equipment.”

This neglect shows a stark contrast to the outcry from female medical workers at the front line. According to Liang Yu’s posts on Weibo (a Chinese social media app), two days after her donations were rejected she received messages asking for help from women working in the same hospital. She learned that there were about 1,300 female medical workers there. After checking donation records in other regions, she also found that menstrual pads were not included in the Command Center’s procurement list of essential materials. Therefore, the items were not eligible for the dedicated green channel for transportation, and could not reach the front line in time. By that time, it had been more than two months since the COVID-19 outbreak.

Organizations and individuals with decision-making power have also shown blatant ignorance, indifference, and inaction towards women’s needs. The gaps in mainstream media coverage have closely matched these levels of ignorance.

On February 14th, People’s Daily posted a message on Weibo regarding the China Women’s Development Foundation’s targeted procurement of menstrual pads (endnote 7). Only then, after countless women’s outcries, did menstrual pads receive justification as an item meeting the requirements for collection during the outbreak instead of an item for special needs.

Due to underlying gender bias, the media have long since reported daily news stories with inaccurate and distorted representations of reality. Before they rebroadcast an interview of a female nurse on January 18th, CCTV news specifically cut out the words, “I am on my period.”

One of the simplest and most straightforward reasons for the negligence and ignorance of women’s needs is the absence of female voices in decision-making positions. The glass ceiling for doctors still exists, and gender imbalance in the workplace has impacted the media representation of women. For example, on Wuhan Tongji Hospital’s official website, only two of the twelve party and administrative leaders currently in office are women. All of the nine party and administrative leaders in Hubei Provincial People’s Hospital are male.

Given that 90% of nurses are women, one has to admit that in the medical system, the power of discourse is tilted towards the “minority group” in the gender ratio – men.

Gender, Social Class and the Grand Nationalist Narrative

It is, however, unjust to attribute the neglect of women’s interests solely to gender bias in the media.

If we introduce the perspective of social class, it is easy to notice that the media has, to a certain extent, created division and hierarchy within women as a group. Elite women, including experts and leaders, have significantly more power and influence in media discourse than women of lower social status, and therefore have received more positive coverage. Prominent examples during this outbreak include Li Lanjuan, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a member of the high-level expert group of the National Health Commission, and Sun Chunlan, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council.

On the other hand, middle-level doctors and nurses are rarely reported in a positive light for their professional value. As discussed, their purpose in the media is mostly to evoke empathy by presenting a measured sense of suffering.

There is one case worth taking a closer look at. On February 7th, people.cn detailed the stories of four female staff members working at two temporary specialized hospitals in Wuhan (endnote 8). In one of these articles, they were praised as “Iron Ladies” and “[r]oses blooming at the construction site”(endnote 9). Their actual work titles are: Team Leader in Epidemic Prevention, Steel Structure Expert, Material Coordination Manager, and Head of Kitchen Staff. The article also noted that 18 women have participated in the work since the project began. If we set aside the description of their family and children, this could count as a decent news article on female workers.

However, if you zoom out just a little to see the bigger picture, you will find that the working women at the lowest level are not even qualified to be a footnote amidst this whirlwind of “Chinese speed.” In the grand nationalist narrative, the tiny figure of a woman is easily dissolved into thin air. For example, a media photo from the Huoshenshan temporary hospital site shows that many female construction workers were ignored in the media coverage. The workers appeared unkempt and didn’t mind lying down at the construction site to rest, their gender attributes largely obscured by their work clothes and hard hats. If it weren’t for the #SeeingFemaleWorkers (#看见女性劳动者) social media campaign, the women would disappear from public sight with the completion of the hospital construction.

In fact, these unnamed female workers were indeed among those cobbled together at the last minute by subcontractors. In the construction industry chain, they comprise the bottom group with lower wages than their male counterparts. As people.cn “poignantly” pointed out in the article, “[t]here are more female construction workers on-site that we don’t know the names of.” They don’t deserve to have names.

From a historical perspective, it is not difficult to find that the Chinese media’s portrayal of working women has undergone a thorough rewrite under state capitalism. The media moved on from the early Party-centric theme, in which Chinese women preferred “to face the [gun]powder rather than to powder the face”(endnote 10). Most media outlets also have an aesthetic filter for consumerism. The media image of working women is immaculately impractical and pleasing. After these images were polished by capital and combined with the “achievements of a great nation,” they constituted the landscape unique to Chinese politics. The workers at the bottom of the social ladder who make a living through manual labor were abandoned right after being exploited, their narratives left blank.

The media selects women to be the object of propaganda to construct a grand narrative of nationwide resilience and soothe the widespread concern during this epidemic. If, however, an individual story brews imminent negativity in the news, female workers are then quickly objectified, dwarfed and exploited. On February 15th, a nurse by the name of Liu Fan from Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan died from COVID-19. While some spoke out on social media, suspecting that the infection was due to insufficient protective supplies, the hospital’s public relations director tried eagerly in an interview to shirk the hospital’s responsibilities. They claimed the nurse in question had voluntarily delayed her retirement, and the hospital did not arrange for her to be on the front line working at the consultation desk in the fever clinic. Instead, she was “just a nurse giving injections.”

The narratives of many women have been deliberately buried and ignored by mainstream media: the female farmers who suffered financial loss because they couldn’t sell groceries in virus-stricken areas; the women working on farms who were forced to kill livestock rather than have them starve to death due to lack of fodder; the female factory workers who could not return to work; the female workers in cleaning and housekeeping services; and the female workers who dealt with trash sorting, etc. These women only appeared in sporadic pleas for help on social media. They don’t even qualify to be misappropriated simply because they would jeopardize the image of a powerful nation.

During an epidemic, when a woman has been placed on an altar, how does she simply be a normal person? How does she fight for her basic rights? In ordinary times, taking one step forward would expose her to a conundrum where she is forced to keep moving forward with no turning back. In these special times, she would need to run or even fly to catch up with the expectations set for her.

She may be ready and willing to do so, but at the same time, she is also presented with no other choice.

Where do you see gendered phenomena during the outbreak – share some of your observations during the outbreak through the lens of gender by emailing us at 2020.uncover@gmail.com.

We look forward to hearing from you.

— An Interview between Ryan Hoover and Maya Wang

Even though it’s hard being spread apart on different countries, different continents, we still have a strong sense of support for each other

—Maya Wang

Editor’s Note

The COVID-19 outbreak has deeply affected China, the Asian diaspora, and the globe to varying degrees. Perhaps more dangerous than the virus itself are the accompanying xenophobia and stigmatization, which seem doubly infectious and deadly.

Maya Wang, a senior at New York University Shanghai (NYU Shanghai), recently posted on Instagram an avant-garde surgical mask makeup in an effort to raise hopes and speak out against sinophobia. Ryan Hoover is an NYU Shanghai sophomore and Diversity Initiatives student leader. He was displaced by the coronavirus to the NYU New York campus, and as an effort to explore the impact of this outbreak in both the school and international communities, he conducted an extended interview on Maya’s experience during the novel coronavirus epidemic on Feb 13 (EST). Transcription from the original audio file has been edited for the sake of clarity and brevity

Original Caption:

《希望》，2020

It is difficult to be joyful and celebrate the lunar new year while Wuhan and all of China is suffering. During the lunar new year holiday, families are meant to reunite and rejoice, not to mourn and worry.

We are grateful to those working tirelessly to find a cure, treat the ill, provide supplies, among many others who are keeping the nation safe. Please keep China in your thoughts and consider donating to the cause.

Additionally, I have been utterly disgusted by the sheer amount of insidious racism and sinophobia that has risen in response to the current situation. It is disrespectful to everyone who has been affected. In a time like this, empathy and sympathy is of utmost importance.

I hope that all of my friends and family in China are safe and healthy. I hope that I can return to China and finish my education. I hope that a cure is found and there is peace. I hope that there are new reforms and policies that are implemented so that a catastrophe like this can be prevented in the future. And most importantly, I hope that there is more compassion for our world and our fellow human beings.

新年快乐，祝福大家身体健康. (Happy New Year and wish everyone good health.)

(Transcription from the original audio file has been edited for the sake of clarity and brevity)

R – Ryan Hoover

M – Maya Wang

M: Hi, I’m Maya Wang. I am an IMA (Interactive Media Arts major) senior, Class 2020 (endnote 1).

R: We’ll just start from your Instagram post. What prompted you to publish, print, and make that makeup?

M: I was feeling super helpless. I think this was probably right after that NYU Shanghai announced that we were going to suspend class for the time being. We could choose to go to another NYU portal campus or study away site or stay in Shanghai. It was really hard for me especially to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to be spending my senior year in Shanghai. On top of that, I was so concerned about my friends who are already there and my family there. I have my extended families all in China right now; they are from Shanxi province and Zhanjiang, which is in Guangdong Province.

I was worried for their safety, for their health, but a lot of it also was stemming from things that I’ve seen online. There was a lot of negativity from number-based, fact-based kinds of posts. Either there’ll be jokes about the coronavirus, or there’ll be news about it, and it was all very heavy.

So I wanted to make things a little bit more hopeful but still bring what’s serious, and bring attention to the fact that this is a real crisis and we need to be compassionate to other people. That’s basically what these posts are about. I feel like the surgical mask has been a symbol for this entire movement about Chinese people wearing masks who are at the center of these racist attacks. And then also coinciding with Chinese New Year, so that’s what the red and gold (is about) – feeling connected to my heritage. I was like “I need a little hope!” So I decided to put that all together and make it about hope for my friends, my family, my school, everything that was going on.

R: So how do you think societal and cultural differences between the West and China amplify and complicate the problem? For example, the differences in attitude about wearing masks.

M: Wearing masks in China is a really common thing whether it’s for pollution or just general personal safety or personal health. But with this outbreak, the mask has become a symbol for people being afraid, or people protecting themselves from others. And it is generally considered a positive thing in China. But it was certainly bad that masks are running out of supply, and people are scrambling to get them.

However here in the United States, if you wear a mask on a subway and you are Chinese or of any East-Asian descent, you are probably going to get looks. Actually, for my personal sanity, I decided not to wear a mask because I figured the risks aren’t as bad as they are here. Also, I didn’t want to be targeted for any kind of racial profiling or attacks, because I heard some stories about people in other cities being attacked for wearing masks — specifically Chinese people being attacked for wearing masks (endnote 2).

Another thing I notice is that in the Chinese-American community, people who immigrated from China to the US actually proliferate a lot of the panic and hysteria around wearing masks and being Chinese. That’s probably where I get a lot of my concern from — the older generation who immigrated here, such as my parents and their friends and their family.

R: How do you think this inter-Asian diaspora racism is different from white racial aggression towards Chinese people?

M: I feel like it’s a little more centralized. For example, my mom was supposed to have these Chinese New Year performances because she’s a part of a dance troop. Once the news of the outbreak broke out, all of the organizers who are also Chinese-American cancelled because they were afraid that a lot of the performers and guests had gone back to China to celebrate Chinese New Year and came back for these performances. They were afraid that some of these people were from Hubei province or Wuhan and decided to stay safe.

While it’s a little bit based in concern, a lot of it is really just Chinese people trying to differentiate themselves by saying ‘oh we are not from this province’ or ‘oh we haven’t gone to China this year. So it’s less racism but more like ‘differentiating’, ‘segregating’ maybe.

R: How are your experiences in New York different from your friends in China?

M: My roommate is currently in China living in her apartment and she’s pretty vocal about everything that’s been going on. What I see at least from her is that the city is rather deserted, empty. People are just continually concerned if there’s a bigger risk obviously from infection. She’s living in Shanghai and now there’s a couple of cases there so it makes sense for people to not want to leave their house. They have these mask-giving out things for you. If you put in your name they’ll give you a permit to buy at most five masks (endnote 3). And you can get a couple of things in a few days’ time but you have to take your turn to get them because there is limited supply.

But here I would say that I’m privileged because I’m not really at a high risk for contracting this, but I’m more at a risk for being targeted for being Chinese here. Whereas there it’s pretty homogenous, so no one’s gonna attack each other; everyone is just gonna be like ‘be safe and be cautious.’ It’s not really a matter of ‘oh you are Chinese, you have that virus;’ it’s more like ‘one of us might have the virus; let’s all keep everyone safe; let’s all stay at home and work together.’ Whereas here it’s like ‘you are different; you are going to get me sick.’

R: Right. So I guess like what you said, the virus itself isn’t actually the most dangerous; it’s the sinophobia that’s radiating.

M: Yes. Definitely in the West, it’s more so the sinophobia that affects me, at least.

R: On a more positive aspect, what community comings-together have you seen?

M: I would say that a lot of the NYU Shanghai students have been so incredible — we are stronger than ever in the face of this and I didn’t expect us to fall apart. But something as big of a crisis as this, our school being delayed, or the fact that a lot of our seniors can’t go back and really live out the way we wanted to. We have come together and support our friends and family in Shanghai and China. And we’ll have our own strong community here (in New York); we are still a part of that.

Obviously we made the NYU Shanghai fundraiser (endnote 4); we’ve reached that goal in like three or four days. It was amazing! And a lot of (people) sent messages to support, from other students who are abroad or who are even in China too, just saying things like “stay strong, we got this!” Even though it’s hard being spread apart on different countries, different continents, we still have a strong sense of support for each other.

R: Do you think there’s a difference between general sinophobia (the meaning here being omnipresent Asian racism experienced by the Asian diaspora) and sinophobia related to this virus specifically?

M: Yeah, I would say that. I might get a little liberal here, (both laugh) but I would say that this outbreak has given Western media a chance to really pit us against us as in specifically America (the West) against the East. Say like China’s dirty, China’s disgusting, the laws are bad, and raise a whole slew of other issues, like even those concentration camps (endnote 5) — papering that up. One thing happened in China, and you’re gonna put all this on the Chinese government, Chinese people and China. So I would say that this definitely was an opportunity for them to really spew some super bigoted rhetorics about China and about the East.

R: How does this troubling information proliferate on the Internet?

M: While I understand that people are suffering and people are trying to cope with this — they make jokes and stuff, but a lot of these jokes are coming off as really, not tactical. I see things on TikTok all the time. I’ve actually made a couple of social justice themed TikToks before about this issue. But people usually reply as a comment like: ‘this is how you get the coronavirus’ or ‘why don’t you stay away from us, Dirty Chinese’ or ‘travel ban on all Chinese people.’ It ranges from humor, dark humor, I guess, to just straight up sinophobia, like “fuck Chinese people”, stuff like that.

And It really sucks because you don’t know when you’re gonna come across something like that. What if I want to just to read a news article about what was happening and I see this whole slew of comments coming from people in the West, saying really negative things about Chinese people and the Chinese government.

R: What is your personal subjective experience like?

M: My personal experience? Well, I would say that I definitely try to report or comment. I really don’t get into comment wars that often. Personally, I made some videos too, about things like “Don’t be sinophobic. This is not an excuse.” Also with my posts, I just want to call out people who are being really disrespectful and rude to people who are actually suffering. Because here in America you don’t really have that much of a risk of contracting the virus, and you doing this is just going to proliferate all hatred.

R: Have you found any ways to combat this? What’s the most effective way to combat people being sinophobic?

M: I would say hit them with facts, but even then they have a lot of confirmation bias (endnote 6). That fake video — I mean it wasn’t a fake video — but it was an unrelated video of someone eating bat soup (endnote 7). It wasn’t in China, and it was reported in 2016. I also believe that there should be reforms to not have this [spread of misinformation and accompanying stigmatization] happen again. There are definitely issues with this.

I don’t have as much experience to speak up about the governmental policy-making side of this, but definitely the social part of this is that people just don’t have respect for other people if they’re suffering. So I just go — imagine if you were sick, how would you feel if someone was making jokes about you being sick? That would just suck. I try to have people be empathetic instead of fighting fire with fire.

R: Obviously, there’s a huge wealth inequality in China, and it has to do with differences in food sanitization.

M: Yeah definitely. And it’s a class issue. It’s a… Well in America, I would say it’s a race issue. It’s a policy and governmental issue with responding to things like that. But it’s also a humanitarian issue! It’s very complicated to deal with a lot of this at once.

R: Do you have any more observations? Things that are troubling you about this outbreak or the response to it?

M: I would say it has died down, part of it. People are going on with their lives here, and that’s the Western privilege. You have privilege — could just go on with your life, could not be concerned about this. I think about this daily. I hear updates from my family WeChat group chats in China, saying: ‘OK, well, we’re going to leave the house today. Hopefully things are okay…’

R: Do you think the coronavirus as well as how people respond to this right now is going to impact the future of how people respond to similar crises?

M: I really hope it does, but maybe more on the governmental side of things, especially with the whistleblower (endnote 8). He died recently. He was one of the first people who was a doctor in China who warned of the existence of the novel coronavirus. He posted warning messages in his private group chat, and the screenshots were later leaked out. And the police admonished him for “spreading rumors and false lies.” But then it became a big issue, and then he passed away from the virus. If he was not forced to keep quiet then there would have been maybe a better response and faster help, with all the supplies that they needed, possibly quarantining this, so it wouldn’t have spread as much as it did now.

But then on the Western side, I would say that hopefully this teaches some people that no matter what race you are, health and being well is really (important). Everyone should value other people’s health. Everyone should value your health and the health of the whole community, the world, and not just make this an us-against-you-guys issue.

R: (Some) people are not able to put aside biases in this issue — maybe they don’t agree with China’s government actions. But people who are affected by this are actual humans. Just because they are Chinese doesn’t mean that they are not human.

M: You know, the people aren’t the government, and vice versa. You’re not gonna just put the entire flaws of the government onto a bunch of people who are suffering from real illness.

R: On a hopeful note, what are you optimistic about? Out of this horrible situation what did you see that made you hopeful, joyful?

M: I would say that our school’s community is one of the things that brings me a lot of hope. Seeing that people do care and people will come together to make actual differences. It’s great and all for me to just post some stuff about “I hope everything’s okay.” But for people who donate, for people who have really tried to work towards finding a solution, tried to donate, I said donate twice… (interviewer laughs), who work towards a cure and are supportive for other people, that’s given me a lot of hope.

R: What are ways in which people like you and me can help the situation?

M: I would say donate. Even though we reached our goal, there’s still so much more to be done. So donate to the cause! And if you see something a little sinophobic, a little racist on the Internet, do your best to either calm the situation or report it. If you are having a genuine face-to-face conversation, a personal message or private message conversation with someone who doesn’t quite understand, teach them, educate them about what’s going on and have them be empathetic, instead of just giving them facts. Have empathy for other people. It’s really great! (Maya laughs).

Ryan’s penny for your thoughts:

Make no mistake the COVID-19 is a deadly disease that has claimed the lives of 2791 people in China (until Feb. 28th). Families have been ripped apart and people have died — that point should not be underscored. However, the radical response from Western media outlets that have hurled sinophobic remarks towards Chinese nationals, ethnically Chinese people, and Asian people in general is unwarranted. Consider the countless stares that Chinese people in the US who wear face masks get walking down the street or consider the people in China who have been cooped up in their houses for days and weeks. Reach out, listen, and put yourself in the shoes of those affected before you repost that problematic tweet or TikTok (shoutout Golden rule). Compared to the 2,000+ deaths caused by the coronavirus, the flu has thus far killed around 16,000 Americans in the 2019-2020 season (endnote 9). So, instead of engaging with or proliferating sinophobic rhetoric, empathize with your fellow suffering human beings regardless of their nationalities, and get your damn flu shots.

When Lin Feng goes to pick up Xiaoyang from work, he always looks for that colorful cap in the hustle and bustle of doctors and nurses busy in green — the color of life.

—路LRH

Editor’s Note:

During the COVID-19 outbreak, dominant media coverage often features scenes of medical workers parting with their families. However, there is little representation of families outside of the “normative” conception. In this issue, we present you with the story of a gay couple, Xiaoyang (30) and Lin Feng (38), both fighting at the front line of the COVID-19 epidemic. They have been together for six and a half years and lived together for four. As an emergency room nurse, Xiaoyang volunteered to join a medical support team to aid a hospital in Wuhan. In their home community in Beijing, Lin Feng serves as a policeman who patrols crowded public spaces to ensure safety.

Based on interviews with the couple, the story was originally published on February 4, 2020 by 亲友会PFLAG China (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays; Beijing Branch), an NGO dedicated to supporting and promoting the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community in China. Although Xiaoyang’s parents do not totally deny his years-long relationship with Lin Feng, they haven’t been very supportive of it, either. Xiaoyang chose to publish their story on the PFLAG platform because he wanted “parents with queer children to see that we can also be socially committed and responsible.”

The endnote of the original Chinese version is worth contemplating: “The photos provided by the interviewees have been deleted and their names anonymized to protect their career prospects.”

Anybody can love; and hopefully someday we can all love without fear.

Looking at the cuddling couples while he and his partner could only see each other from afar, Xiaoyang “was a little jealous.”

“Take care of Lele and Keke.” Immediately after boarding, Xiaoyang texted his boyfriend Lin Feng on WeChat (a Chinese social media app). He was worried about their two pets, but even more so about his boyfriend.

Four replies from Feng shot into the chat box:

“Take care of yourself.”

“Are you boarding?”

“No need to worry about those little two.”

“Remember to call me as soon as you land.”

As a member of the volunteer medical support team, Xiaoyang boarded the flight to Wuhan at 2 pm on February 2. Earlier that morning, Xiaoyang received the WeChat message from his supervisor at the hospital that asked him to pack up and be on call. Now, he was finally heading to the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Seventeen years ago Xiaoyang’s parents took part in combating SARS. Xiaoyang felt prepared when he submitted his written request to go to the front line of the “battle” against the novel coronavirus, but he still got a bit nervous the moment he received the notice. He was the most junior member in the second batch of medical support teams. Confronted with the climbing numbers of infections and deaths in this formidable epidemic, he said, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid,” but, “(w)ith the white scrubs on, saving lives becomes my call of duty.”

Xiaoyang has had experience supporting the fight against the H1N1 and avian influenza epidemics. He also took part in the medical relief efforts in the aftermath of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (Endnote 1). At the emergency room, Xiaoyang’s daily patients are in critical condition or have urgent needs. Considered the “physically strong” ones in the department, male nurses like Xiaoyang typically do more work. Always in green scrubs (Endnote 2) and a pair of white cloth shoes, Xiaoyang also wears a nurse cap with cartoon figures. When Lin Feng goes to pick up Xiaoyang from work, he always looks for that colorful cap in the hustle and bustle of doctors and nurses busy in green – the color of life.

The morning before Xiaoyang’s flight, Lin Feng went shopping with him. “We bought a lot. He (Feng) got everything he could think of, whether it would actually come in handy or not.” Later, Lin Feng accompanied Xiaoyang to the hospital, watched him take an oath to fight the virus with his colleagues, and took pictures of him. Right before the departure, Lin Feng put an amulet his mother prepared for Xiaoyang in his backpack. To Xiaoyang, that was a heartwarming gesture.

At the airport, a friend of Xiaoyang’s came with supplies to see him and his team off. She had promised not to cry, but still ended up bursting into tears while embracing Xiaoyang in her arms. “It’s alright! I will be back safe and sound. Don’t you worry,” Xiaoyang said.

Also at the airport were the husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends of many medical staff on Xiaoyang’s team. Some were hugging, others holding hands. But Lin Feng could only take pictures of Xiaoyang away from the crowd. Looking at the cuddling couples while he and his partner could only see each other from afar, Xiaoyang “was a little jealous.” Immensely worried, Lin Feng initially did not want Xiaoyang to go, but bearing the “big picture” in mind, he decided to be supportive.

Xiaoyang said, “Beijing, Beijing, I am leaving. I really hope that when I come back, we will be able to take off our masks and see each other’s smiles!”

The 135 passengers on this special flight were all doctors and nurses going to Wuhan for medical support. And they were about to arrive at the most severely impacted place, with a life-and-death battle in front of them.

At 4:34 pm, Xiaoyang and his colleagues arrived at the Wuhan Tianhe Airport.

Now that Xiaoyang was really there, some of the things his boyfriend packed proved to be useless.

The day after their arrival, Xiaoyang was told by fellow doctors that the situation was still critical — many patients were waiting for a hospital bed in anguish. Such severity was disconcerting. Even though Xiaoyang had signed himself up for this volunteer mission without second thought, he couldn’t help but feel scared and uneasy: “Besides respiratory (droplets) transmission, recent findings revealed that the novel coronavirus could be transmissible along fecal-oral route. The virus may mutate fast and it is not known yet if there are new channels of infection to be discovered.” Their medical support mission was originally scheduled to last one week, but judging from Wuhan’s serious situation, Xiaoyang figured that he might have to stay until things are under control.

25 January, 2020, Wuhan, Hubei – ER workers covering themselves with isolation suits on top of their protective suits (Source 5).

Medical supplies in affected areas were tight. In anticipation of this battle, Xiaoyang’s hospital donated all of its protective medical suits to Wuhan’s hospital. Having been told that they would receive theirs in Wuhan, no one brought any with them. They learned today, however, that the local hospital had insufficient protective equipment. Besides, no daily necessities were available and everyone had to fend for themselves. Now that Xiaoyang was really there, some of the things his boyfriend packed proved to be useless.

The hospital Xiaoyang was assigned to had opened a few dozen beds exclusively for COVID-19 patients in critical condition. Upon arrival, Xiaoyang went shopping at a supermarket for necessities before devoting himself to work that night. Besides a washbasin and a toothbrush, Xiaoyang also bought quite a lot of adult diapers. Due to the severe shortage of protective suits, they had to wear each set for as long as it allowed — working for at least five to six hours straight. They would have to take off the suit to use the bathroom. Before putting on a new one, they would have to shower, which takes at least half an hour. Therefore, to save time and avoid unnecessary consumption of protective suits, medical workers often wear diapers to take care of their urine.

[Lin Feng] would stretch his palm to feel the other half of the warm bed, not being able to fall asleep for long.

Neither of them enjoyed this Lunar New Year. Xiaoyang was working backup shifts at the hospital throughout the holiday, while Lin Feng, a policeman, was also on the front line. These days he often needs to work outdoors, patrolling very crowded places like train stations to secure people’s safety.

Lin Feng said that he has long been accustomed to Xiaoyang’s working pattern. Once on a chilly winter evening, Lin Feng walked Xiaoyang to work, hand in hand. They were only one street away from the hospital, but suddenly there was considerable noise ahead — someone had just passed out and was now unconscious with no breath or heartbeat. Xiaoyang turned to Lin Feng and shouted, “Call 120 (the Chinese emergency number)!” Then he bent down and immediately started chest compressions. During the process, he did not forget to turn around and ask the crowd, “Any family?”

One, two, three, four… Xiaoyang knelt in the snow and pressed hard on the patient’s chest, steam rising from his mouth and nose. An ambulance came and he went with it. The vehicle sped away and Lin Feng rushed home, looking for dry clothes to replace Xiaoyang’s pants, the knees of which had gotten wet from the snow.

Oftentimes a sudden phone call in the early morning would wake Xiaoyang up when he was still all sleepy. “Where? What’s the patient’s condition? Alright, I’ll be on my way!!” He would start dressing the moment he hung up the phone. Getting out of bed gently, Xiaoyang would swiftly put on his clothes, clean up, quietly close the door and leave.

On top of understanding the commitments of his partner’s nursing job, Lin Feng also feels a deep sense of apology. As a policeman, he is also on call to work anytime. Many times, summoned by emergency calls, Lin Feng has to rush to the site and leave behind the equally exhausted Xiaoyang.

In their small world of two, there are always urgent situations like this and that: one guarding patients, and the other guarding the public. Disturbances are frequent in their already limited shared time — how to balance, to give and take, and to have it all? Understanding that they are trusted with lives, mutual support is what they both choose.

In those early mornings, Lin Feng no longer pretended that he had not been awoken. He would stretch his palm to feel the other half of the warm bed, not being able to fall asleep for long. He could only pray in his heart:

“Fighting on the edges of life and death, I hope that you can always be at your best to handle even the worst-case scenarios. My dear babe, I wish the patients health and safety, and for you to come back early.”

While Shanghai is a city of approximately 24 million people, it has felt like a ghost town since the novel coronavirus hit. There are barely any cars on the road, almost no one on the subway, and significantly fewer expats on Tinder. Most of the guys I matched with before winter break are now thousands of miles away with new bios. For the poor guys who have stuck around, they are definitely bored and in desperate search of Netflix-chilling not necessarily implied (endnote 2). In fact, a lot of people are scared of actually meeting up at all.

Tinder typically comes with a side of risk. The person you meet up with could kill you, give you an STD, or worse, catfish you (using a fake profile). Now, on top of all that, you could catch the coronavirus. Guys in Shanghai, aware of this new risk and thirsty as ever, have certainly risen to the challenge and adjusted their Tinder game accordingly. I’ve seen lots of coronavirus jokes, people claiming to not be from Wuhan, and one guy even posted a picture of a thermometer to prove he’s healthy.

On the one hand, I think I’ve got mad game because even though everyone is terrified of catching the coronavirus, I can still find a date. On the other hand, everyone’s standards have dropped significantly since the mass exodus, so I should not be too proud. Tinder really seems to be a means of survival these days. I don’t even mean in terms of fighting loneliness – I had a guy straight up ask me for masks the other day. His request was a humble reminder that I, in fact, do not have mad game. Upon realizing that I was being used for masks, I decided not to share.

Of course I would love to meet someone who already has their own mask the good old fashioned way, but nothing is open. You can’t meet someone at a movie theater, a bar, or a restaurant because all of those places are closed right now. Except for a few, most restaurants are only delivering and only a couple bars have started opening this weekend (endnote 4).

Even if you do manage to meet someone, everyone’s wearing a mask and it’s not the cute kind you wear to a masquerade ball. The masks we’re all sporting these days are sweaty and just alert you to the stench of your own breath. I think I’ve actually gotten a few pimples from wearing them so much, which of course has not helped my Tinder game.

Mom, if you’re still reading this, please don’t worry about me. I’m not pregnant or dead yet, and the guards at my apartment complex aren’t even allowing guests in. Also I promise I’m putting more effort into my online classes than online dating.

Soap Oracle

“日光之下，并无新事。” — 《传道书》1:9

Stop washing your hands

so aggressively.

You’d lose your soap oracle —

concrete shapes of dissolving prophecy;

deaths of mortals born out of chaos

only to rinse off chaos.

WAR IS OVER?

Comes only,

the revelation

of xenos, entropy, locution completely walled.

Erotic sin slipped through the alkaline foam between my fingers;

a divine coolness against my rashed skin

bites off the last shred of sanity

I was proud of.

Soon flesh, cleansed and foretold,

would roam on the street still anticipating

vital signs and stubborn wait.

Soap oracle consistently repeats

that we don’t love well.

Google Translate

肥皂神谕

“There is nothing new under the sun.”

— Ecclesiastes 1: 9

别洗手

如此积极。

您会失去肥皂神谕 —

解散预言的具体形状；

混乱造成的凡人死亡

只是为了消除混乱。

战争结束了？

只来

启示

异种，熵，信息录完全被破坏。

色情的罪恶在我手指间的碱性泡沫中溜走。

针对我皮疹的皮肤神性的冷静

咬断最后的理智

我为之骄傲。

不久，肉被洗净并预言，

仍会在大街上漫游

生命体征和顽固的等待。

肥皂甲不断重复

我们不太爱。

WeChat Translate

肥皂甲骨文

“日光之下，并无新事。” — 《传道书》1:9

别再洗手了

如此咄咄逼人。

你会失去你的肥皂神谕——

消解预言的具体形态；

凡人因混乱而死

只是为了冲掉混乱。

战争结束了？

只有，

启示录

在氙气、熵、位置完全封闭。

情色的罪恶从我指间的碱性泡沫中滑落；

神圣的凉意拂过我的皮疹

咬掉最后一丝清醒

我很自豪。

很快的肉体，洁净并预言，

会在街上游荡，期待着

生命体征和顽固等待。

肥皂甲骨文不断重复

我们的爱并不好。

From Rats to Bats

Animals, including bats, mean different things to different cultures. The media and other institutions complicate intercultural perception of these differences, and those with racist prejudices tend to dehumanize whole groups of people by comparing them to animals.

Before the bat was unfairly linked to China and disease, the rat served the same purpose. From the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, the image of the filthy rat was constantly associated with the plague and the Chinese in North America.

Since the beginning of the 2019 outbreak, the origin of the novel coronavirus has been extensively discussed. The first diagnosed cases were found to be connected to the Huanan South China Seafood Market in Wuhan (henceforth Huanan Market). The news began to draw attention to the illegal trade and consumption of wild animals in Huanan Market; it was suspected that the virus was transmitted from animals to humans (Endnote 1).

The spotlight soon turned to bats: a mammalian animal known to host numerous viruses. Bat soup (bian fu tang 蝙蝠汤) has become one of the most infamous dishes of the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak. By the end of January 2020, netizens were raging at people who had hunted, sold, and eaten wild animals, especially bats, blaming them for “catching” the virus and infecting the innocent others.

In this article, we show it to be a myth that the COVID-19 outbreak originated from bat soup, or any other “dirty” Chinese eating habit. This is not to deny the fact that processed bat materials are used as remedies for diseases in traditional Chinese medicine. Nor do we overlook the fact that wild animals, including bats, civets, and pangolins, urgently need protection. What we emphasize is that the notion that COVID-19 originated from bat soup is easily used as a racist trope. As those who were found to have eaten bats become victims of this cyber-bullying, we see how Asians who have long suffered from racism continue to face discrimination as COVID-19 becomes a pandemic today.

The Bat Soup Myth

On January 22, 2020, a bat soup image tweeted by Chen Qiushi, a Chinese lawyer and citizen journalist, garnered much attention. Chen followed the epidemic outbreak in Wuhan closely before and right after the lockdown of Wuhan city. His friends and family now fear that he has been silenced (Endnote 2). In his tweet, Chen expressed his disgust toward eating bats, and warned the Chinese not to eat wild animals. He did not specify where the video was taken, or who took the video.

As the bat-eating Chinese woman went viral on social media, other media outlets quickly followed in expressing disgust toward her. For instance, Apple Daily used the image of a young Chinese woman having bat soup on January 23, 2020. “She sits in a seemingly clean and bright restaurant. The woman uses her chopsticks to clamp the entire bat and starts biting the bat wing.” (Endnote 3) Yet, neither the source of the photo nor the actual location of the restaurant was identified. The bat soup image was similarly used without context in reports by the New York Post, the UK’s Mirror, the Toronto Sun, among others (Endnote 4, 5, 6). These early reports invariably expressed disgust, and juxtaposed descriptions of the bat soup and of patients in China.

Wang Mengyun, a Chinese host of a travel show, was vilified for a video that filmed her having the bat soup dish as a local delicacy. The video was taken not in China but in Palau in 2016. However, after bats were identified as a possible carrier of the 2019 novel coronavirus, Wang’s video has been reposted and turned into another coronavirus meme (Endnote 7).

Wang has since received messages like “You should go to hell. You should be killed in the evening. You’re abnormal. You’re disgusting. Why haven’t you died?”On January 23, 2020, Wang apologized on her Weibo (microblogging) account: “[I] had no idea during filming that there [would be] such a virus.” (Endnote 8) Yet, her apology did not stop the harsh criticisms from both Chinese and non-Chinese netizens. Under intense pressure, she shut down her social media account.

On February 3, 2020, the France 24 Observers further debunked the bat soup myth by pointing out that the images circulating online had different sources. The team “investigated six of the most-shared videos [, five of which] were filmed…in Palau and Indonesia. None of the videos had any documented link to the outbreak.” (Endnote 9)

Although it had been shown that bat soup was not a dish local to Wuhan, and that it disgusted many Chinese as well, racist assumptions remained present and extended beyond bat soup. While co-hosting a Fox News program in early March, Jesse Waters shouted that the Chinese are “a very hungry people” and “they are desperate, this food [bat soup] is uncooked, it is unsafe.” (Endnote 10)

Journalists and scholars quickly took note of such trends and warned against the racist association between bats, the novel coronavirus, and Asians. James Palmer, a senior editor at Foreign Policy, called bat soup a “racist meme” and pointed out that the images were taken years ago outside of China (Endnote 11). “At a time of heightened fear over a viral pandemic, the Palau video has been deployed in the United States and Europe to renew an old narrative about the supposedly disgusting eating habits of foreigners, especially Asians.” Palmer’s analysis echoes the anti-racist position held by many journalists and scholars in the West.

Amanda Darrach, a Columbia Journalism Review Delacorte fellow, reflected on the US-centric interpretation of the bat soup images online. “Too many articles have missed the cultural significance and socioeconomic factors that underlie China’s reckoning with the coronavirus — and instead suggested that America is more sanitary, more evolved, more pure.” (Endnote 12)

As we can see, the bat soup was first used as a general critique toward Chinese who eat wild animals, but soon became a source of racist stereotyping. The media is both fueling the stereotype of the bat-eating Chinese and helping debunk such a myth. Instead of spreading information that might contribute to racist stereotypes, we need to do fact-checking and be attentive to the cultural nuances of animal-related language and images.

The Science of the Bat Origin

Scientists have not confirmed whether bats are the natural host of the novel coronavirus, or 2019-nCoV (According to WHO, the official name of the virus responsible for COVID-19 is “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2,” or “SARS-CoV-2” — see endnote 13; however, here we will refer to the virus as “2019-nCoV” in accordance with the discussed articles). A number of studies stated that the genome sequence of the virus is highly similar to that of the SARS coronaviruses carried by bats, but further investigation is needed. In this section, we will review several studies that presented detailed genomic-sequencing analyses of the virus.

Paraskevis et al.’s analysis proved that 2019-nCoV is closely related to a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13), and suggested a high possibility of a bat origin for the 2019-nCoV (Endnote 14).

Similarly, Lu et al. discovered the close relation between 2019-nCoV and two bat-derived SARS-like coronaviruses. They pointed out that although bats are a plausible candidate for the original host of the virus, wild animals sold at the Huanan Market might well have been the intermediate hosts that spread the virus to humans (Endnote 15).

Chan et al. confirmed 2019-nCoV’s close relation to bat coronaviruses, and contended that further analysis is needed to determine the novel virus’s natural animal reservoir and possible intermediate hosts (Endnote 16).

The hypothesis of transmitting via intermediate hosts was also raised by Zhou et al. (Endnote 17). They further mentioned that it is still not known how 2019-nCoV is transmitted among hosts, and animal experiments have yet to prove that the association between 2019-nCoV microbe and the disease fulfills Koch’s postulates (Endnote 18).

Li et al. discussed the genome plasticity of bat coronaviruses and their ability to achieve greater genetic diversity via mutations and recombination. Further, they stated that such diversity can raise the chance of transmission across different species (Endnote 19). If the 2019-nCoV did originate in bats, then the characteristics of bat coronaviruses described above would also apply to the 2019-nCoV.

Li et al. also supported the hypothesis that the 2019-nCoV is likely transmitted from bats to humans via an intermediate host. They also stated that further fieldwork is needed to test this hypothesis (Endnote 20).

While research shows a high possibility for 2019-nCoV to have a bat origin and intermediate mammalian hosts, none of the studies we have reviewed here could confirm the bat origin. The manner in which the virus was transmitted to humans remains a puzzle.

As we have seen since the start of the outbreak, fears about the coronavirus have provoked anti-Asian sentiment in many places. Misconceptions of Chinese eating practices are used to rationalize the dehumanization of a whole group of people. Yet, let’s not forget that what is deemed “acceptable” or “civilized” to eat and what’s not are a product of the interplay between culture and power. After all, someone like Andrew Zimmern, the host of the show “Bizarre Foods,” is never vilified as a savage for eating his way through all the “weird” food — including bats. Instead, he is portrayed and often praised as the “fearless eater.”

Endnotes:

Highlights

Their Actions

What has prompted you all, who had different backgrounds in the media industry, the fashion industry, and academia, to act so valiantly during the COVID-19 outbreak?

[06:51] Jing: The purpose of creating the Sinophobia Tracker with friends

[08:50] Sakura: The intention of initiating the “Firefly Plan” and the support they’ve received from women along the way

“What does the project [GirlSUP] mean to me? I didn’t make any money from it. But this time when I wanted to do something for women through this platform, almost everyone I asked — most of them girls — said yes immediately.” — Sakura

The Neglect of Women’s Needs

Why did the mainstream media and official organizations neglected the needs of female staff after the outbreak? How does this phenomenon relate to gender roles in culture?

[12:40] Sakura: Influenced by cultural upbringing, people are uncomfortable with discuss personal needs in the public, and the neglect towards female have been long standing

[13:07] Alex: Behind the incident of female nurses being asked to shave their heads [2] is the lasting history of female body objectification, this issue is rooted in gender roles and gender norms in culture

“The underlying reason for this misrepresentation or underepresentation boils down to the consistent unwillingness of first see women’s bodies and then to acknowledge and respect their needs as equal to men’s – not less important just because men don’t have the same needs.” — Alex

The Portrayal of Women in Mainstream Media

What is it that lies behind the paradox of women’s real needs being neglected and women’s contributions and “sacrifice” being highly praised?

[14:35] Alex: Women have always put on a pedestal for being the guardians of morality or honor, instead of humans with basic physical needs. This is the prefiguration of the eternal feminine [2]

[16:10] Alex: The deified female body is propaganda

[19:07] Jing: The creation and impact of propaganda that constructed women as warriors, consumers, and working class who “could hold up half of the sky” during 1950s in China

“It’s essentially the archetype of women as beautiful, holy, and virtuous beings. This feminine entity — they’re almost like goddesses, but they’re not real . . .The ‘eternal feminine’ is meant to be a praise but not a realistic portrayal of women . . . These female bodies are hyper-visible and invisible at the same time.” — Alex

“Tani Barlow’s text [3] traces the discursive shift of what is being considered or constructed as a woman in modern China. I think she would definitely agree . . . with how women are constructed as ‘the Other’ in the private sphere versus men in the public and political domains, and that the concepts of women are always relational.” — Jing

The Intersectionality of Gender and Class [4]

Who are also being neglected, when we start to pay attention to women medical staff?

[21:44] Jing: The intersectionality between gender and class; the absence of women logistics workers in the media

[22:53] Joyce: Female workers constitute 34.8% of the entire migrant worker demographics according to the “2018 Report on Migrant Workers”. Every screen is also a panel: we need to see the presented as well as the underrepresented

“This is not just a gender issue. It’s a class issue as well.” — Jing

“Every screen is also a panel that blocks what’s behind it. So when we see what’s shown on the screen, we always have to question which narratives are presented and which are not.” — Joyce

Personal Narratives and Documentations

How have people documented the COVID-19 outbreak in their own ways?

[24:57] Jing: Fang Fang — A writer whose works were widely read during the outbreak [5]

[26:35] Alex: Guo Jing’s diary on Wuhan’s lockdown [6]; “The Unrecorded” Project [7]that grieves over the unrecorded lost lives.

“I have been reading Judith Butler’s Precarious Life[8]. And to quote her, ‘If a life is not grievable, it is not quite a life; it does not qualify as a life and is not worth a note.’” — Alex

The COVID-19 Outbreak and Civil Society

The year of 2008 is claimed to be “The Beginning of China’s Civil Society.” During this outbreak, social organizations and individual citizens have actively contributed to the relief work. In the long run, how might this outbreak impact the the advancement of civic consciousness and the development of civil society?

[32:00] Alex: The so-called “Golden Age” is already passed, but this outbreak has led to more appreciation and recognition for the political involvement and civic engagement. It has caused heated discussions among young people on public affairs.

[35:17] Jing: The idiosyncrasy of civil society in China — constraints and opportunities[9]. The incident of “Whistler Blower” Doctor Li Wenliang and its relations to asserting voices within censorship[10]

[39:49] Sakura: The commercialization of social media in China and its impact and momentum for hot topics in public affairs; the “Firefly Plan” receives much support from the media

“[In] a heavily controlled system, there are always cracks and gaps at different levels. I think there are people who know how to use new media to self-educate and become [more politically conscious] citizens.” — Jing

For the whole story, please read here.

— Conversation with Wang Jing and Li Li

A face mask is not just a medical product. It is also a cultural artifact.

—Wang Jing

Interviewers: Amy Decillis, Jingzhi Xu, Jiannan Shi

Interviewee: Wang Jing and Li Li

Translators: Xiaoyu, Natasha, Freya, Xue

Editor’s Note:

“Fear and discrimination will not take us far.” These words are shown on the homepage of “Sinophobia Tracker,” a website that archives and documents the information on sinophobia, its spill-over effects, as well as the counter efforts worldwide during the COVID-19 outbreak. Here, sinophobia is defined as racist or xenophobic sentiment against China, Chinese culture, or people of Chinese heritage. During the COVID-19 outbreak, sinophobia is particularly manifested in anti-Asian racism as in some countries people of East Asian features are often regarded as Chinese.

Also seen on the homepage is the shape of a thumbnail symbolizing the admonishing, policing and silencing of Doctor Li Wenliang. To Wang Jing and Li Li who created the “Sinophobia Tracker” project and built the website, the death of Doctor Li was a “wakeup” call, prompting them to do something to “record, remember and carry on.” Wang Jing is a postdoctoral fellow at Shanghai New York University (NYU Shanghai) whose work mainly focuses on globalization and Muslims in China. Li Li is a PhD candidate at the University of Tübingen. While COVID-19 is already an unforgettable epidemic, Wang and Li want to ensure that no one will forget the racism and sinophobia revealed by it.

The interview took place on February 26, 2020, conducted by three NYU Shanghai students — Amy DeCillis, Jingzhi Xu, and Jiannan Shi. Since the interview, the outbreak continues to spread rapidly around the globe, and has been declared a pandemic by the WHO on March 11. The development of the outbreak in different countries as well as governments’ response to it informs our discussion on the outbreak in the political context. This is particularly true when it comes to questions of certain policies and measures taken at cross-national or local level with an aim of containment. Some of those questions are discussed in the interview and our readers may agree with the views presented here, or have their own. We encourage you to tell us your views via different platforms including Wechat, facebook, instagram or email.

(The following transcript has been edited for the sake of clarity and brevity)

J – Wang Jing

L – Li Li

What prompted you to start this sinophobia tracker initiative?

J: The death of doctor Li Wenliang (endnote 1) was a kind of wake-up moment for me. I can’t even remember whether I slept or not that night. The news of his death got spread around the media like wildfire on February 7th. It was the most searched topic on Baidu (a Chinese search engine) and Weibo (a Chinese social media platform) and all the other social media platforms, but just after a couple of hours, its rank went lower and lower until it disappeared from the page.

That was a very scary moment for me to see how fast memory disappeared from both the official platforms and the social media platforms in China regarding the coronavirus. By initiating this project, my purpose is to record and remember what is happening. If people want to go back and see what happened during coronavirus, what kind of racist reactions people had, they can. We can all remember and learn something from the past. This is why we started this, and we continue to believe in the power of memory.

L: For me, it was when the outbreak started right before the Lunar New Year, when the government announced the lockdown of Wuhan. One webpage on Baidu said that this was the first time in over a century that the Hankou train station in Wuhan had been shut down. I knew then that something was really wrong.

When Jing approached me with the idea, I was really into it. While donating money might be a way to contribute, I didn’t know if the money would help because of the corruption. But (co-initiating the Sinophobia Tracker project) was something I knew I could do to make a difference, however little that difference might be.

Also, I worked in Hong Kong for two years, so I have some ex-coworkers there. I ended up unfollowing them on Facebook after a while because the stuff I saw them posting was just unbearable. So I think this project is a way to, first of all, tell people these racist comments are real. It’s also a way to remember that there are good people out there fighting against racism and supporting one another.

Why do you think that racist coverage is more prevalent during the coronavirus outbreak than it was with SARS back then?

J: The internet in China, first of all, was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At that time, perhaps only very few government bureaus, educational institutions, and companies in China had access to the internet.

When SARS broke out in 2003, it was actually only two years after China joined the WTO and won the bid for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Today, the integration of China into the world is much deeper and more extensive than in the early 2000s.

This is not to say that during the SARS epidemic, there were no racist reactions. There was, and a lot of researchers have confirmed this. If you ask some Chinese restaurant owners in Chinatown in Philadelphia or in New York, they would perhaps tell you that they had few customers during and after SARS.

Today the media plays a more important role. If you have read major Western media outlets like CNN, New York Times, Guardian, or BBC, you’ll easily discover their first reactions. Their undertone is quite negative. For example the New York Times would directly say “Wuhan Virus” and quickly every news outlet followed up, including social media. I’m not saying they are outright racist. But when they first reported, the journalists weren’t careful enough in the language they used. Later these reports and this terminology were picked up and circulated in social media or other news outlets, just like the reports about bat soup (endnote 2).

Also, even before the COVID-19 outbreak, a very strong anti-China sentiment had already existed in some media. The biggest news back then was the trade war between China and the US – Not many talk about that now!

Of course, there are journalists who are reporting on the sinophobic incidents. On social media, people are fighting against racism. For example, A Fu on Youtube during the coronavirus, he actually posted a video very explicitly saying do not fight against China, but fight against the virus (endnote 3).

The “Chinese Against Racist Virus” group (endnote 4) also organizes activities online and offline to raise the awareness of people who don’t know what actually happened in Wuhan. They’ve been collecting the stories from ordinary people in Wuhan and translating them online. These are the efforts from ordinary people who come from different walks of life, and they are able to extend far beyond what the government and journalists can do.

Before the 21st century, China was more like a mysterious political regime and even an enemy for a lot of countries. One might think that when China integrates more into the global economic and political system, people will understand and accept China more. But why is this kind of racism getting even stronger after the integration?

L: I took a cultural anthropology course and one thing I remember from it goes: anthropology cannot debunk anthropology. That is, you can never understand others’ cultures if you only try to understand them through your own lens and by using your own cultural structure.

When people from other countries didn’t know much about China and felt that this country was distant and mysterious, it was hard for them to make any comments and give negative or positive judgments. However, due to China’s integration into the world and the rapid traveling of information, people see more aspects of China that they never expected. They are also more likely to use their cultural norms to judge the Chinese culture when they can’t understand certain aspects of it.

For example, some of my foreign friends feel strange when they see me raising my hand to ask a question in class, because that’s not what they normally do.

Have you personally encountered any racist incident?

L: I was looking for masks in a drug store in Germany and asked the salesperson whether they had any. There were two people waiting in the line behind me. The minute they heard me asking about masks, they started to laugh. I looked back and stared at them. Now I regret that I didn’t say something to them. At the time, I was just too shocked by their reactions.

After that, I talked about this with my friends. Some friends told me to be careful of the law because in some European countries you are not allowed to cover your face in public space (endnote 5). If you do, you may be stopped by the police and have to show your ID.

There was a Chinese person who said that I was the one who should be more considerate towards the German people. I should not disturb them, scare them, or cause any inconvenience for them. I was so angry about this person’s comment. I know that in most European countries, people only wear masks outside if they are really sick, so they may get scared if you wear a mask in public. But at the same time, some people are also scared of getting infected if you don’t wear a mask. So it’s just so confusing because you’re damned if you wear it and also damned if you don’t.

What do you think about the travel restrictions that the US implemented to restrict entry from China? Do you think it’s a racist policy? How do you compare it with the Chinese government’s lockdown of Wuhan?

J: I would be cautious in calling these policies racist. In order to fully understand them, we always need to go back to their local political environments to see what it means and what kinds of existing frameworks can help us to interpret them. In the US context, I think it is appropriate to call this kind of travel ban a policy backed up by racist politics in the US.

When it comes to the lockdown of Wuhan, it’s another question. Is this policy a form of racist politics, or does it reflect the strong power that the government is exercising over its people? Admittedly it is a major public health crisis, but we’ve seen this kind of power exercised in different levels of regions in China, say, in Xinjiang Province where there were massive re-education camps. Similar surveillance techniques were used; similar approaches to self-isolation were used. The mentality behind these policies was somehow similar.

The politics of naming the virus appear to be interesting as well. It reminds us of the Ebola virus, which was named after the Ebola River where one of the outbreak took place. When it comes to the recent coronavirus outbreak, WHO named the virus and the disease with specific intention not to bring in Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease. How would you comment on the naming politics?

J: Indeed, there were lots of reports about racist reactions during the Ebola outbreak in 2013. Even for the current virus, we first called it the Wuhan virus. Later, it was quickly changed to “novel coronavirus.” Now we finally call it COVID-19 as named by the WHO (SARS-COV-2 is the name of the virus and COVID-19 is the name of the disease caused by the virus —Endnote 6). One of the intentions behind the name change is to delink a place from a virus, so that people wouldn’t use it as a kind of racist excuse like Chinese virus or Spanish virus, etc.

When it comes to the Ebola virus, that’s how we are still calling it today. And the Wikipedia page is still calling it the Western African Ebola virus epidemic. The naming itself implies that it is related to a specific region, Western Africa. When people call it, they automatically associate it with Africans. I think this is one part that causes so many instant racist reactions, saying, oh, it’s blacks and Africans who have everything to do with this virus.

However, this is a myth and misrepresentation. The Ebola outbreak that we are more familiar with today happened in 2013. It happened indeed in West Africa, in countries like Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. But like HIV/AIDS, the first case was actually found long ago in 1976 in Central Africa, not in West Africa. Ebola was first found in Congo and South Sudan. And it was named after the Ebola River. It’s not a place in West Africa.

Not only is sinophobia happening around the globe, but some people inside China were also spreading “xenophobia” against people from Hubei province. What does it connotate?

J: It reminds me of a comment from my friend. He used the term 地域歧视 “di yu qi shi”, which is a kind of discrimination based on geography. The discrimination against Wuhan people is one example.

But I think there’s actually a deeper meaning in this kind of prejudice or discrimination, both inside and outside of China. There’s a sociologist, called Zygmunt Bauman, who wrote a book called Strangers at Our Door (2016)（endnote 7). In his analysis, the people who are the most anxious and the people who are very outspoken both online and in daily life, are not the poorest people or elites. They’re often the middle class.

As you can see in online comments, lots of people in China who can access Weibo and are very articulate are neither very wealthy nor very poor. They increasingly become precarious in their everyday life: squeezed by the top 1% and fearful of those who are poorer than them. They are afraid of any uncertainty that can threaten their stability, their own lives, or their health. Digital media such as Facebook and Twitter are adding fuel to such anxiety as well.

In Chinese, we have a term for it, called “精致的利己主义” (jing zhi de li ji zhu yi), redefined as egoism among the middle class. You can see such phenomena exist not just inside China, but also in almost every country in the world. There are self-centered xenophobic walls being constructed everywhere. That’s why, in the US, for example, Donald Trump is continuously calling to build a wall between the US and Mexican border as if the Mexicans were viruses.

There were reports of violence against Chinese who wear masks in public. Wearing face masks now is becoming a symbol of “being Chinese,” and the sinophobia because of the virus may come successively. Why could a simple act of wearing a mask get such a violent response?

J: Wearing a mask is not just becoming a symbol of being Chinese but also a symbol of being Asian now. A face mask is not just a medical product. It is also a cultural artifact. By knowing its history, we can start to see the disruptors and inconsistency in the changing meanings of face masks.

During the 1918 influenza pandemic, about 500 million people were infected, and at least 50 million died. Masks became “an emblem of public-spiritedness and discipline,” (endnote 8) and a symbol of Western civilization. Japan adopted this and further developed the culture of face masks. In the Japan-occupied colony of Taiwan, face masks were introduced as part of the public health system to fight against the flu and other pandemics. This is a symbol of both colonization and development.

After SARS, face masks became popular in Asia, especially in Hong Kong and Japan, as a public health measure. Mask-wearing can also be a fashion statement, a polite way to keep to oneself, a reflection of peer pressure, or even a way of protest and demonstrate civic resistance.

For now, what can we do? Ordinary people and social media can have a huge impact. Examples include 海豹王xx’s cartoons in Weibo, selfies with face masks with “不能，不明白 (bu neng, bu ming bai)” (endnote 9) after Li Wenliang’s death, and Chinese rappers who sing about face masks, e.g.“口罩” (kou zhao) by 马思唯 (Ma Siwei) and “守护” (“shou hu”) by 幼稚园杀手(you zhi yuan sha shou) (endnote 10).

In daily life, we need to respect individual choices of whether or not to wear face masks when it is not absolutely necessary. We also need to see racism as an interconnected phenomenon. Do not be passive or indifferent bystanders. Do not discriminate against others, because the same discrimination may affect ourselves.