Since last week I’ve been hearing reports of foreigners in China being barred from shops, restaurants and bars. This has been both in local social media chatter on WeChat and Facebook as well as media reports such as this one in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/29/china-coronavirus-anti-foreigner-feeling-imported-cases
I do feel that both China and the U.S. are stoking xenophobia by blaming each other for the outbreak. For instance, in recent weeks, Trump has labelled Covid-19 the ‘Chinese virus’ and a Chinese government spokesperson claimed, incredibly, that the coronavirus was created by the U.S. military. The Chinese government also hasn’t done much to quash the notion that foreigners are responsible for bringing new cases into China via air travel, when in fact the vast majority of returnees are Chinese citizens returning from abroad.
One viral photo that has been doing the rounds is of a sign on the glass door of what appears to be a bar or restaurant with the words “We do not accept foreign friends and people whose temperature is above 37.3 temporarily” along with the same in Chinese characters. Two people I know have posted this on social media - one in a WeChat group of China film and media professionals and other on their Facebook page. It seems that the photo was sourced from a blog called Expat Focus, which is hosted on China’s QQ platform. In the blog, there’s no information to give context: no indication of when and where the photo taken or whether the management was contacted for comment. The blog also features a of a notice apparently from ‘Powerlab Gym’, stating something similar, but there’s also no further information. A Google search for Powerlab Gym China didn’t turn up any helpful clues. When things like this are impossible to verify it undermines the credibility of any other information in the blog. It’s sad that people get news from these kinds of places. Unfortunately this kind of source will continue to gain influence with the decline of legacy media. On top of everything else, the coronavirus is a real sucker punch for the news media. In Australia, News Ltd just closed 60 regional newspapers due to advertising revenue falling off a cliff. But back to racism…
Personally, I have not seen signs in restaurants, bars or gyms in Shanghai that forbid entrance to foreigners. I’ve heard people say, that friends of theirs were stopped from entering a small bar they frequent, but I haven’t heard any first hand accounts. That is not to say that I do not disbelieve that such things are happening. On the whole, I’ve been treated well in China and haven’t encountered much racism directed at me, but I’m caucasian. A story I did with Margaret Simons on the African community in Guangzhou for Good Weekend (Sydney Morning Herald/The Age weekend magazine) give me some perspective on how blacks are treated in China. I can think of several times that I’ve ben taken aback by how racist some Chinese are towards people with dark skin. The story also ran as a photo essay on Al Jazeera:
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2014/09/pictures-chocolate-city-2014911115258446208.html
As for the current situation with the coronavirus outbreak here in Shanghai, I have indeed noticed a shift in people’s attitudes towards foreigners. As I wrote in my previous post 'Shanghai: Nightclubbing in the time of coronavirus’, when I interviewed and photographed a live blogger at a nightclub, her fans told her that I should be wearing a mask when they heard I was a foreigner (the blogger wasn’t wearing a mask). Having said, that the coronavirus outbreak has seen a rise in racist attacks on people of Asian appearance outside China. This incident with the blogger was eye-brow raising rather than harrowing.
Yesterday, when I was on my riding my bike a meeting at an ad agency, my first meeting since mid-January, I noticed a woman stare and take a few steps back from me when I stopped and waited for the lights to change at an intersection. I wasn’t wearing a mask, although I had one in my pocket. Her friends followed suit. It just made me wonder whether it was because I was a foreigner, because I wasn’t wearing a mask or both. Vanessa, my fiancee, who’s a Chinese national, thinks it’s the latter.
To be fair, everyone in the vicinity was wearing a mask. Even though the Chinese Government has announced that masks are no longer necessary outdoors, most people still wear them. I guess they just feel safer with them on and they do make it easier not to touch one’s face. As I’ve said before, the lockdown is easing within Shanghai, but one can’t say life is back to normal. Although, I did have a meeting yesterday, I could not go beyond the foyer of the building. Instead the art buyer and I went to a nearby cafe and sat across a table from one-another wearing surgical masks.
Anyway, the answer as to whether China is a racist country is a simple one as well as a complex one. I feel like I could answer that question with either ‘Yes’ or a PhD paper. So of course it is. Having said that, no country isn’t. I lived in Germany for a few years and the rules restricting employment made it pretty clear that the country didn’t want non-EU citizens living there and the experience of the Taiwanese friend and her U.S. husband attempting to move to Berlin recently reminded me of this. Having said that, China is much more blatant in its discrimination. For instance, last year China began to offer a new five year visa for foreigners last year. The main catch is that it is only for those of Chinese ancestry.
Before the coronavirus crisis hit, I began to plan a pivot back to Melbourne with Vanessa. Although I’ve criticised that country’s response to the outbreak on my blog, I do miss the place. Each time I come back, I find it harder to leave. However, one thing that has worried me about a move to Australia, which I suppose will happen over the next three years, is the racism that Vanessa may face, especially as someone who doesn’t speak English accent-free. That worries me as much as whether she is able to be fulfilled within an alien land and alien culture.
This is another digression, but I can think of a couple of things that illustrate how tone-deaf Australian media and the general population can be to racism. Although these things happened decades ago and awareness of racism in Australia has heightened, I think they’ve still valid. Let’s take the soap opera Neigbours for example. Back when I was a kid, my neighbour, Diane (my Hong Kong ‘aunty’) and her daughter Michelle appeared as guest stars. A dog went missing on Ramsay Street, where the suburban soap is set, and they were suspected of eating it in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge attempt at comedy. Another thing that popped into my head for some reason was an appearance of a singing troupe on the Red Faces segment (basically a mini Gong Show-esque ritual humiliation of substandard performers) on Hey Hey it’s Saturday, a long gone evening variety show. Harry Connick Jnr was a guest judge and you could almost see his jaw hit the floor when four guys appeared in black face. This American jazz crooner, an arch conservative, gave the performers zero points and said something about being from ‘The South’. He was horrified and everyone else was puzzled and maybe a bit embarrassed. People were probably asking. “Why is that racist”?. Obviously no one up to that point had considered anyone might think it was. Anyway, there’s a digression for you: I start out discussing racism in China and end up writing about Red Faces on Hey Hey it’s Saturday. I must be homesick.
I’ve attached a few more coronavirus related pics below.
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