Pandemic:
Tradition Disrupted
Contributor: Alison Fong is a junior Honors College student majoring in history, international and global studies with a concentration in peace, human rights, and security, and Asian studies and minoring in East Asian history and politics. Originally born in Singapore before moving to Phoenix, Arizona in 2010, Alison is involved on campus as a member of the University of Arkansas Museum Student Advisory Council, an Honors College Ambassador, and a member of Sigma Iota Rho. After college, Alison desires to pursue a masters in global and Asian history and further her knowledge of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
China during Golden Week: Hoards of people wait in line to travel back home for Chinese New Year
When the news of COVID-19 first hit, there was a time of uncertainty, where we stood staring ahead into a blank future without truly knowing the impact it will on lives for the next year and maybe longer. At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 seemed like a very isolated and distant issue in comparison to others. When I asked my peers about it, if they were concerned about COVID-19 reaching Arkansas, none of them seemed to believe that it would ever go that far for a variety of reasons.
Meanwhile, China was in the thick of what would become a global pandemic. In an effort to stymie the spread of the virus, they implemented draconian social distancing measures and utilized their experience in security and technology to aid in contact tracing. Hospitals were constantly packed and running low on supplies, people were waiting in line for days to take a single COVID-19 test, and the government was building additional hospitals in days to meet the demand.[1]
Last year, Chinese New Year began on January 25th in the middle of China’s fight with the virus. China has two week-long national holidays known as Golden Weeks. The first Golden Week occurs from October 1st to October 7th, while the second Golden Week begins on the first day of Chinese New Year and also lasts a week-long. During these Golden Weeks, workers return to their hometowns, where they visit their parents and other relatives and spend time with their families. As pictured above, Golden Week is a time when swarms of people flood highways, terminals, and airports – much like the Thanksgiving rush we experience in America. During an outbreak of a highly contagious virus, however, such a situation is a public health nightmare. Last year, for the first time in decades, the normally bustling, energetic, and festive streets of China’s cities and rural towns were deserted.[2] Everyone was issued a strict stay-home order, and the only times a person could leave their houses were when they needed to grab any essentials, like groceries, or when they needed to go to work because they were an essential worker.
When COVID-19 cases began to increase substantially in other countries, and governments began to implement social distancing measures, impacting local business, education, domestic economies, and personal relationships, people began to look for scapegoats. Some blamed China, sparking wild conspiracy theories that included discussions of biological warfare, and condemned an entire ethnicity for the virus.[3] Pointing fingers at a large and rather untouchable entity leads to directing those fingers at the smaller people, those who make up the Asian diaspora. They are the elderly people, sitting behind the counters of Asian grocery stores or Chinese barbecue stalls in Chinatown; they are the younger generation, opening hip business that illustrate their mixed cultural heritage as both Asian and another; they are the international students, who sit at the same library tables and work just as hard for an A as we do.
In the US, hate crimes against Asian Americans dramatically increased ever since the spread of COVID-19 domestically.[4] Chinatowns all around the world are vandalized and looted.[5] Asian-owned business are targeted both violently and economically, as customers refuse to patronize Asian businesses.[6] Innocent people are attacked in broad daylight for no other reason than the fact that they “looked Chinese”. Some of these attacks are motivated by misplaced anger that an abrasive political climate does not abate, and even more of these attacks are spawned from ignorance and a lack of humanity. We even experience discrimination without violence when people skirt around us in stores after they see that we’re Asians or cover their mouths as they see as approaching. Most recently, a 19-year-old teenager pushed an 84-year-old Thai man, Vicha Ratanapakdee, to his death in San Francisco.[7] Videos of the assault show how the attacker charged towards Ratanapakdee and shoved him to the ground.
While COVID-19 is definitely not the only reason for hate crimes against Asian Americans, as these crimes have been occurring over decades since the Chinese first immigrated to America, it is a catalyst for growing numbers of assaults and incidents within the community. The pandemic remains a sore spot in our community, and some might be inclined to lay the blame on China or on others. However, cases, such as with Mr. Ratanapakdee and with last year’s Brooklyn incident when two teens burned an 89-year-old Chinese woman with a match and lighter, has brought solidarity to the community and has empowered members of our community to speak up for our own.[8]
As Asians all around world celebrate this Chinese New Year, we spend another year in social distancing, adhering to government policies on gatherings or even transferring all celebrations to a virtual space. For those who have directly suffered from unwarranted attacks or unbridled racism, I hope that you can find healing as we celebrate a new year. If we can only hold out for a little longer, we soon begin on our journey toward recovery, and maybe one day, towards normalcy.
[1] Owen Amos, “Coronavirus: How Do You Quarantine a City – and Does It Work?,” BBC News (BBC, January 23, 2020), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51218014.
[2] Simiao Chen et al., “COVID-19 Control in China during Mass Population Movements at New Year,” The Lancet 395, no. 10226 (March 7, 2020): pp. 764-766, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30421-9.
[3] Nathan Rott, “COVID-19 Denial Still Rampant In Some Coronavirus Hot Spots,” NPR (NPR, November 19, 2020), https://www.npr.org/2020/11/19/936248527/covid-19-denial-still-rampant-in-some-virus-hotspots.
[4] Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Mandates of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance; the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants; and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls (Geneva: August 2020).
[5] Anne Leclair, “Montreal’s Chinatown Faces Second Wave of Vandalism, Break-Ins,” Global News, October 28, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/7423592/montreals-chinatown-second-wave-vandalism-break-ins/.
[6] Hannah Knowles and Kim Bellware, “Fear Sent Her Chinatown Restaurant Spiraling. The Challenges to Reopening Feel ‘Just Impossible.’,” The Washington Post (WP Company, May 16, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/16/asian-american-business-coronavirus/.
[7] Ryan General, “Teen Who Pushed Elderly Thai Man to His Death Pleads Not Guilty to Murder,” NextShark, February 4, 2021, https://nextshark.com/thai-man-teen-suspect-pleads-not-guilty/.
[8] Rose Adams, “Asian-American Marchers Take to Brooklyn Streets after 89-Year-Old Woman Was Set on Fire,” amNewYork, August 5, 2020, https://www.amny.com/news/asian-american-marchers-take-to-brooklyn-streets-after-89-year-old-woman-was-set-on-fire/.
Image Attributions:
- Mike Diliberto. China During Golden Week. Mike Diliberto blog.