Storytelling Saturday #7: “You don’t have to be Spanish to catch Spanish flu.”
Welcome back to Storytelling Saturday, where I share stories about my experiences as an international student and immigrant. Does anyone remember the lockdown? More like a hate-crime hotline.
People walk around today (at least in the UK, where I live) as if the pandemic never happened. No traces of it are left, except for a small corner in Boots (a pharmacy) that sells Covid test kits for £2.99. It suddenly seems very expensive to pay for something that used to be free. It seems people have forgotten it all, and it was only a couple of years ago. Off they go, the colourful masks that people made during lockdowns, along with their hatred for Chinese people.
For the record, COVID-19 started in a province in China. There is not yet a definite origin as to which animal species caused the mutation. Yes, it infected Chinese people in the province first before spreading to others all around China and the world. Chinese people didn’t create COVID-19; they were the first victims. But, from what I have experienced and observed, people seem to have made an equation that says, ‘Chinese=Covid-19.’ Businesses closed, and many were never open again. Communities dissipated. The stock market crashed. All was hopeless because of the Chinese.
I am not Chinese (if I say it enough times, maybe it’ll stick!), but that’s only a minor variation in the eyes of the British. I remember people shouting things at me, pulling their hand-stitched masks down so that all their spit and hate can travel through the air. I would see people darting across the road when they saw me coming towards them on the footpath. I was asked what race I was when phoning to make a hospital appointment. The prejudice and hatred I faced were so mild that I can’t complain, but it was still there. In New York, USA, the police had to make a dedicated hotline for the Asian diaspora because of their increased hate crimes. Hate spread faster than COVID.
And after all that, as the virus subsided and more people were vaccinated, the hate suddenly vanished. It is as if people binned their hatred along with their colourful masks, just like that.
I often wonder if all that racism was a catalyst or an excuse. Was it a newly found hatred that was created by fear of the pandemic? Or did people always have the hatred in them, suppressed by logic and decency, that was let out when Covid-19 gave them a ‘pass’ to unleash it? At this point, I won’t know for sure. But I remember what happened to me. The harasser often forgets. The harassed never does.
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