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Xenophobic conversations about Chinese eating habits go viral on the Internet
Such ignorance is not only unpleasant – misdiagnosing the problem is also dangerous.
A change.org petition launched on January 26 had 118,858 signatures Wednesday afternoon. Ian Ong, who wrote: “We are not rat or bat eaters and should not have to take responsibility for their stupidities.
Xenophobic conversations about mainland Chinese and their eating habits have spread around the world since the first cases of the new coronavirus 2019 (n-CoV 2019) appeared in China’s Hubei province in December.
The virus has now infected more than 6 000 people, most of them in mainland China where at least 132 people have died. Dozens of people have been infected in the rest of Asia – including 10 in Singapore and seven in Malaysia.
Some countries, including the Philippines, stopped issuing visas on arrival to all Chinese nationals. Papua New Guinea went further, closing its airports and ports to all foreigners from Asia.
In Malaysia, there have been calls to block Chinese tourists and social media articles claiming that the epidemic is “divine retribution” for China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim population. Some mosques in Malaysia have also closed to tourists.
In Japan, a shop in a mountain town prompted an apology from tourism authorities after posting a sign saying, “No Chinese are allowed to enter the shop. I don’t want to spread the virus”. “
“Save your virus, you Chinese tramp! You’re not welcome in France,” shouts a hit-and-run driver accelerating over a puddle of water to splash him. Minh, who recounts the episode that took place on Monday 27 January, is of Vietnamese origin. Since the identification in France of several cases of patients contaminated by the coronavirus 2019-nCoV, which appeared in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, racist remarks against people from the Asian community have been increasing. They are the first victims of the concern about the virus.
On Wednesday from noon, Singapore blocked the entry of tourists who had visited Hubei province in the last 14 days or who hold passports issued in the province. Malaysia has also stopped issuing visas to Chinese travellers from Hubei.
The Government of Singapore said the travel ban was due to global trends showing that most of the infections were among people who had visited the province and that the country wanted to minimize the importation of the virus into Singapore.
Sam Phan, a master’s student at the University of Manchester, wrote in The Guardian: “This week my ethnicity made me feel like I was part of a menacing and sick mass. To see myself as someone who carries the virus simply because of my race is, well, racist. »
“As an East Asian, I can’t help but feel increasingly uncomfortable,” added Phan, a British citizen. “On the bus to work last week, as I sat down, the man next to me immediately rushed to collect his things and stood up to avoid sitting next to me.”
In Canada, the Toronto BlogTO website said that there is also a stigma attached to Chinese food, noting that a similar thing happened during the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars), which infected 8,000 people worldwide and killed nearly 800 people. on its Instagram publication about a new Chinese restaurant, which some posters urged diners to avoid because “there may be pieces of bat or whatever else they eat”.
The comments referred in part to a video of a Chinese social media influencer slipping into a bowl of bat soup. Some posters claimed that the video was evidence of “disgusting” Chinese eating habits, although the video was actually filmed three years ago in Palau, a Pacific island nation where bat soup is a delicacy.
