My Family and Friends In Hong Kong Love Trump’s “China Virus”

Gisella Tan
5 min readMar 26, 2020
Photo by visuals on Unsplash

When Parasite won the Academy Award for Best Picture in February, my family in Hong Kong was unimpressed.

“It’s like any other Korean drama,” they scoffed over a dozen messages in our family Whatsapp group.

I attempted to explain how groundbreaking it was for a foreign-language film set in another country to beat contenders that were love letters to the American film industry. In the 6 years that I’ve lived in this country, I’ve learned how special it is for a film with an Asian cast to have a wide release in American theaters, let alone win the industry’s highest accolades.

After Parasite’s Academy Award win, I reveled in Asian American Twitter’s euphoric reactions. Critics penned articles titled “Is 2020 the year for Asian Americans?”, though some were pessimistic.

It’s hard to believe that the Academy Awards took place only 6 weeks ago. Since then, 9 Democratic candidates have dropped out of the presidential race. There’s been a global pandemic outbreak. Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Multiple states have enacted a shelter-in-place order.

In mid-February, when most San Franciscans were still gaily hanging out with friends and going to work, my family offered to mail me face masks they diligently scoured since the New Year. Mask-wearing was ubiquitous in Hong Kong, learned societal-level hypervigilance from SARS. I declined their generosity. News reports of Asian people getting discriminated against, even physically attacked, were beginning to surface.

“It’s not worth the risk,” I told my extended family, “And nobody here wears masks.” They understood and told me to stay safe.

Last week, I watched the live briefing where Trump spoke of the “Chinese virus.” My Twitter feed fired up with angry comments denouncing his comments and predictions on how anti-Asian sentiments would be exacerbated. I scrolled through posts by Asian American friends recounting how prior to Trump’s comments, white people were already avoiding them in supermarkets or making snide comments on public transportation. I decided to only leave the house for groceries alongside my white roommates.

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Gisella Tan

I write about Gen Z, marketing, Hong Kong, and my immigrant identity. Email: gisellatanx@gmail.com