As soon as I walked into the train carriage, a whole family packed up their belongings and shuffled nervously to the next one. It happened on a train from Oxford to London earlier this month.
I am an ordinary postgraduate student but for the fact, extraordinary in these times, that I’m Chinese. As the coronavirus outbreak spreads around the world, I have been experiencing a different epidemic – one of racism and xenophobia.
I felt unwelcome. For the first time in years, I was self-conscious of my status as the person of color in a white space, the alien in a culture whose values I share.
I expected a better Britain than the one in which two of my Hong Kong friends, walking on a Manchester st
Feb 24, 2020