Wuhan Virus + Brexit: how are things in London?

Hi guys, allow me to string together two recent major events: Brexit and the Wuhan Corona Virus. Now the UK officially left the EU on the 31st January last Friday and of course, the Wuhan Virus has been in the news for weeks now. So two stories caught my attention on social media in the last few days: the first was that of a racist 'Happy Brexit Day' notice appearing in a council block in Norwich, asking those who do not speak English to leave the UK. The second was a report in the BBC about how Chinese people in the UK are subject to racism as a result of the Wuhan virus. There is a lot of ignorance about the Wuhan virus amongst ordinary folks who are not well educated and this does manifest itself in racism. So with this double whammy of Brexit + the Wuhan virus, I had a reader in Singapore express concern for me, if I was going to be subject to any kind of xenophobia as a result. Well, that's a good question and hey, thanks for your concern. But the short answer is no, I'm fine - little has changed in my everyday routine. I did wonder if I was going to be treated any differently when I was in Venice recently, if I had to say, "Non sono cinese, non vengo dalla Cina" (I am not Chinese, I am not from China) to anyone getting suspicious of me the moment I coughed a little, but no, nobody seemed to care. This was before Italy stopped all flights from China so Venice was still full of Chinese tourists then. However, I am learning how to say it in Greek since I am off to Thessaloniki this weekend: Δεν είμαι Κινέζος - δεν είμαι από την Κίνα.

But let's start with the incident from Norwich: the block where that racist note appeared was a building called Winchester court, it is a council block for tenants over the age of 55. For my readers who are not British, allow me to explain to you what that means. In the UK, the government provides housing for those who do not have the means to either rent or buy their own property - so this is called 'council housing' where the government builds these houses and then rents them to poor people at a discounted/subsidized rate. In extreme cases where the people are destitute, the government will allow them to live rent-free there. If it makes the UK government sound generous, well it certainly is! Such is the welfare state. Not everyone is entitled to it - like if I tried to apply for a council property, they'll be like fuck off, you earn so much money, you don't fit the criteria, the limited stock of council housing is for poor people who would be homeless otherwise. Also, you need to be resident in an area for a number of years before you are entitled to even apply to be on the council housing waiting list - the demand is far greater than supply, so the waiting list is usually a few years long. Since the purpose of council housing is to stop the poorest in our society from ending up homeless, they are usually modest and basic. Once in a while, you may come across a rather nice council housing project, but the majority of them are old, shoddily put together and in the case of Grenfell Tower, a disaster waiting to happen: the cladding of a council block in London was made of such cheap flammable material that a fire in June 2017 led to 72 deaths. So if you do have money, you wouldn't choose to live in a council estate - you would use your wealth to live in a much nicer, safer neighbourhood.

We have an ageing population in the UK, so there is a high demand for housing with facilities that are suited for much older people - so we're talking about ramps instead of stairs, railings next to the toilet bowl and bath. It is easier for councils to create purpose built buildings when every flat is fitted with such facilities for the elderly, rather than to renovate existing council properties to make them more suitable for the elderly. Such purpose built blocks for the elderly represent great economies of scale and if there's a large enough local elderly dependent on council housing then it makes sense to build such projects. This is when I am going to get very nasty: I am 43 and a multi-millionaire. I came from a poor working class family in Singapore and I got absolutely no help from my parents, yet I worked hard and built up a career in finance from scratch here in London and today, I am leading a very comfortable lifestyle. If these local English elderly people have worked all their lives till the age of 55, only to be so piss poor that they still need help from the government just to pay the rent - then the word that comes to mind is 'loser'. They can't even support themselves, that's just fucking pathetic - they'll starve to death without the welfare state. This is a block for losers who are dependent on the government to pay the rent, to buy food, to keep the lights on and guess where the government gets the money from to pay for people like that? That's right, from higher-rate tax payers like me. So if a resident in the block wants to use Brexit as an excuse to be racist, then this Asian immigrant is going to turn around and call him/her a fucking pathetic loser in return. These council estate scum are really losers who are dependent on government handouts for everything.

That's the link between poverty and racism. For someone like myself, I have a list of achievements longer than my arm that I can be proud of: I was a triple scholar when I was a student, a former national champion gymnast, I have established a very successful career in a country where I am an immigrant, I am a multi-millionaire, I have a platform where people listen to me: I get thousands of readers reading everything I post on my blog. Modesty aside, I am pretty darn awesome and have achieved a lot. But if you look at these poor, elderly English people who are so penniless they are dependent on the government to give them a roof over their head or they would be homeless, what have they achieved? Nothing. They don't even have enough money in the bank to take care of themselves. When they look back on their life, they have nothing but be proud of, only a lot to be ashamed of having achieved nothing. So under these circumstances, in order to derive some kind of pride to replace that overwhelming sense of shame, they become racist and take pride in the colour of their skin. "I may be poor and old, but at least I am white, being white is better than being brown or black!" That's why the racist in that block who put up that 'Happy Brexit Day' poster is projecting all this hatred on non-English immigrants because he is taking pride in his English heritage and identity, rather than his personal achievements. And just to be clear, if you are a resident in a council block like that, then you have fulfilled the criteria of being piss poor and elderly - there's nothing to be proud of here, if you want to scrape the bottom of the barrel and see the very worst characters in British society, you go to council blocks like that: that is the context you have to understand.

You may think, woah Alex, I think you're going too far. I get it you're angered by the racism arising from Brexit, that poster was very offensive indeed but you don't need to attack the elderly poor like that. After all, poor elderly people deserve charity and sympathy, not your harsh judgement about their financial situation. But this is when I have a problem with the way stories like that are reported in the media: they make us sound like we're helpless victims who suffer in silence, unable to react or do anything when faced with racism. After all I'm a gay man and if all gay men were to just cry and commit suicide the moment we faced any homophobia, there won't be any more gay people left on the face of the earth. I'm just saying that some of us react to this kind of xenophobia by fighting back, by standing up for ourselves and giving as good as we get so nobody will dare to fuck with me. So thankfully, I have not experienced any racist harassment associated with the Wuhan virus so far, but if someone is dumb enough to try that kind of shit with me, I wouldn't just suffer in silence. I would challenge that idiot and make a point that nobody messes with me like that, I would teach them a lesson. This is London, this is my home and nobody has the right to mess with me here - heck, even when I have been abroad in other countries, I have verbally attacked people who disrespected me: I picked a fight with a woman in Rome in Italian when she had the audacity to be rude with me and I showed that bitch who was boss. Nobody fucks with me. I wouldn't go round picking fights but good luck to the person who tries to pick a fight with me because I will destroy them.

At this point you may think, Alex why are you so aggressive? You sound like a really angry person who is spoiling for a fight. Well, allow me to share with you a childhood memory that made me the way I am. My parents were primary school teachers and sometimes the teachers would organize a badminton session in the school hall, I liked joining them for those games as it was fun. I remember this incident when I was about 8 years old, my father got into an altercation with another younger female teacher - it was over something silly, my father had brought some rackets and shuttlecocks and she used it without asking. Instead of apologizing for the mistake and perhaps thanking my father, she was very rude to my father about the fact that he kicked up a fuss. My father just stood there in complete silence and allowed himself to be insulted by this woman - then when we got home, he complained about it for days about how humiliating the experience was. And I was like, if you were that unhappy, why didn't you say something about it there and then? Scold her, insult her, threaten to slap her face - but you just stood there in silence like a coward only to complain to your family days later? I know exactly what happened: you see, my father isn't intelligent at all, he's a simple man who isn't articulate or eloquent. When put in a difficult social situation, he struggles to find the right words to express himself and would panic, thus he would remain silent if he didn't know what to say. But basically, the lesson I learnt from that story is that you must always stand up for yourself and say something the moment you are unhappy with the situation, never ever remain silent: do speak up, express yourself, make others know just how you feel and make your voice heard loud and clear immediately.

Let me be clear here. I'm not saying that racism and xenophobia doesn't exist in the UK, it most certainly does: but the richer you are, the far less likely you are to experience it. So for example, an ordinary person may encounter racism when out in a public space like a supermarket, a train station or at a bus stop. But a super rich person would have servants to get the groceries and would never use public transport - they would probably get a taxi instead or they might have their own cars. And if you're very poor and dependent on the government to help pay your rent, then yeah you'll end up in a council estate surrounded by other poor, uneducated, ignorant people who are far more likely to be racist. But if you're rich, then you're going to have a much better class of neighbours who are going to be far less xenophobic. You see, poor people don't travel - that's a luxury they can't afford if they're so poor they can't pay the rent without some help from the government. Rich people on the other hand can afford to travel regularly; they are also better educated, they probably speak a few foreign language language, have been exposed to many other cultures and have friends from other countries. I'm not assuming that all poor people are racist, but you're far more likely to experience racism from poor working class people than from rich, middle and upper class people. Of course, you do get the odd rich idiot who is racist - but that's far more rare and certainly not condoned by others from a similar background. So if you're an EU national or a Chinese person in the UK now, well, I hope you are very rich or at least have enough money to avoid poor British people.

I'd like to share with you a more positive story about my own experiences: on Brexit evening (the 31st January), I was at my gymnastics club training when one of the new gymnasts couldn't communicate what she needed to do with the coach. The coach then realized she was from Spain, so he called me over to translate - I then also got my friend Nick over, he is from Manchester but like me, Nick speaks Spanish fluently too. So together, we made sure that the Spanish gymnast was able to communicate with the coach and we went out of our way to made her feel welcome. It was her first session there, her English was limited and she was a little nervous, but after Nick and I got involved, she was a lot happier. Do instances like these get reported on social media? No, because we just treat this as normal and simply not that newsworthy, this kind of thing happens in my gymnastics club in London all the time where the gymnasts come from a very diverse background and a number of languages are spoken every training session. So for me to switch to another language to communicate with a gymnast or to make her feel more at ease is really no big deal. But allow me to point out that gymnastics is an expensive sport: the equipment costs a lot of money, so to access a gymnastics class at a well-equipped facility in London, you need to be able to afford the expensive fees. Poor people generally cannot afford to do sports like gymnastics because of the prohibitive costs. Nick is a final year student at law school and is about to embark on a career in law - hence very well educated, rich people like him and I will speak a foreign language and be very welcoming to foreign nationals, whilst it is more often the poor people who are racist and xenophobic towards outsiders.

Now as for the BBC report of Chinatown being affected by the Wuhan virus, that surprised me actually because I have been to Chinatown recently and it looked pretty normal to me. I was in Soho to get my fix of Singaporean food at Singapulah (yes don't laugh, that's the real name) and I then popped into the Chinese supermarket in Chinatown to pick up some supplies, I didn't notice anything unusual at all then. Indeed, business was brisk at Singapulah, I struggled to get a reservation and the only slot they could give me was for 5:30 pm, okay a bit early for dinner, too late for lunch but I accepted it nonetheless because the menu looked awesome. There was a super long queue of people (probably mostly Singaporean and/or Malaysian judging by the accents) waiting outside and I was so happy to had the reservation. The service was fast, the food was excellent but the portion sizes were too small for the prices they were charging - when we finished our cendol, we were given a less than subtle hint from the waiter that there were others waiting so we left quickly. Of course, Singapulah was doing such good business because they had something unique to offer - they did authentic Singaporean street food and hawker fare, everything from the satay to the friend Hokkien mee to the cendol tasted exactly as one would expect. The restaurant trade is a cut-throat, competitive business and whilst there are many Chinese restaurants in the Chinatown-Soho area of London, some are a lot more successful than others if they get the formula right. I have seen restaurants come and go in Chinatown over the years and the crux of the matter is getting the business model right to ensure the long term survival of the restaurant, rather than blaming something like the Wuhan virus if business sucks. For the record, I have looked at menu for Jinli (the restaurant featured in the BBC report) and it didn't look particularly interesting to me. There was nothing there which made me think, "oh yeah, I must eat there soon."

But such is the nature of journalism: it is not a newsworthy story if the headline was, "nothing much has changed in Chinatown, it is business as usual, if not a little quiet but it could be due to the fact that it was raining most of yesterday." That's not click bait, that's not a sensational story that is going to be shared on social media - when you have a hot story like the Wuhan virus going viral (pun intended), then all these news websites are competing with each other to try to get you to read their story instead of their rivals'. Hence the focus on the more sensational headlines and even making mountains out of molehills just to spice up a story - the fact is we have had zero cases of the Wuhan virus so far in London, we have had two cases in the UK but they both are up in Newcastle. These are two Chinese students who had been in Wuhan and had recently returned to the UK where they are currently studying. Newcastle is a long way from London, according to Google, walking from London to Newcastle will cover a distance of 445 km and both of those students have since been quarantined the moment they were diagnosed. There isn't any reason to panic in London as there are currently no cases of the Wuhan virus here at all. Thus in this case, there's an element of bad journalism here, where the journalists have started with a hypothesis: "there are so many Chinese people in London, so they must be concerned about this Wuhan virus spreading, let's do a story about it" and then selected stories to fit their narrative rather than realize there isn't much of a story here at all to write about. Certainly as a British-Chinese resident on London, I certainly don't have anything to report from my end. Likewise, there was a BBC report on racism towards Chinese people in Italy - I have just returned from Venice myself recently but didn't witness or experience any kind of racism at all there.

So if I haven't encountered any Wuhan virus related racism in person in London, is there any anti-Chinese racism online in social media that I've encountered? Actually, yes but this is not as straightforward as it sounds. A lot of people are critical of the response of the Chinese government, given that they had initially tried to cover up the news of the virus when it first emerged back in December - this initial cover up was disastrous, it was a monumental fuck up by the idiotic Chinese government because they missed a vital window period to contain the virus in the early stages and trying to keep the entire Hubei province on lock down after the virus has spread is like trying to shut the stable doors after the horse has bolted. As you can tell from my language, yes I am equally critical about the Chinese government's handling of the matter - so can people differentiate criticism of the Chinese government from racist remarks about Chinese people? I have quite a few vegan friends who have used the Wuhan virus as a reason to speak up against the eating of animals, they have dismissed some of the bush meat markets in China as downright barbaric and disgusting - I eat the usual more common meats like pork, beef, duck, lamb, chicken, fish and other forms of seafood that I can readily buy in my local shops. Not all Chinese people eat bats, snakes, pangolins and dogs - it is only a minority in China who do that and it's not like I can walk into a supermarket in Chinatown London and buy any of these exotic meats. So I do feel a bit unnerved when I read what some of my vegan friends have been posting, but then again, these people do consider me a murderer anyway since I regularly eat meat and I'm going to have roast chicken for dinner tonight. The fact is I am aware that my vegan friends already strongly disapprove of my diet in any case even before this 2019 Wuhan virus came along.

I did actually fall out with another ex-friend (from Poland) not so long ago over the issue of Chinese people eating dogs and I wrote a whole blog post about it. Of course there are many aspects of Chinese culture which I don't agree with, but then it becomes a question of having the right kind of social skills to debate the various aspects of Chinese culture which are problematic without resorting to petty insults. So if you want to have a civilized, mutually respectful conversation about why some Chinese people still want to eat dog meat, then as a Chinese person who doesn't eat dog meat and has no desire to, then I am more than happy to have that conversation. I'd compare it to trying to talk about the atrocities of the Nazi regime with young German people today, bearing in mind the fact that WW2 ended in 1945 and even if you were born in 1945, you'll be 75 years old today and even if you were born in 1940, you'll only be 5 years old when Hitler died so the vast majority of the German people you will talk to about Germany's past have nothing to do with the atrocities the Nazi regime committed even if they may be children and grandchildren of people who did participate in the Nazi regime's war machine but could you actually hold someone responsible for something their parents or grandparents did before they were even born? But that ex-friend of mine didn't know how to express herself, you see, she is autistic too (that's not me labeling her autistic, she has admitted that herself) and her social skills are rather poor. She didn't know how to make her point without getting personal, hence let me show you two different ways to make the same point.

Version 1: The slaughtering of dogs for meat is a barbaric and very cruel practice.
Version 2: Your culture is barbaric and cruel because your people kill dogs for meat.

So as you can imagine, my Polish ex-friend mostly used version 2 which can does come across as a personal attack of a racist nature, whilst using version 1 would have enabled her to discuss the issue without making me feel as if I am being attacked personally - the fact is if I feel attacked, then that's when I get defensive and I have to start saying things like,  "I don't eat dog, so why are you blaming me for what other Chinese people in China have done, what has that got to do with me?" I could have had a very insightful and information conversation with her as I taught her about some aspects of Chinese culture, history and geography that has led to this situation, but instead, the only response that was acceptable to her is an apology for the cruelty of 'my culture'. Like seriously, how meaningless is that? It's not like I have ever harmed a dog or visited one of those dog markets in China where they sell dogs for meat - it's not like you can open my freezer and find frozen dog meat in there! All this has nothing to do with me whatsoever. Yet because I had refused to 'apologize' for something that I had not done personally, she branded me a cruel barbarian who condones this practice and at that point I thought, that's it, you're a vile autistic asshole and I'm cutting you off, unfriend, block. Ironically, I don't think my Polish ex-friend is actually racist - she is merely someone is very autistic and has extremely poor social skills. She got emotional about the killing of dogs and furthermore, English isn't even her first language but regardless, even if she is not inherently racist, I don't have the patience to deal with people with such poor social skills. Admittedly, none of my vegan friends have crossed that line so far regarding the Wuhan virus, but a few have sailed rather close to the wind.

So whilst there has definitely been some incidents of racism but reports of it do make it sound like it is very widespread when really, it is fairly limited. Poor people are far more likely to encounter it than richer people and there's a lot of shit being said online by people who would hide behind their computers whilst spewing hatred on social media, but they are quite unlikely to ever have the guts to do anything in person in a public place. On the issue of Brexit, crikey I have a friend - let's call him Oliver (not his real name). Like me, Oliver is very pro-EU and was angered by the result of the Brexit referendum, so he started sending out a lot of provocative tweets about Brexit and yes, he was looking for a fight on Twitter. And yes when people respond and disagree with him, he spends hours arguing with them. Well, Oliver bit off more than he could chew when one of his particularly provocative tweets got picked up by a tabloid newspaper and before you know it, his tweet was in an article about Brexit and the tabloid published his full name and the university where he worked. So on the university website, you could find all of Oliver's contact details and that was when Oliver received an insane amount of hate mail, he was bombarded non-stop for weeks on social media and through email, even getting death threats. It got so bad he left the country to lie low for a while until it all blew over. On one hand, I did feel very sorry for him, it was a horrific experience; but on the other hand, there's a part of me that wants to say, "Oliver, what do you think was going to happen if you keep poking the hornets' nest with that big stick? You wanted attention, be careful what you wish for." Of course there is racist crap written about Chinese people on Twitter for example, hence I just choose not to look at it or let it bother me - I'm certainly not going to do what Oliver did, oh he was looking for trouble.

Here's an example of how I would deal with an issue in contrast: my friend Max is a militant vegan, that means that he is always trying to convince his people to go vegan and he would take part in events like protesting at abattoirs and farms. He's essentially a nice guy and I respect his point of view though I am clearly a meat eater. So he did a status update about taking part in a peaceful protest at a farm about the terrible treatment of animals there and one of his old school friends 'Henry' (not his real name) launched a stinging attack on Max on his Facebook page - Henry was being extremely rude and the kind of language he used can only be described as childish. I could have waded into the argument and told Henry that he had crossed the line, it was fine for Henry to disagree with Max on the issue of eating meat, but he had to learn to present his point of view in a more respectful and mature manner, without resorting to name calling and petty insults. It looked like Henry had a severe lack of social skills, that he wasn't a particularly well educated or intelligent person who knew how to communicate his ideas. So instead, I sent Max a private message to tell him that I had seen what Henry had written but I do not want to get into an online spat with someone I didn't know - I offered Max my moral support, telling him that he didn't deserve to be insulted like that and that the best thing to do would be to cut Henry off: unfriend and block him at once, so you would never have to deal with him again. With 'friends' like that, who needs enemies? Max agreed with me and thankfully that was the end of it. Someone like Oliver would have gotten into a very, very long argument with Henry and that's the kind of battle that nobody wins, everyone loses the moment they take part.

I'd like to finish with a story about an incident in Wales - a woman from Taiwan Su Chu Lu, who is a long term resident of Wales faced some racism at work. She runs a shop in a market Hall in Aberystwyth and she was confronted by three other vendors in the market who told her that she should leave and quarantine herself or they would call the police. She stood her ground, went public with her story and now there is a massive outpouring of support for her in Wales, whilst action is being taken against those who had the audacity to confront her. I don't like the way the story is being reported in the BBC as they focused on the confrontation that happened, rather than the reaction in Wales and the support Ms Su has received since. Now what this stories tells us is the following: there were a small handful of stupid, ignorant, racist cunts working in that market hall whilst the vast majority of the people in Wales are not racist at all and have offered Ms Su so much support. That's the ratio we're dealing with here - tiny minority of stupid cunts vs vast majority of nice people, yet somehow, the media chooses to report on the actions of the tiny minority of stupid cunts because it makes for a more sensational story that will get more clicks online. I have since followed up with the story on the Ceredigion People's Assembly where Ms Su has shared her story, every comment I can see just how much love and support there is for Ms Su in that part of Wales. Yet somehow, the media has focused on the initial confrontation with that small group of ignorant cunts and that's really misrepresenting the situation in Wales. As a Welsh speaker with many friends in Wales, I take great offence because it is making Welsh people look quite racist. There are a tiny minority of stupid cunts everywhere you go, including Wales but I have to stress that they are a tiny minority, unlike the impression the media might give you.

Okay, so that's it from me on this topic: what do you think? How has the Wuhan virus affected you? Are you genuinely afraid of getting ill and stocking up on face masks or do you think that this will all blow over by next month? Is this any worse than the SARS epidemic back in 2002 to 2003? Are you worried the moment you have a runny nose? Are people over reacting or are we not doing enough to stop the spread of the virus? Or perhaps you have something to say about Brexit? Have you been personally affected by these recent events? Do leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.