Dictionary: Life as an Oversea Chinese in the Age of COVID-19

Worry

The mental state between January and Mid-March. Checking on your parents every 8 hours. Reading every chart on Netease News or TouTiao news App every 30 minutes. Wanting to talk to your grandparents but could not find a way. Asking everyone you know to find facemasks to send back to China and cleared the last one on the aisle at Ace Hardware store. Read posts on Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter), marked some of those, only to find they were deleted after 24 hours. Your critical thinking skills went numb - rumors after rumors, from individuals, scholars, and media.

Fear

Intensified over time. You sensed it when you were asked to sit on the backseat by the Lyft driver and then being asked to leave. News clips started to emerge. Microaggression started to brew. You feel it when you wear a mask while others are not. You feel it when Trump tweeted about the Chinese Virus. You feel it when the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry started to bullshit and spread conspiracy theories. You feel it when you are debating with your old friend and eventually being called a traitor. You deleted the words you had typed in WeChat that you were about to send.

Facemask

A necessity if you are in Asia, but it is more complicated if you are somewhere else. The ultimate source of security and confusion, later creativity.

Sadly Amused

See #nnevvy on Twitter.

Confusion

The feeling you have around Facemask (see above). Seeing Spring Break pictures from Florida. Watching White House daily briefing. Read 5 articles with different opinions and models about COVID-19. Reading jokes about Corona beer and bat soup. Learning that people only need to voluntarily report their own COVID-19 cases to condo building management. Learning about "health code" in China. Your parent sent the same case of facemask back to you. Reading the celebratory news from some Chinese media while seeing the world suffers. Realized some unexpected items are gone from the market: flour, Switch game console, toilet paper, and your favorite jasmine rice.

Li Wenliang

A reminder, a sacrifice, a hero just like every one of us. A statue of him should be established on Tiananmen Square, looking directly at Mao's eyes.

Zhong Nanshan

The public health expert who kept politicians in check.

Anthony Fauci

American version of Zhong Nanshan (see above)

Chinese International Students 

The most vulnerable group on earth at this moment. Torn by what they heard about their hometown and what they saw in the States. Student housing closure on campus left them homeless, while the drastic flight schedule change grounded them at where they were. The job-hunting went bad to worse though many of them have the perfect GPA and extra curriculum experience. They asked themselves if studying abroad is a good choice but could not find a satisfying answer.

Animal Crossing

The better world.