Five years on, Chinese Canadians recall ridicule and racism over pandemic precautions

A passenger who arrived on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong stands with baggage on carts while waiting for other family members at Vancouver International Airport, in Richmond, B.C., on Jan. 4, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

VANCOUVER — In early 2020, Lili Wu was already “armed to the teeth” whenever she ventured to public places near her home in Port Coquitlam, B.C. -- face mask, sanitizer, protective eyewear and gloves.

It was more than a month before the World Health Organization’s March declaration of a global pandemic that introduced most other Canadians to concepts like masking and social distancing.

But for Wu and many other members of Canada’s Chinese-speaking communities, the outbreak that was exploding out of Wuhan, China, did not seem like a distant problem around the start of the Lunar New Year.

“When I came across the horrible news related to COVID-19 in China, I asked my two kids to watch with me together to give a sense of what was going on there,” Wu said in an interview conducted in Mandarin.

“Then we took protective measures together ... I was among the first group of people in Canada to wear masks.”

Almost five years on from the official start of the pandemic, Chinese Canadians are reflecting on how their early precautions were met with confusion, ridicule and hostility.

But their measures, including masking and avoiding crowds, would eventually become accepted as key strategies.

“We’ve learned a lot,” said Dr. Susan Poutanen, a medical microbiologist and infectious disease physician at Mount Sinai Hospital and University Health Network in Toronto.

“We were not using masking (before the start of the pandemic) to the level that we are now, and I think we’ve learned a lot about the ability for it to help, and we learned a lot about it not just in the role of symptomatic people, but in terms of asymptomatic people and the potential for asymptomatic spread.”

Kim Hsieh, a music producer living in Coquitlam, recalled taking her infant son wearing a mask on a grocery run before a mask mandate was put in place in B.C.

The reaction of another shopper stuck in her memory, she said in Mandarin.

“She just walked by me and said, ‘I can’t believe you let young children wear a mask. How awful are you as a parent?’

“She said it right in my face,” Hsieh recalled. “At that time, I wanted to yell to her, you know, `mind your own business.' But I didn’t. I just politely walked away and vented on my Facebook.”

Many Chinese restaurants in Metro Vancouver reported a sharp slide in business as Chinese community members hunkered down in January 2020 around Lunar New Year when eateries are traditionally filled to capacity. Lunar New Year occurs this week, on Wednesday.

Some new year festivities in B.C.‘s Lower Mainland were cancelled in 2020, while others were downsized or sparsely attended. Celebrations had already been cancelled across China.

Officials from all three levels of Canadian government responded that February by trying to encourage people to get out and socialize in Chinese restaurants in B.C., and suggested the empty seats were due to misinformation about COVID-19 that had stigmatized the establishments.

Surrey resident Steele Zhang described some of the reactions in Canada as “bizarre,” and he said he could not understand why few outside the Chinese community seemed to be taking the threat of the virus seriously.

“The looks we got were not just simply as if we’re being weird,” Zhang said. “We also felt some animosity behind those looks because the belief was the virus came from (China), and we’re from there, so there was tension for sure.”

Vancouver police statistics show that hate-crime incidents targeting East Asian people surged by more than 700 per cent in 2020 from 12 to 98 cases.

University of British Columbia history professor Henry Yu said the spike did not surprise him.

“Over this course of COVID, what began in those first four months is actually quite targeted,” said Yu. “‘The threat is people from China.’ It was already part of the broader discourse in 2019 in terms of housing prices (and) foreign buyers.

“So that was the initial reaction, even as Chinese (people) were actually the first to really be aware, especially those with ties to Hong Kong, (to) wear a mask and stop going into crowded places.”

‘We did the right thing’

Once the pandemic was officially underway, data would eventually emerge suggesting caution in Chinese communities had yielded results, notably in the Metro Vancouver community of Richmond, B.C.

The city’s population is 54 per cent ethnically Chinese, according to the 2021 census, making it the most Chinese city in North America.

More than two years into the pandemic, British Columbia’s COVID-19 case distribution report in July 2022 showed the city had an infection rate by far the lowest in the Lower Mainland, and less than half of that in nearby Surrey. In a colour-coded infection heat map from that time, Richmond stands out as a pale island, surrounded by more heavily infected neighbouring municipalities.

Zhang says he has no doubt why Richmond’s COVID-19 numbers were so low before the virus mutated and new variants resulted in much higher rate of spread worldwide.

“I believe the COVID-19 cases in the Chinese community were the lowest since we paid so much attention to the pandemic and we set up systems to protect ourselves from COVID-19,” he said.

Poutanen said the process of making health recommendations against a new, evolving virus was similar to shooting at a moving target.

Health officials in Canada initially recommended against mask use by healthy, asymptomatic individuals. That ran counter to what health officials were saying in China and Hong Kong.

“Initially the thought was (for) symptomatic masking, but general masking was not needed,” Poutanen said of the Canadian response.

“That was partly because the thought was symptomatic spread is predominantly how this was being transmitted, but that changed. I certainly think that no question, masking -- the mask mandates and knowledge of what masking can do now -- is one of the ongoing infection control measures that we continue to use that is effective.”

Wu and other Chinese community members pointed to memories of the SARS outbreak from 2002 to 2004 in Hong Kong and mainland China, where hundreds of people died, as the dominant factor in their response to COVID-19. SARS also killed more than 40 people in Canada.

Wu still winces at the thought of how she was treated in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was just like it happened from yesterday,” Wu said, recalling being “the centre of attention” when she went masked and gloved into a grocery store, other shoppers “rolling their eyes.”

However, she said it did not let it deter her.

“If I can go back to five years ago, I would still do the same thing,” Wu said, adding that she felt the actions of the Chinese community ultimately benefited everyone.

“I think we did the right thing.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2025.

By Chuck Chiang and Nono Shen

THE CANADIAN PRESS