by Annika Wang
We were on Chinese New Year break from our school, Taipei American School, when the emails started.
The first one was sent on Monday, January 27th:
We at School are very sorry for the people made sick, and those who have lost lives around the world because of the novel and deadly coronavirus. We are taking every precaution to protect our community. Towards that end, TAS WILL NOT RESUME CLASSES UNTIL THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6th.
The second email arrived on Monday, February 3rd:
Given that Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has called for school closures until February 25, and because TAS always follows the government’s direction relative to school closures that are Health and safety related, TAS will be using digital learning from the 6th through the 25th and school will be closed until Feb 25.
Someone might assume these kinds of emails would incite panic, but I was excited since I was up for co-Captain of TAS’s golf team and needed as much practice as possible. My playing had become extraordinarily unstable; I went from shooting in the 90s over the summer to shooting four-five Out of Bounds per round. I literally had to up my game.
The next email came into my inbox on Tuesday, February 4th:
Starting on Thursday, we will put in place a schedule for classes that roughly mirrors the regular school day. We will continue the A/B rotation of our typical school calendar. Thursday is an A Day.
They had to be joking. It felt like an insult to injury: If you leave your house, you WILL GET INFECTED, but let’s not think about that, let’s pretend everything is normal. Oh, and guess what, you have to hand in homework for your classes tomorrow.
I canceled my morning practice on the course, but kept my afternoon appointments with my golf coach, and then stayed up until 12:45am reading a long article about protégés and writing a summary of said article and then completing a quiz.
Sitting at the breakfast bar for my first day of online classes, I was completely distracted. First of all, my siblings were gaming in the study room; they were so loud I could barely hear my own thoughts. If that weren’t bad enough, we had just gotten three dogs for the Chinese New Year, and they were barking at me, trying to get me to play with them. Then there was the food: Doritos, Oreos, left-over candies from the New Year, ice cream; I wanted to eat everything. This was a bad situation.
I skipped office hours that day to play golf. My parents had gotten us all masks, but I didn’t feel like wearing one, so I left my apartment building wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, as if it were another normal day in Taiwan. When I got into the car, I was surprised to see 阿伯 (uncle in Taiwanese) was wearing a mask.
“Why are you wearing a mask?” I knew he hadn’t been out of the country.
“To be safe,” he said, and kept driving.
I started to panic and wondered if my casualness would lead to my early demise.
When I entered the range, I was relieved to see that the other players and coaches were sans masks. It seemed as if the workers were the only ones taking precaution, which made me curious. Was it the fact that they came in close contact with more people during the day? That they had to be on the streets, ride buses, take taxis with strangers to get home?
I hit balls for two hours and then headed home. Later that night, on the news, I saw footage of people standing in massive lines for masks. There was a shortage. Each person was allotted two masks per week, but they were out of them. I felt lucky to be in a large family that had collected masks over the years. With five kids, someone was sure to get sick, and this allowed the remaining siblings to stay healthy. It felt strange to be part of this global crisis, but to also feel slightly on the outside of it.
I wasn’t the only one.
The president, Tsai Ing-Wen, posted on Instagram, fighting for Taiwan to become part of the WHO (World Health Organization), stating: “Taiwan is the first line of defense in combating the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.” Given that Taiwan is in close proximity to China and there’s a lot of business between the two countries, it didn’t make sense to be excluded. She was able to move the needle only slightly. As of now, Taiwan can observe online, but we are not named “Taiwan,” we are considered “Chinese Taipei,” as to not upset China.
It was interesting to me that so much of this crisis was being handled online. On TikTok, I started to see comments accusing Asian TikTokers of having the Coronavirus. I watched videos of Asian TikTokers defending themselves, saying that just because they’re Asian does not mean that they have the Coronavirus. On Instagram, I saw the same thing. Some of my friends began reposting posts saying that “the coronavirus does not give anyone an excuse for being racist towards Asians.” But that didn’t stop Xenophobia from becoming just as big of a global crisis as the coronavirus. The Guardian reported shocking levels of racism in the UK. BBC reported that French Asians were hitting back with, “I am not a virus.” Washington Post also reported that the virus had reopened old racist tropes.
What bothered me the most is that Asians were not only being treated like a deadly virus that could kill the world, but they were also being lumped together as one nationality since most people can’t tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Singaporeans, Cantonese. To the outside world, we were all the same and deserved the same kind of exile. Country and class didn’t matter. It was a kind of leveling. But class did matter in Taiwan. I had seen it firsthand. The wealthier, the ones with private transportation weren’t at risk in the same way. But in the end, we are all human, we all have families we love, families who love us. We all have lives we want to live. Dreams we want to pursue. I am a high school teenager who wants to make captain of my golf team and do well in school and maybe one day have a family of my own.
For right now, I am sequestered in my room, taking online classes, doing my homework, staying up late, waiting to go back to school and resume life as normal. I pray this isn’t the new normal.