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Coronavirus has created a lot of chaos in all of our life, and it also showed different sides from different people. I had a mentor, he is great professionally, and I did learn a lot from him during my internship last year. Every single conversation I had with him is like a huge lesson both in life and at work. I always took notes whenever I was talking to him. I would go back and review those as well. I use to even tell my friends, “If he asks me to jump off a building because it is the right time to do so, I may do it”. That’s how much I use to trust him. I really appreciate everything he has done for me for sure, I appreciate the fact that he would take the time and sit down with me to talk about how I should approach my career and how I should be a better human being. However, things changed a couple weeks ago. The situation start to get bad in the US. I reached out to him and asked him how he is doing, and I just wanted to make sure that he and his family are doing OK, since he residents in California. He told me that he and his family is doing OK, then he went on talking about discrimination against Chinese. I am from China. I was aware of those from the news I read and things I listened to. I am lucky enough that I didn’t face anything bad like that. It of course doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Then he went on talking about the things China eats, and saying that China has to stop that. It kinda made me uncomfortable, it is not a “China” issue, it is individual issue. There are already laws in place in China regarding to eating exotics, however, some people still like to eat exotic animals. It is kind of similar to drugs. We all know drugs are bad, and the laws clearly states that you shall not deal, use drugs; but some people are still using, and even overdose on it which killed them. When there is a need, there is a market. I wasn’t sure why he brought that up and telling me about it. I couldn’t do anything, I cannot stop those people, I am nobody. Then he sent me a video of an Asian looking female eating centipede. I honestly couldn’t tell her ethnicity, she looks like some young Asian girl who either had a plastic surgery on her face or she just wear a tons of makeups. I honestly couldn’t tell. I don’t know what to say after that. After that one video, he sent me a bunch of other videos and links, I remember one of those is actually a Korean person eating giant Octopus. I just lost my words. I don’t know what to do. I tried to defend my country and our culture as a whole, but he kept on going. It is honestly not funny, and it is disrespectful. He also went on saying how India has thousands of vegetables dishes, and how awesome they are. I almost wanted to text back, “then go back to India and never come to the US”. United States is a place with different cultures, it is the differences make everything more interesting, right? I don’t know a lot about India, thus I couldn’t comment on a lot of things, and I don’t know what else to say to him. Finally I remembered one thing, which is how dirty it is in India and people do do their number two on the streets. His response is pretty much saying, it is because people in India are doing things like that, their tolerance of any disease and viruses are extremely high, and the cases of coronavirus is not that high in India, which he was surprised as how great it is. He probably forgot to mention that India’s average life span is also lower than most of the countries? I don’t know what to say, even without the disease, the number of people dying from starving in India can easily be counted up to millions. (Please refer to this Quora question for more information: https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-die-due-to-hunger-in-India I understand that Quora is not a “reliable” source, however this answer offered a lot of good links with stats. The numbers were from 2017, so the data is out of date for sure, but just give you an idea on this topic) India’s culture is really spiritual, which also led them to thinking of death as part of reincarnation. If someone died, they would think this person is probably reincarnated in the next couple of minutes. It is their belief and their religion, which I totally respect. At the same time, I would expect them respect us as well. They treat cows as god, one point I totally forgot and brought beef to one of my Indian friends’ house for dinner, which is absolutely my fault. That also shows how much I know about their culture. If there will be a chance, I would love to sit down with some people from India and talk about cultures peacefully, please don’t be as aggressively this person is. Only having a good discussion can resolve the misunderstandings between us. I also would like to point out the following; One, most of his source are from YouTube channels or some publications from India, some of those videos only has like 700 views; Two, most of what he was mentioning are all based on his assumptions. With the information he found, it feels like he was just randomly Googled, and grabbed some random links without fact check and source check. You also cannot use few cases to assume for the rest. The world is a complicated place. Most of the time, you cannot even say one thing is absolutely right, or one thing is absolutely wrong, there are a lot of grey areas. He used to talk to me about god and mercy. If you truly believe in that, you would also respect the differences as well, it shouldn’t matter which god you believe in, love is the key in any religion, love is also the key to unite and show mercy. Everything exist for a reason, and everything happens for a reason. 

Prejudice exist everywhere. 

At that time, I didn’t have a tons of information about India. I honestly still don’t have a lot of information about India even now. It is a country with a long history, and it is a country with a lot of continents. The handful information I have about India only comes from the few times I talked to people from India. Most of the time, they won’t even be talking about their own country and culture. I obviously cannot learn about India from couple conversations, or in couple hours or in couple of days. It is the same with Chinese culture. It is a country with with 5000 years of history. You cannot say you understand China or know what it is like just because you know how to use chopsticks, or you watched couple videos about China. It is such a huge country, a lot of bizarre things are happening there as well as happening in the rest of the world. I cannot say this enough, because of the internet restriction in China, the world is having a hard time to know the real China. Thanks to the correspondence from CNN and NPR that’s in China, they brought in those valuable information that’s from China for the world to see. (Those are the only two medias I know that are doing this, those are also the two medias I got most of my news from)

Regardless what people are thinking about Chinese government, you have to also see how much development and growth China had in the past 70 years, China mainland was established officially in 1949, so I am counting from 1949. It is because the power of the government is so centralized, China has the capability to get coronavirus situation under control in such a short period of time. 
Step by step, China is making progress, all the flaws and problems people are critic about are part of growing pain. Just like each of us, when we were growing up, you would say that you never made a wrong turn once or twice? You learn from those mistakes, then going forward. I am not sure if a lot of things will change in China, but things are definitely changing in China. That’s a good thing.

It absolutely breaks my heart to see all the discriminations that’s going on around the world against China and Asian descent, in the end, human race shall unite as one and face the crisis regardless our background, our culture, our differences. 

I have been wanting to write something on this topic for a while now. This article may attract some hates from people. If it is, please go easy on me. Thank you. 

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