I
put my fingers on
the scanning screen
for the third time, as
the machine was unable to
recognize my fingerprints.
After finally succeeding, I
quickly put my mask back on
as my fingers fumbled with
my immigration documents.
“Please come with me,”
a U.S. Customs and Bor-
der Protection officer sig-
naled in my direction after
I passed the Canadian bor-
der into the United States,
proceeding to walk me to a
door on the side of the hall.
I sat alone on the bench and
waited for about 10 minutes
before another officer came
into the room and sat beside
me.
In a calm manner, she
asked me a series of person-
al questions: What were my
private and school emails,
what was my American ad-
dress, how much cash I was
carrying and lastly, “Do you
have WeChat?”
WeChat is a multipur-
pose, Chinese social media
application. Many people refer
to it as China’s equivalent of WhatsApp,
but with greater bandwidth. The services
WeChat offers include, but are not limited
to, e-transferring, mobile payments, or-
dering food at a restaurant without wait-
ers, online shopping and location sharing.
Recently, due to WeChat’s role in China’s
oversea censorship and spreading propa-
gandistic misinformation, the Trump ad-
ministration has denounced the app as a
national security threat and proposed its
ban in the United States.
I reluctantly gave the officer my infor-
mation. Though recently many Chinese
international students have been sub-
jected to harassment and interrogation
at Customs and Border Protection, I was
completely caught off guard by their line
of questioning. I am not a Chinese citizen,
but a Canadian one — the only indication
of my Chinese heritage is my name and a
stamp on my passport showing I had trav-
eled there last summer. In that moment,
my sense of surprise was overcome by fear
and anxiety about my alien status in the
U.S. Do I really belong?
The officer then put the notepad away
and went into the back room for a pair of
gloves, her demeanor seemingly pleasant
but her actions and questions intrusive.
She unpacked all of the pockets in my
backpack, my pencil case, my wallet (and
counted the cash) and my immigration
files. She pointed at the Hangul characters
in my notebook and asked “Is that Manda-
rin?” She was startled after I told her that
it was actually Korean, a language I was
trying to learn, and moved on with her
search. She left in a haste after thoroughly
probing all of my belongings. When alone,
I realized that my legs were shaking.
T
ensions between the U.S. and
China escalated during the
trade war of late 2018. Though
economic pressures from both sides had
calmed after a series of negotiations, more
conflicts ensued in mid-February, when
China expelled three Wall Street Journal
reporters in the name of a racially insensi-
tive headline: “China Is the Real Sick Man
of Asia” — a phrase that carries strong un-
dertones of European colonial history in
China.
Though the reason for expulsion may
be justified, this measure only provoked
further retaliations — like limited staff
for five Chinese news organizations in the
U.S. — from the Trump administration.
After China passed the National Security
Law, which significantly infringes upon
Hong Kong’s democracy, the Trump ad-
ministration responded by ending Hong
Kong’s preferential trade status with the
U.S. and China vowed to retaliate. In late
July, the U.S. had also shut down the Chi-
nese Consulate in Houston, accusing it
of espionage efforts. As a direct result,
the American Consulate in Chengdu was
ordered to close within a 72-hour time
frame.
When the pandemic first started taking
shape in the U.S., fear and ignorance about
the virus fueled an increased sentiment of
xenophobia. Asians have been assaulted
on public transit and called “diseased,”
and Chinese businesses in New York City
reported an approximate 40% sales drop
while Boston’s Chinatown had also suf-
fered significant customer loss after the
first COVID-19 case was confirmed in
Massachusetts.
As U.S.-China tensions escalate, Chi-
nese nationals tend to become the most
vulnerable subjects of discrimination.
Therefore, I spoke* to three Chinese in-
ternational students about how they are
persevering and navigating their lives in a
country that does not want them.
*The following interviews were conduct-
ed in Mandarin Chinese, for the most effec-
tive and genuine form of communication,
and translated into English.
J
ulia**:
**The following interviewee
uses a pseudonym for fear of re-
taliation from the University.
It was one minute past our meeting
time at 7 p.m. when Julia entered the
Zoom meeting. She was sitting at her
desk in her shared apartment near central
campus. Throughout our conversations, I
could hear loud bass music coming from
her side and the occasional roaring motor-
cycles passing by.
“Do you ever hear parties like that
where you live?” Julia smiled exasperat-
edly, “We get that all the time.”
Julia is a Chinese international student
who just transferred to the University of
Michigan last September. Julia made the
choice to stay in Ann Arbor when classes
moved online because she did not want to
contract COVID-19 on her way home. She
has stayed in the U.S. for more than nine
months as the last time she went home
was for Winter Break.
Coming to the U.S. was a big decision
for her, but Julia wanted new possibilities
in life and to challenge herself. Julia’s col-
lege experience has largely been positive,
as she met many people who shared her
passions in her program. But when the vi-
rus spread through the world last March,
she began to develop a deeper under-
standing of racism and xenophobia on the
campus that she made her home.
According to Pew Research Center,
31% of Asian Ameircans and 21% of Black
Americans report having experienced ra-
cial slurs and jokes since the COVID-19
outbreak began. When I told Julia that
earlier this year people would turn around
to look at me while I’d speak on the phone
with my mom in Chinese, Julia confessed
that she has felt similar aversion and con-
fusion from others.
“A white girl once told my friend dur-
ing class ‘it’s the Chinese who brought
the virus here,’” Julia recounted. “I was
so shocked to learn this from my friend.
Apparently the girl said it so blatantly in
front of a lot of students, and I found that
quite rude.”
Born into a racially homogenous home-
land (Han Chinese makes up 91% of Chi-
nese population), Julia said that she did
not start thinking seriously about racial
issues until after she moved to the United
States. She told me she was particularly
influenced by a sociology course she took
this past summer, where the professor in-
vited speakers from different ethnic back-
grounds to share their experiences with
race.
“That’s when I had an epiphany, that
the color of your skin could dictate how
others perceive you.”
Despite her unpleasant experience
with xenophobia, Julia told me that she is
still interested in pursuing her postgradu-
ate studies in the U.S. However, she can
also foresee the increased discrimination
and retaliation that she might face as U.S.-
China relations aggravate, such as further
limited opportunities for international
students and drastic changes in visa poli-
cies.
As one of the U.S.’s most profitable ex-
ports, higher-education institutions have
always relied on their international stu-
dents to make up for budget gaps. Nev-
ertheless, many American colleges have
already observed a sharp decline in Chi-
nese international student
enrollment rates prior to the
pandemic. As the Trump ad-
ministration continues to en-
force travel restrictions and
other policies that restrict
work
opportunities
from
international students, the
road ahead appears uncer-
tain. For now, though, Julia
is willing to risk this uncer-
tainty for her education.
“Now I just miss home
cooked food.” Julia smiled
again, this time not exasper-
atedly. “I have a lot of friends
who went to the Shanghai
Disneyland already and I am
super jealous.”
S
huchen:
On a warm Satur-
day afternoon, I met
with Shuchen Wei on Zoom,
me in my East Quad Resi-
dence Hall room and she in
her off-campus apartment.
Shuchen is currently in her
last year at the University of
Michigan, and she chose to
stay in Ann Arbor in March
in fear that further U.S.-Chi-
na tensions could keep her
stuck in China and meddle with
her graduation plans.
“It has been a year since I last went
home and I really miss my parents,”
Shuchen said. “But if I go back (to China),
attending synchronous lectures would
disrupt my sleep cycles.”
Shuchen told me that homesickness
is not an unfamiliar feeling for her, since
she has repeatedly thought about going
home as COVID-19 cases were increas-
ing at an unprecedented pace in the U.S.
She was also concerned about the armed
demonstrations in East Lansing in protest
of Governor Whitmer’s stay-at-home or-
ders, seeing it as a sign of the U.S.’s poor
pandemic strategies. However, booking a
flight home was no easy feat: In March,
3,102 out of 3,800 planned commercial
flights from and to China were canceled.
China had also restricted many interna-
tional flights to prevent their own citizens
from bringing the virus home.
Additionally, on July 6, the U.S. Immi-
gration and Customs Enforcement issued
a new policy (now revoked after backlash
from various prestigious universities) that
would have stripped international stu-
dents of their visas if their coursework
were entirely online. This also generated
great anxieties among Chinese students
about their immigration status and fears
of never being able to return to their in-
stitutions.
“After the ICE policy first came out,
a lot of my classmates who returned to
China for the summer panicked,” Shuchen
explained. “I know of some people who
planned to quarantine in Cambodia for
14 days and then make their flight back.
There were a lot of flight cancellations but
some tickets did not offer refunds, which
was also stressful financially.”
More so, U.S. government officials have
recommended excluding Chinese stu-
dents from critical technology disciplines
to prevent espionage efforts, while Chi-
nese international students have faced
increasing scrutiny while passing through
Customs and Border Protection. These
policies have since turned many Chinese
students and researchers away from pur-
suing their education here in the future.
Shuchen
echoed
a
similar
senti-
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
14 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020
statement
Looking in: The unseen challenges
of Chinese international students
at U-M
BY LOLA YANG, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY
Read more at MichiganDaily.com