Confronting hate against east Asians – a photo essay

F or Bonnie Kwok it was a subtle difference. Whenever she used public transport there was always a space left next to her. At first she dismissed it, but when it started to happen regularly she began to question why other passengers were reluctant to take the free seat.

Kwok, 43, who was born in Hong Kong but moved to the UK when she was 16, also started to notice children at the Hackney Chinese community school, where she is a headteacher, were increasingly coming in upset. They were, she says, being subjected to racist abuse on their way to school – something that started to happen with concerning regularity during the onset of the pandemic.

• Mrs Helen Fung, honorary chair of Community Cohesion Advocates CIC, governor of London Hackney Chinese community school and Dr Bonnie Kwok (right), headteacher of London Hackney Chinese community school, East Croydon.

“There is no other way of explaining it – we were being shunned and abused because we were being blamed for spreading coronavirus,” she said. “Things definitely got worse with Covid: someone told one of our students to ‘go back to your country, we don’t want you here , you are a virus’ – the student was really upset. She couldn’t understand why she had been singled out.”

The experience described by Kwok and her students is part of a worrying trend. Over the past year there has been a significant rise in hate crime against people of east Asian appearance. In May 2020, ministers told MPs that hate crime directed at south and east Asian communities had increased by 21% during the coronavirus crisis, with police estimates suggesting a threefold increase in such incidents in the first three months of 2020 compared with the same period last year.

Incidents include individuals being spat on and assaulted, with an unprovoked attack on a 26-year-old woman in Edinburgh, the beating of a university lecturer out jogging in Southampton and a physical assault on Singaporean student Jonathan Mok on Oxford Street in London.

For Songsoo Kim, a South Korean cook who has been living in the UK for more than three years, there had always been a level of microaggressive behaviour towards her, as well as overt racial slurs, including being called “ching chong”, but there was a distinct change during the pandemic.

• Yeon You, fashion stylist, Hackney Central. Right: Songsoo Kim, cook, Shoreditch.

The 33-year-old, who lives in London, said one of her regular customers questioned whether she was still OK to work, with another making racially loaded comments about her mask.

“I think Covid has definitely brought about certain incidences and these kind of strange suspicions of east Asian people,” she said. “At first it was quite confusing – like: why am I being asked if I should be working still? – and then you realise what the meaning is and it hurts.”

• Maya (make-up artist), Vic (sport massage), Josie (singer) and Alexandra Man (personal trainer), St Mary Cray.

But Kim says UK-based east Asians have suffered racism for many years, and due to a culture of quietly ignoring inappropriate comments and staying silent, the abuse had slipped under the radar.

“It is not something new for me and others, but our parents’ generation did not want to talk about it – it’s a deeply rooted cultural thing where there is a sense of shame in discussing it,” she said. “It’s also rooted in the fact that there is a facade of this model minority, of excelling, and so you kind of shut your mouth, don’t complain and keep going.”

• Jyni Ong, writer at It’s Nice That, Cricklewood. Right: Maria Yeung, founder of Marieyat, Dalston.

However, movements to end violence and racism against east Asian people have begun to gain traction globally. In the US there have been dozens of rallies against anti-Asian hate across the country, viral social media campaigns spreading awareness of the issue and more than $25m in donations to groups supporting Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) causes. This comes after two high-profile, violent incidents in January against elderly Asian men, one of whom died from his injuries, and the murder of six Asian American women in a mass shooting in Atlanta.

In the UK, celebrities have united to back a #StopAsianHate campaign with Marvel film stars Gemma Chan and Benedict Wong among prominent east and south-east Asian people taking action on the country’s wave of Covid-related sinophobia.

• Jenny Cheng, AKA Stem, DJ, High Barnet. Right: Candice Lo, film-maker, Dalston.

The photographer Wendy Huynh, who grew up in the suburbs of Paris, raised by Chinese parents who immigrated to France in the early 1970s from Vietnam, says she created this series of portraits to try to encourage open dialogue about east Asian racism.

“Racism has been a constant thing for me and my family in France and this has followed me in the UK with people shouting ‘Ni Hao’ or ‘Ching Chong’ to me and making the slitty eyes,” she said. “Every time this happens I would just ignore it but in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and people being more vocal about racism I have opened my eyes on the issue,” she added.

The 28-year-old said the pandemic became an excuse for people to be actively racist towards the east Asian community. “It was the start of the pandemic last year and I was in a pharmacy when a woman shouted at me: ‘You people come here and bring your virus! Go back to your country! We don’t want your virus here’. I was so shocked that I didn’t immediately understand that she was talking to me,” she said.

“The east Asian community is one which doesn’t like to speak up or is afraid to. Parents would tell their kids to keep their heads down and just keep working hard in order to be accepted by our current society,” she said. “But our parents have risked their lives migrating to a western country to create a better life for their family and I feel like it is our turn today to tell the story of our immigrant parents, to embrace our culture and to speak up in order to fight racism.”

• Rahel Stephanie, founder and chef at Spoons, Brockley. Tianna Chan, head of operations at Rekki, Deptford.

Natalie Chui, an amateur footballer, agrees with Huyhn about the importance of discussing racism openly. The 24-year-old was physically attacked in 2017 and says she has only recently been able to talk about the assault.

“I was at the bus stop in the morning and I saw this figure walk towards me, and without me kind of realising it, all of a sudden he was right in my face calling me a ‘dirty Vietnamese’. I have never been so aggressively attacked like that – there was a lot of rage – and then he hit me in the head,” said Chui, who is dual Malaysian Chinese heritage.

• Nicole and Natalie Chui, football players from the Victoria Park Vixens, Homerton.

The attacker was arrested immediately by a passing police car and after a trial was found guilty of a racially aggravated assault and given a custodial sentence, but Chui says she still thinks about the attack often.

“At the time I just tried to move on from it quickly. It was so intense I blocked it out. I had spent most of my life living in Hong Kong, where I was the majority, and then all of a sudden to be attacked because of my race it was a real shock. I felt like an alien,” she said.

But Chui, who plays football for the Victoria Park Vixens team with her sister, Nicole, 25, says many in the east Asian community are feeling mobilised for the first time ever to tackle the issue.

“The Black Lives Matter protests really helped: it allowed us to reflect on what was happening in our communities, and we have bonded together and started to talk about these difficult things we have been experiencing,” she said. “It’s shocking and it’s sad and we would like for it to stop.”

Sarah, Sami and Roxy, founders at Baesianz, Loughborough Junction.