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Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaPeople

Coronavirus: in India, a traveller from China faces xenophobia and hardship as cases rise

  • Every winter for the past decade, Du Fengyan has left Beijing to travel around the world
  • This time, however, the 35-year-old has been kicked out of hotels and called racial slurs as India grapples with the spread of Covid-19

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Chinese national Du Fengyan, 35, has experienced racial discrimination while travelling around India. Photo: Du Fengyan
Luo Ruiyao

Every winter, Du Fengyan leaves his home in Beijing to take a trip. The 35-year-old works as a technical assistant in the film and documentary division at a government university, so the end-of-year holidays are the only time he gets to travel.

Du has been to countries in Southeast Asia and the Middle East over the past decade, not to mention a 35,000km bicycle journey from China to Africa. But a recent trip to India turned what should have been an adventure into an experience of racial discrimination in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He arrived in Mumbai on January 29, a day before the country reported its first Covid-19 case in Kerala. Du had a pleasant stay for a week, but this was interrupted by the staff of his hotel suddenly asking him to leave the premises.

“I had no symptoms of the coronavirus and I was healthy. Despite that, the hotel had a problem merely because I was Chinese,” Du said.

The staff told him travellers from other countries had a problem with a Chinese visitor, and there were fears he could be carrying the coronavirus – despite Du pointing out airport authorities had screened him and cleared him to enter India.

Du says he had always previously been welcomed as a foreign guest in different countries. Photo: Du Fengyan
Du says he had always previously been welcomed as a foreign guest in different countries. Photo: Du Fengyan
Du moved to the outskirts of the city as getting a hotel became more and more difficult following the spread of the disease in India, which now has almost 10,000 confirmed cases and more than 300 deaths. The discrimination he faced grew in tandem with awareness of the pandemic.

“Some people did it without realising it,” Du said. “Every time I faced such a situation, I pointed out their mistakes and left in search of a safe place.”

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