Pitt graduate student Alexis Lai shares her story with PublicSource.org.
Shortly after the University of Pittsburgh announced it would shift all classes online, I received a WhatsApp message from a fellow Chinese student: “It might be better to leave ASAP. It’s going to get worse – the racism, if not the virus."
Her comments echoed my fears. Just a few hours after Pittsburgh had reported the city’s first two COVID-19 cases on March 14, a Black teenager yelled “Corona” at me as I walked into a Rite-Aid in search of face masks.
While Americans and their president were just waking up to the seriousness of the pandemic, Chinese students have been acutely aware of it since January when the virus was first reported in mainland China. In fact, international students from various parts of Asia have been steadily monitoring the news, concerned about the broadening outbreak in their home countries and its implications for their lives in America.
