A little bit of background:

I’m a spanish born chinese who had lived almost all my life in Spain. Since two years ago I had been living & traveling China. I speak chinese but I can’t read chinese. This is why the conversation was in English.

The person I’m talking to is an educated woman (computer science major) from a first tier city (Guangzhou), she is a bookworm and she is an informed person who reads very often the news. She has never been out of China.

Despite her background, she knows very little or nothing about chinese people’s lives in western countries.

This is a chat I had with her when I was responding to one of her “wechat moments” (like an instagram post):

(green are my replies, red is her replies)

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https://preview.redd.it/8r0jh2ily3s51.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8ef036b921765c0b3a53bdaa0fe1c4996aeb5ea

https://preview.redd.it/f1mgd1ily3s51.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80e51dc10804c7beeefcdf5653fe9337270b0d4c

https://preview.redd.it/ghku57gly3s51.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c5173995aa0b7cdfd60a4b35684138a548f7eec

https://preview.redd.it/kk7kd7ily3s51.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4cda736650ee9abe23205751d36addc6a3a153ce

https://preview.redd.it/jgeh87gly3s51.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3a3979c0be38991cc5b84b80a0e73614269609e4

This is the private chat she sent me confirming what I‘m saying:

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https://preview.redd.it/83ssutlhy3s51.jpg?width=1407&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b3af135fd7ec8f5dc982bae3b7b896934bff221c

https://preview.redd.it/o48i3unhy3s51.jpg?width=1377&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8a33329004ef84858d7b4fb2b7f65e940d3f5bd7

https://preview.redd.it/g9zm67ohy3s51.jpg?width=1388&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efe72c28fbd95bad3dfdb0456a0d45751bff758a

She thinks that we chinese people do business in western countries dishonestly by cheating, lying, scamming, and selling fake products and fake foods (like it happens in China), and this is the reason we are being discrimined (while japanese not).

Her answer is not uncommon, every time I talk about the discrimination we chinese people suffer in western countries, the attitude is always the same: “you had done something to them”.

It doesn’t matter if the person I was talking to was a taxi driver, an illitrate farmer or in this case an educated person.

The common perception is almost always the same: “nobody hates someone for no reason” + “maybe you did nothing to them, but probably the majority of overseas chinese people did something to them“.

They just don’t understand that we are being hated not because we overseas chinese people did something to them, but because how we overseas chinese people have to deal with the stereotypes portrayed of chinese people of China (dog/cat eaters, oppressors, dictatorial communists, slavists...) by the western media.

https://archive.vn/TRA0m