THE WILDCAT DIGITAL HISTORY PROJECT
CHINESE STUDENTS IN AMERICA AND THEIR COVID-19 EXPERIENCES
Grade 11
Galleries of social media posts from US and China that reflects the OP's opinions on "Chinese students in America" with some personal comments at the end. The posts are not necessarily covid-19 related, but are within time of the outbreak.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Background
As a member of the addressed community, Chinese students studying in the US, I want to show and share our covid-19 experiences with people outside of this social group, specifically the general American public. As the global tension between US and China grows around the covid-19 pandemic, this community is facing different types of pressure from both sides, and I think it's important to recognize these pressures.
This project is created entirely by myself.
POSTS FROM TWITTER
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These are tweets collected by searching the keywords "Chinese students".
All posted within time of the covid-19 outbreak.
There are two tweets by Chinese international students about the medical packs they claimed from the Chinese embassy in their areas.
Click on the post to enlarge.
POSTS FROM QUORA
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Quora is a platform to ask questions.
All the pictures here are snips of answers under certain questions posted on Quora.
Its user base is smaller than Twitter, and you can even argue that it's a more "prestigious" site.
Feel free to compare voices on Quora to the Tweets above.
Click on the post to enlarge and view the numberings.
THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ON THE PROJECT
First of all, I want to say that the content in this project can only partially represent the public's view in both countries, the section of Twitter is especially one sided. Some friends reminded me that the social group I talked about isn't under the spotlight in the US, unlike in China, so only people with really strong opinions would go out of their ways and comment on it. I think this can somewhat explain the voices on Twitter.
I consider this project very meaningful. Going into the project, I had mentally prepared myself to see a lot of hateful comments from both sides, and I was more sure of it after searching for my tweets. But the other three sources, Quora, Weibo, and Zhihu, were all a lot nicer or at least critical about the subjects. That was extremely comforting to see, as the content on Twitter was so triggering that I took a long break before looking through other sources. It really is important to look at different sources regarding the same topic.
An archival project like this could not be done without the digital world, although this was an individual project by me, all the people that I collected posts from were the key of it. Traditional history could never :P
Again, the goal of this project is to let people see from the perspective of a Chinese student in the US, thus understand/acknowledge more of our version of the Covid-19 pandemic experience. There has been a popular phrase in China: "In this pandemic, China played before halftime and other countries played after. But Chinese people oversea? They're here for the whole game."