Distant But Connected Care

Estelle Liao never thought she could rescue a city’s future and protect thousands of lives. She is only 17.

Liao is an 11th-grade student from China, studying at a private girls’ school in London. She is in charge of the international transportation routes of the ‘#FightforWuhan’ Chinese Student Association in North America, or ‘#FightforWuhan’ CSANA.

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Photography by ‘#FightforWuhan’ Chinese Student Association in North America

Founded in January 2020, ‘#FightforWuhan’ is a student-run volunteer organization, created to help solve the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. The international group came together in just 24 hours.

“I have just telephoned China Southern Airlines, it was the first time that I had called an airway company, but not for booking a ticket or looking for my lost luggage,” Liao said. “Luckily, over 10,000 N95 facial masks are now on the way to Wuhan.”

It now has over 2,400 volunteers. The average age is around 17. They are high school and college students currently studying in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and other countries outside of mainland China.

Although most of them have never met, Liao, Eloise Wang, and Cheng Liu remotely work for the same goal, but in different roles.

Wang, a rising freshman at New York University, is working for the social media part of ‘#FightforWuhan’.

“[The reason I participate in ‘#FightforWuhan’ is that] I am good at website designing, and more importantly, I want to do some practical things for Wuhan, not just to trend tags on social media,” Wang added.

Liu, a sophomore studying physics at the University of California-San Diego, is proud of his friend circle, which “covers all the states in the U.S.” Liu said his social network “helps me a lot this time, and I’m glad that we receive so much help all around the U.S.” Liu added, “I had a good time with my Taiwanese partners. Even though we have opposite political stands, we stand and work together for this time.”

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To ensure the successful delivery of medical supplies, they set up two major departments with 13 sub-groups, including finance, purchase, publicity, coordination, legal affairs, information, translation, and communication with international student councils.

But they are being connected by one city: Wuhan.

As the center of the coronavirus outbreak, Wuhan suffers from a severe shortage of facial masks, safety goggles, protective coveralls, and other medical supplies. ‘#FightforWuhan’ focuses on point-to-point donations to the hospitals or communities that need help most.

Roxy Ng once worked for the information group. Her job was to do fact-checking for all the call-for-help announcements posted on social media platforms.

“If the announcement is confirmed fake, for example, the contact number or mail address is completely wrong or doesn’t exist, we post a clarification to refute the fake news,” Ng said. “But if it is confirmed true, we update the fact-checked announcement on our website and process donations to them.”

“We want to make every coin to the most in-need place,” the founder of ‘#FightforWuhan’, Ling Zhang, wrote in her social media. “Fact-checking and financial transparency are the key points.”

“If the announcement is confirmed fake, for example, the contact number or mail address is completely wrong or doesn’t exist, we post a clarification to refute the fake news.” Ng said. “But if it is confirmed true, we update the fact-checked announcement on our website and process donations to them.”

“We want to make every coin to the most in-need place,” the founder of ‘#FightforWuhan’, Ling Zhang, wrote in her social media. “Fact-checking and financial transparency are the key points.”

Every record of money donations and medical supplies has been updated on social media and the website of ‘#FightforWuhan’ by the information team.

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They have already delivered 120 boxes of disinfectant, 200 pairs of medical safety goggles, 1,650 pairs of protective coveralls, and over 65,000 facial masks. All medical supplies they purchased from other countries are on the way to 294 hospitals in Wuhan and nearby cities. They have gathered nearly one million yuan (equal to about 520,000 Qatari riyals or $123,000) for more donations of medical supplies.

On Jan. 31, the first two batches of medical supplies arrived at Wuhan. Mo Kong got a box of N95 facial masks from a local community center, shipped from Los Angeles.

“Not only me, but the nurses and doctors in the hospital near my home started using the facial masks from the studying-abroad Chinese students. Thanks for their generosity, and I am so glad that they care and voluntarily help their homeland at this point.” Kong said via WeChat.

In the largest social media platform in China, Weibo, millions of online users have praised what this group of students has done.

“It changes my viewpoints of studying-abroad students. In the past, I thought they were just xenocentric egoists, lavishly spending their parents’ money abroad,” a blogger named Yalun wrote on Weibo.

For a long time, the general portrait of the studying-abroad Chinese students has linked them to the privileged class. Xenocentrism also plays a part, due to the misunderstandings of study abroad. One of the most popular TV series in 2019, Over the Sea I Come to You, illustrates the stereotypical pictures of the life of studying-abroad Chinese students. For example, in one episode, a girl’s boyfriend was caught in her bed when her parents came to visit her homestay family in the U.S. But because the girl was too scared to admit that she fell in love and made love with her boyfriend, she told the police that her boyfriend raped her.

‘#FightforWuhan’ is rebuilding the public image of studying-abroad Chinese students.

Changing perceptions of studying-abroad students is not the initial intention of ‘#FightforWuhan’.

“We are privileged and different from our peers in China because we have started to study abroad and live alone at very young ages. That’s why I feel that we can, and we should do more… Of course, we care about Wuhan. If we do need to summarize our intention at a higher level, I might use a quotation from Lu Xun to explain,” Liao said, “‘Lots of distant places and lots of people are all related to me.’”