5 years on, Chinese Canadians recall racism over their early pandemic precautions [Video]

In early 2020, Lili Wu was already “armed to the teeth” whenever she ventured to public places near her home in Port Coquitlam, B.C. — face mask, sanitizer, protective eyewear and gloves.

It was more than a month before the World Health Organization’s March declaration of a global pandemic that introduced most other Canadians to concepts like masking and social distancing.

But for Wu and many other members of Canada’s Chinese-speaking communities, the outbreak that was exploding out of Wuhan, China, did not seem like a distant problem around the start of the Lunar New Year.

“When I came across the horrible news related to COVID-19 in China, I asked my two kids to watch with me together to give a sense of what was going on there,” Wu said in an interview conducted in Mandarin.

“Then we took protective measures together … I was among the first group of …