Chinese American volunteers offer support through WeChat
Just after Lunar New Year, Alice Zhang banded together with other overseas alumni from her Guangzhou middle school over WeChat, the dominant Chinese messaging service. They raised money to buy and ship masks to Chinese hospitals in the throes of a coronavirus outbreak.
The Orinda mother of two knows exactly when her worries turned closer to home. On Feb. 28, a friend in China messaged: “Can you help get masks to our son attending college in the United States?”
Back then, San Francisco Mayor London Breed had just declared a state of emergency. Weeks would go by before the Bay Area and the rest of the country would shelter in place.
In those waning days of normalcy — when few Americans knew what the future held — Zhang started researching how to buy masks on behalf of friends and neighbors, long before public officials mandated the use of face coverings.
Eventually, she got in touch with an audio factory in China, one of many that had redeployed its production lines to meet the demand for masks. After receiving the shipment and learning about shortages at hospitals in the Bay Area, Zhang sprang into action with the Lamorinda Chinese American Community — a group on WeChat — and raised $10,000 to buy 23,000 masks from the same supplier. Carton after carton arrived on April 3, and soon volunteers distributed masks to hospitals, the elderly and grocery clerks and other essential workers.
Zhang is one of scores of Chinese American volunteers in the Bay Area who organized quickly to provide muchneeded support, mobilizing over WeChat.
Their efforts come at a time when antiAsian hate crime has been on the rise in this country, xenophobia stoked by the president’s inflammatory rhetoric about China.
“Our first purpose is to provide help,” says Zhang, who learned the ins and outs of manufacturing and international shipments on the fly. “But we also want to improve the Chinese community image.”
Dr. Zilue Tang put out a call for masks and personal protective equipment on WeChat and has received donations from the Lamorinda group, a UC Berkeley Chinese family association and an alumni association from a Chengdu middle school, among others. The supplies have outfitted staff, doctors and outpatients in the Kaiser NapaSolano service area, Tang said. “We needed it badly.”
I asked Tang to explain the role of WeChat, which has more than a billion active monthly users. “It’s so powerful. It’s a part of life,” he said with a chuckle.
Chinese immigrants are also behind Meal With Love — which provides restaurant lunches and dinners to frontline medical workers.
At the beginning of April, Ristorante Fratello in Campbell — owned by Italian immigrant Carmine Camporaso — wanted to donate meals and asked for advice from Cindy Liu. She in turn teamed up with friends Jade Wu and Shuishui Hu to launch the program.
Wu contacted Xing Wang, the owner of the Easterly restaurant chain — they’re both from Hunan province — and he agreed to donate meals. He also asked the restaurant’s thousands of customers connected on WeChat if they wanted to donate to support local restaurants and health care workers. Easterly is one of many Chinese restaurants I’ve heard of that have kept in touch with customers via WeChat, offering special menus and delivery options during the pandemic.
Meal With Love provides thousands of meals to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, Highland Hospital in Oakland, Stanford Hospital and elsewhere twice a week, according to organizers, who have also started a group on Facebook to share pictures and spread the word.
“We’re serving frontline warriors, no matter what ethnicity and nationality,” said Wu, a tech startup executive. The group collects donations via a nonprofit foundation affiliated with the River of Life Church in Santa Clara, where organizers Wu and Liu belong to the same Bible study group.
At Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s Fremont Center, the donated meals are shared with doctors and nurses in urgent and respiratory care units, as well as janitors, receptionists and security guards.
“So many people out there batting for us; it’s heartwarming,” Dr. Anu Reddy said of Meal With Love’s efforts. Being armored up in PPE and masks for hours at a time takes a physical and mental toll, Reddy’s colleagues say. The meals offer a respite, making frontline workers feel they are not alone while fighting COVID19.
Reddy has never met Wu in person, but she said they’re already planning to get coffee after the crisis ends. “She sends me pictures of calligraphy, and I send her the watercolors I do. I feel like I know her already. We are all one. I hope the Bay Area remembers that, after this.”