- Asian-American restaurant workers are still facing racist attacks a year after the pandemic.
- Insider spoke to chefs and owners across the US, who detailed the harassment they've experienced.
- Their fear has only heightened after the Atlanta shootings and recent attacks against the elderly.
Jane Peang, the head chef of Michelin-starred restaurant Jeju Noodle Bar, was walking around
"F--- you, you Asian piece of s---," they screamed.
The experience, she told Insider, "made my skin crawl."
The incident is just one example of the racist harassment that Asian-American restaurant workers have faced over the last year as the pandemic - and the rhetoric surrounding it - brought a spike of violence against the larger community. And fears have only been heightened after the Atlanta shootings, as well as a recent wave of attacks against elderly Asian-Americans.
Insider interviewed Asian-American restaurant workers around the country, who spoke of the challenges they've faced over the last year while dealing with a deadly pandemic, struggling business, and racist harassment that they saw increase after Donald Trump and other Republican politicians repeatedly called COVID-19 the "China virus."
Jeju Noodle Bar was one of the Asian restaurants hit by racist graffiti at the start of the pandemic
A regular sent owner Douglas Kim a picture of the restaurant's window on April 10, 2020. The words "Stop eating dogs" were scribbled on it in black marker.
The racist graffiti came weeks after Kim temporarily closed his restaurant because Peang and other employees didn't feel safe coming to work or doing deliveries.
Peang told Insider that people had started treating her strangely on the subway as she made her daily commute.
"I noticed people wouldn't sit next to me," she said. "It was very noticeable that they didn't want to be near me. I never had that feeling before, and it made me a little scared for myself and the staff."
Kim asked some of his other employees if they felt the same, and they told him about a friend who had been beaten up in the street. Then a fellow Asian-American restaurant owner told Kim that her son was attacked by three men inside the elevator of her luxury high-rise apartment.
Kim decided staying open wasn't worth the risk.
"What if one of my employees got hurt?" he told Insider in April 2020. "That's the worst thing that could happen."
Peang temporarily left the city and went home to Maryland, fearing the spread of the coronavirus and violence against Asian-Americans in the city.
Meanwhile, Samuel Yoo, the chef and owner of Golden Diner on the Lower East Side, was heading home from work when a man yelled a derogatory term at him and put on a fake Chinese accent.
"I confronted him and was like, 'What'd you say?'" Yoo told Insider. "He backed off, understanding I speak English. He didn't say sorry, he just pretended like he didn't mean to do anything wrong."
Peang's experience is all too familiar to Asian-American restaurant workers
Jade Garden, a Chinese restaurant in Seattle, was also vandalized at the start of the pandemic. Owner Eric Chan told Insider at the time that he broke down in tears when he saw the smashed windows of his restaurant.
"I was heartbroken," he said. "We've been working nonstop, 14 hours a day, my mom, my dad, my wife, my brother and sister. No breaks. It was like a punch in the stomach. I felt super helpless."
Chan said many of his employees had been too scared to come into work. In the weeks prior, people were calling the restaurant or opening the front door to scream "You brought the virus here!" before running off.
Shayn Prapaisilp - the vice president of Global Foods Group, which includes Chao Baan in St. Louis, Missouri, and a board member of the city's Asian American Chamber of Commerce - told Insider that the racist harassment was all the more upsetting to witness because many Asian
"Asian restaurants in St. Louis were some of the first businesses to start donating meals and extra PPE supplies to medical and frontline workers," he said. "Then a few months later we had some people coming back and start blaming these same business owners for 'bringing the flu from China.'"
Then Trump and many other GOP politicians began calling COVID-19 the 'Chinese virus'
Every restaurant worker that Insider spoke with said that the harassment and violence they either heard about or witnessed firsthand got worse following Trump and other Republicans' - including Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. Paul Gosar, and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy - repeated use of phrases like "China virus" and "Wuhan virus," even after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Director Robert Redfield called them "absolutely wrong and inappropriate."
"The way Trump handled it was so poor, there was no forethought to the repercussions," Yoo said. "It just made it so much more worse than it had to be - and now we're in this state."
Trump told reporters at the time that he didn't think the term was racist, nor did he believe that calling the coronavirus the "Chinese virus" would negatively impact Asian-Americans, even as the FBI released a report warning that there would likely be a "surge" of
Meghan McCain came to Trump's defense on "The View" in March 2020, claiming "the left" was focusing on "PC labeling this virus."
McCain apologized for her words a year later after they were highlighted on a segment of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" following the Atlanta shootings.
-Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) March 22, 2021
But some Republican politicians continue to connect the coronavirus to the Asian community. In early April, Texas congressional candidate Sery Kim falsely claimed during a political forum that Chinese immigrants "give us coronavirus."
Some restaurant workers say things have gotten worse
"When hateful rhetoric was coming from the highest elected office in the land, that gave everyday people the feeling that they had a free pass as well," Prapaisilp said. "Words do matter, and they hurt. But we also saw how that type of speech, left unchecked, led to physical attacks and eventually a shooting."
Following the Atlanta massacre and recent reports of elderly Asians being attacked in New York City and
"I have my staff walk home, buddy-system, to the train at the end of the night," Yoo told Insider. "We try to take as much precaution as we can."
Peang bought pepper spray for her female staff members after she heard about the Atlanta shootings, in which six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent.
"That definitely opened my eyes," she said. "It's something we have to deal with. I never thought about living my life this way, or thinking about this."
Community organizations have rallied around Asian-American restaurants
Many Asian-American restaurant workers reported a huge drop in business as early as February 2020 when
"A lot of my fellow Asian restaurateurs felt like they were being avoided or boycotted because they were serving Asian cuisine and at that time the rhetoric about the 'China virus' was just beginning," he added.
While Yoo has seen some neighborhoods in Manhattan come back to life a year later, he said the city's Chinatown is still hurting.
"I've lived in the neighborhood for 10 plus years, I went to high school around here, and it's just not the same," he said. "You see a lot of 'for rent' signs and the level of foot traffic isn't there. Things are still closing early, there's no resurgence."
When Megan Lam, Alan An, and Brian Ngoy saw restaurants struggling in California's San Gabriel Valley at the start of the pandemic, they created the Facebook group SGV Eats. With 37,000 members, the group has become a boon to local restaurants, which can promote their new hours, post their menus, and share challenges they're facing. One shop sold out within hours the day after posting about its struggles on the SGV Eats Facebook page.
Lam, An, and Ngoy say SGV Eats has been a silver lining during a year in which they dealt not only with the pandemic, but with increasing harassment. Just two months ago, a homeowner refused to show Ngoy his house - which was on the market - because he was Chinese. And Lam's mother was told to "go back to China" when she was out for a walk in the neighborhood.
"I personally feel the platform has given even more of an opportunity for people to learn about one another and learn about other cultures through
Prapaisilp is among the dozens of chefs who have joined the #doughsomething fundraiser, in which restaurants will create dough-based dishes and donate a portion of their sales to help the Asian Americans Advancing Justice organization fund bystander intervention trainings.
"A lot of non-Asians' first exposure to our culture is through our food," Prapaisilp told Insider. "I felt like this was the best medium to tell our stories and communicate how we're feeling."
"Asian restaurant owners and workers have been working tirelessly not only trying to keep our businesses afloat, but also donating - oftentimes from our own pocket - food and supplies to all of the communities we live in," Prapaisilp said. "We very much feel a part of our communities, we just wish these communities felt like we belong to them too."
Bryan Lew, the founder of Rooster & Rice in San Francisco, has also turned all 10 of his locations into a safe space for Asian-Americans who might feel threatened and need help.
"In light of everything that has been happening, we wanted to ensure that members of the Asian-American community felt safe and protected," he told Insider.
The restaurant owners who spoke to Insider said it has been inspiring to watch the Asian-American community stand up and demand change.
Now, they hope the rest of the US follows suit.