It was supposed to be a pleasant late summer day last August.
Having worked from home in the morning, I got on the train to have lunch with my colleagues in central London.
Just before I reached the bottom of the escalator, I heard a voice from behind saying, ‘Excuse me’.
A short Caucasian man in, I’d guess, his late 30s appeared from my left side and said something that I didn’t understand. I could tell from his aggressive look that it was something nasty.
Also by the sound of it, he was imitating an Asian language.
‘Just another idiot’, I thought. I ignored him and kept walking.
But this man wouldn’t let me go. He kept pace with me and said something in a louder voice with an even more menacing expression.
This time I could just make out what he was trying to say – a hateful and vulgar insult in Mandarin, referring to a part of the female anatomy.
His pronunciation was terrible, worse than a tourist could do from a phrase book. I suspect he never learned Chinese, a tonal and pictographic language that is notoriously difficult to learn.
‘Had he acquired a couple of rude phrases expressly for the purpose of harassing Chinese people?’, I thought.
It struck me that the phrase he’d uttered before this one could have been another vulgar phrase in Mandarin. Or it could even be in a different East Asian language – maybe he was testing to see which language I would respond to.
I quickly went through multiple options in my head of what I could do – but I realised, if I shouted back, it’d only give him the satisfaction of seeing that his assault worked. He was not worthy of my engagement.
I bit my tongue and walked on.
We got on the same escalator. He was ahead of me, with one female passenger between us. Halfway up, he turned around and shouted more unintelligible insults while making a hideous face.
Both my attacker and his assault seemed invisible to the people around us. ‘This is wrong, he shouldn’t be allowed to do this,’ I thought to myself.
What to do if you’ve been a victim of a hate crime
If you have been a victim of hate crime, you can contact Victim Support, a charity there to support victims of crimes in England and Wales.
A hate crime is someone who has been targeted as a result of:
- Disability
- Race or ethnicity
- Sexual orientation
- Being trans
- Religion
When we reached ground level, he went down to a railway platform. I reported the incident to the staff at the ticket gate and was told I should chase him down the platform myself and find a staff member there.
I understand they might have had a low number of staff and were unable to spare a person to help me, but I felt unsupported and alone. It felt bizarre to chase down my attacker all by myself but I felt I needed to do this.
On the platform, I identified the guy to a female member of the staff, who politely invited him to come to the station office. He responded with fake innocence: ‘Is there a problem? I have a case of autism’.
The member of staff said she could not force him to go with us to the station office. She took me there instead, where the supervisor expressed his disbelief and anger.
My attacker had clearly prepared to target Chinese or people of other East Asian ethnicities. He had rehearsed his assault. He had no other reason to attack me except my ethnicity.
I called and asked for an update, but was told that my case number didn’t exist in the police system
What angers me even more is that he seems to have prepared his ‘autism’ script. Even if it was true, using it to hide behind is a grave insult to neurodiverse people.
My guess is, he has done this many times and he will do it again.
Nevertheless, the perpetrator got away easily.
As I left the station, I felt a strong sense of disgust. I’d lived and worked in London for over a decade. Despite the unconscious bias I had sometimes experienced, in general London had been a safe and friendly place to me – until now.
Before I left the platform, I managed to take two pictures of the attacker on my phone, which I planned to supply to the police – and that afternoon, I reported the case on the police website.
Seven days passed, and I heard nothing. I called and asked for an update, but was told that my case number didn’t exist in the police system.
I reported the case from scratch again on my phone and was told the case was being forwarded to the Transport Police.
Read more first-person accounts of hate crime
I patiently waited for another seven days. Then 14 days and 15 minutes after the incident, an email arrived:
‘Unfortunately the CCTV has expired, and we are unable to request it. This does mean I am unable to allocate this out to an officer for investigation. The crime report will now be closed but remain on our system for intelligence purposes.’
I asked how long the CCTV footage was held. The answer was 14 days.
This means the police were 15 minutes too late.
A couple of days after getting the email, I dropped by the station office and spoke with a different supervisor about the CCTV.
He really tried to help. He said racist attacks like that happened in their station all the time and suggested that a CCTV footage download request should have been made by the station on the day. That way, the footage would have been saved in time, available for investigation afterwards.
But no such request was made from the station, even though I asked for help right away.
I felt let down by the cascade of failure and mistakes from both the police and the station.
In the days following the assault, whenever I got on a train, I’d intuitively scan the crowd. Anyone who physically resembled my attacker would make me cringe. If I did run into him again, I would be 100% sure to recognise him.
What would I do? I didn’t know. But I knew that I would not let him attack me and run away scot free.
Verbal violence can just be as harmful as physical, especially to one’s mental health. I am lucky that I got support from my friends, my loving husband and my amazing colleagues.
I work for a leading creative studio with over 1,000 employees in our London office alone. When I shared my story on the company’s social channel, sympathy and anger poured in.
But I imagine someone without such immediate support could easily suffer mental trauma from a racist attack like this.
My attacker had clearly prepared to target Chinese or people of other East Asian ethnicities
I also posted my story as a cautionary tale on Xiaohongshu, a popular Chinese social media platform.
On Xiaohongshu, I’ve seen the hashtag ‘Fighting Against Racism’ getting a huge number of views, with many sharing their experience of how they have been racially attacked abroad.
The overall mood is that, as a community, overseas Chinese have to fight the stereotype that Chinese people are easy to bully – even though it is not up to us to change the stereotype.
From what I read on Xiaohongshu, many racist attacks against Chinese people in the UK happen on public transport.
Some get people shouting ‘c***g c***g’ at them, which is a classic racist slur; some received the equally unimaginative ’go back to your country’.
Things need to change.
For a start, the public transport system could do with providing more training to their staff.
Station staff should understand that a hate attack victim can be vulnerable and not in the position to think and act effectively – and that they may also face physical danger and need protection.
When station staff intervene, they need to have a strong and assertive presence and voice.
And lastly, they should request a CCTV footage download immediately – or at least advise the victim to submit the request.
The general public can also offer their support. If you spot someone in an uncomfortable situation, a simple ‘Are you OK? Do you need any help?’ carries a lot of weight and may stop the abuses.
When I look back at this incident, I wonder what drove my attacker to be racist. Is it pure hate? Or was he looking for a sense of self-worth by tearing another person down?
Either way, I find him pathetic.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected].
Share your views in the comments below.
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