A Beijing-based author has hit out at what he is calling a "racist" reaction to a viral video of a Chinese woman eating bat soup amid the coronavirus outbreak.
In an opinion piece for Foreign Policy, senior editor James Palmer took aim at the "thousands" of Twitter users creating memes about the video.
"As news of the Wuhan virus spread online, one video became emblematic of its claimed origin: it showed a young Chinese woman, supposedly in Wuhan, biting into a virtually whole bat," Palmer wrote.
It was confirmed on Tuesday that the virus originated from a seafood wholesale market in Wuhan that was illegally selling wildlife.
Palmer said that people were blaming the epidemic on supposedly "dirty" Chinese eating habits.
"Images of Chinese people or other Asians eating insects, snakes, or mice frequently circulate on social media or in clickbait news stories," he wrote.
"This time, that was mixed with another old racist idea: that the 'dirty' Chinese are carriers of disease."
The woman in the video has revealed that while she did eat a bat, she ate it during a tour of Palau, Micronesia in 2016 where it is a delicacy.
Wang Mengyun was forced to defend herself after she received abuse and death threats.
In a statement on her blog, she wrote about how the original video was posted as part of a travel segment for her website.
"When the video was released, I only want (sic) to introduce the lifestyle of the local people. I don't know what will become the host [of the virus].
"Experts say that the source of the new coronavirus is wild animals illegally sold in a seafood market in Wuhan. There is not much information about eating wild animals on the internet, so the anger naturally points to the 2016 tour program."
Wang wrote a list of reasons why she defended the video.
"1. The video was shot in 2016 and released during 2016-2017. Recently it was turned over by some accounts sponging off the heat and fanning out malicious panic.
"2. When shooting the video, I really didn't know there was a virus. I didn't know until recently.
"3. In the video, fruit bats are raised by local people, not wild ones. Many countries around the world eat this. It's a daily dish in many countries, but it's also a bat, can't argue with that."
James Palmer echoed Wang, and wrote that eating the bat was "simply an addition to the well-trodden cannon of adventurism and enthusiasm for unusual foods" of other countries.
He believes the "old racist idea" of the Chinese being "dirty" eaters is something that still persists today.
"These prejudices can fuel fear and racism. As the Wuhan virus spreads, the Chinese as a group are more and more likely to be blamed for its incubation and spread."
The moral standards of what we do and don't eat are "culturally arbitrary", Palmer said. While vegetarianism is morally consistent, deploring the eating of dogs while tucking into "companionable and intelligent" pigs isn't, because of different cultural norms.
He added it's time to renew the narrative about the eating habits of foreigners, particularly Asian and Chinese people.
