Thread by @aliceysu

This is @mare_porter and me in the streets of Zhengzhou yesterday. We were surrounded by an angry crowd shouting things like this is China, get out of China! I tried to de-escalate by “translating” the crowd’s message (Mathias is actually fluent in Chinese)

https://twitter.com/liu_xiaoyuan/status/1419121103327223808

At one point an angry man pulled out a phone w a blurry screenshot of another white man and yelled “this is him! It’s him!” I told him no, that’s just another white guy, please calm down

Later on we realized that was actually a screenshot of @robindbrant from the BBC, and that Weibo users had been calling for a manhunt to catch the “rumormongering foreigner.” They’d been photographing Mathias for days and posting shots online saying he must be the BBC

The black cap girl’s message was that foreign media are slandering China, Henan people are very united, recovery in Zhengzhou is fine and we should focus on reporting rescue efforts. She insisted we take the contact of a rescue team and go film them instead

Prior to this we had been chatting w people on a street where several huge holes and opened in the road. Shopkeepers were distressed about insufficient govt help to drain water from their underground stores, w all their goods still submerged after four days

There were many other ppl in Zhengzhou and the surrounding worse-hit areas who were open and even eager to talk about the destruction and difficulties they’re facing. But this crowd seemed really angry and eager just to tell the foreigners off (有人说“我们要捍卫中国”)

我也跟他们说了拜托您这并不是您在找的记者，而且大家这么激动会让他觉得中国人就是这样有点恐怖的感觉，那不是也造成负面的形象吗？我们是来报道真实灾情的

After we “translated” the crowd’s message about not smearing China they seemed to calm down. Black cap girl told them “this is our German friend, we should welcome him” and some people clapped. One guy even said “sorry.” We then quickly left. It was not a pleasant experience

We weren’t the only foreign reporters who encountered hostility in Zhengzhou this week:

https://twitter.com/katmyu/status/1418843905961992192