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Overview
This T-shirt was created during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 by Helene Wong, a third-generation Chinese New Zealander. Its message, ‘I’m not from Wuhan, Drop the Pitchfork’, was a response to the spike in reports of racist abuse and harassment targeted at Chinese during the pandemic. After Helene posted a picture of herself wearing the shirt on social media, her message attracted the attention of media outlets such as Newsroom, The AM Show, The Panel and Marae. Its message was subsequently met with a wide range of responses from the general public, from effusive support to scepticism that anti-Chinese racism exists in Aotearoa and confusion over her message in relation to Chinese who are from Wuhan.
Helene is the author of the autobiographical memoir, Being Chinese: A New Zealander’s Story (Bridget Williams Books, 2016). In some of her past writing and interviews, Helene has described the difficult period of the 1990s, when the passage of the Immigration Act 1987 provoked hostile reactions towards the arrival of new Asian migrants – the so-called ‘Asian invasion’. At the time, Helene felt annoyed about being lumped in with and targeted alongside newer migrants from East Asia.
For Helene, the anti-Asian racism fuelled by the pandemic brought up some of this past and an expectation that all Chinese would be once again lumped together and racially targeted. 'I decided to pre-empt being targeted again, as well as send a message, by coming up with a slogan that carried a sting behind the joke. Unfortunately the chance to wear the shirt on the street was curtailed by increasing caution around being out in public with a virus possibly circulating, so a friend kindly hosted a photo of me wearing it on her Facebook page', she explained. (1)
Wong later told The AM Show host Duncan Garner. 'I'm targeting people who seem to equate people from Wuhan [the epicentre of the outbreak] with all Chinese. When they're walking around Auckland, they automatically assume any Chinese they see must be infected. It's about stereotyping all Chinese with this disease. I'm tired of it, this is not the first time this has happened.' She noted that many Chinese in New Zealand had little connection with Wuhan. 'I'm an example, I was born in New Zealand and I've grown up in New Zealand. I haven't been to Wuhan, I don't know anyone in Wuhan. I'm not trying to point the finger at people in Wuhan - I'm pointing the finger at people who have conflated the idea of Wuhan into being all Chinese.' (2)
Helene’s shirt is one among the many diverse and often complex responses people of Chinese heritage have articulated in response to the racial dimensions of the Covid-19 pandemic and reveals how intimately they are informed by discourses of identity which are rooted in the highly specific histories, cultures and identities to which they are connected.
References:
(1) Helene Wong, emailed statement to Grace Gassin, 5 July 2021. Minor amendment made on 28 October 2025 following further email correspondence on that date.
(2) Lana Andelane, 'Chinese-New Zealander hits back at racism with T-shirt, Newshub, 18 February 2020 https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/02/coronavirus-chinese-new-zealander-hits-back-at-racism-with-t-shirt.html (accessed 23 February 2022).