An elderly Chinese man has been hit on the head with an umbrella in a racist attack on a New York City bus.
As reported by Shanghaiist, 68-year-old Wang Zenxin was hit by a woman on a bus in Queens who declared “I hate Chinese”.
Wang boarded the bus with a Chinese woman on 7 March when a middle-aged Hispanic woman gave both of them a shove. When asked why, the woman reportedly replied “because I hate Chinese people,” according to a Chinese witness who filmed the incident.
Wang scolded the woman for racism but when the elderly man tried to leave the bus, the woman smacked him on the head with her umbrella.
Speaking to the New York Daily News, Wang said, “She said she hated Chinese and I criticized her… I said, ‘This is discrimination.’ ”
“When I tried to get off the bus she hit me with the umbrella,” Wang added
The video shows the bus driver tying to calm the situation down whilst an impatient passenger yells that he has somewhere to be. Although Wang didn’t call the police immediately, he told the Daily News that he suffered from a headache for several days after the incident. Wang eventually called the police on Saturday.
The police are currently searching for the woman.
Wang moved to New York City from China in 1986 and now worries for his own safety.
“I feel sad and I feel very uncomfortable,” he told the Daily News. “I think New York is a nice city, many kinds of races of people, all of them together, very nice, very peacefully. Now I know that some people hate Chinese and I have to be careful.”
