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Coming back to Syracuse from her hometown in Wuhan, China, in January 2020, Peipei Liu did not encounter much kindness from the surrounding community.

Liu, a junior television, radio and film major at Newhouse School of Public Communications and one of the 2022 recipients of Syracuse University’s Unsung Hero Award, felt mild flu-like symptoms 11 days after she came back to Syracuse that winter. After she read about the outbreak of a newly identified coronavirus back in her hometown, she started to worry that she had the virus herself.

Liu consulted with the Barnes Center at The Arch, complied with multiple tests and spent three days quarantining in Upstate University Hospital and then on SU’s South Campus, but doctors then confirmed that she wasn’t infected with the virus. Still, Liu chose to be cautious and wear a mask both on and off campus, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the university hadn’t yet required people to do so.

One day when Liu was eating in Ernie Davis Hall, someone yelled “coronavirus” at her and pretended to cough. Another night, when she was walking near Marshall Street, another person walked by, put an open umbrella toward her and stepped off the sidewalk to avoid her.

Liu was saddened. She wasn’t sure if these actions were prompted by bias.

“If we don’t speak out loud, these kinds of things will certainly happen again and again,” Liu said in Mandarin. “But if we do speak out, even if it’s just a small group of people, we are still making a positive change.”

In February 2020, after all the unpleasant experiences and discriminaton she confronted after the outbreak of COVID-19, Liu decided to carry out a street experiment by holding a sign written “#FightVirusNotUs. A HUG in exchange for a word of Encouragement” at different locations on campus.

While Liu and her friends worried about her physical safety, the experiment received a considerable turnout, Liu said. Many SU community members embraced her and gave her the courage to continue. Yajie “Lannie” Lan, a friend of Liu and a junior architecture major at SU, wrote a song in Mandarin dedicated to the city of Wuhan and filmed the street experiment in the song’s video.

The video was circulated in the news and on social media back in China. Although some comments criticized it as a photo op, the experiment itself meant far more than that for many people because it brough confidence to a lot of Chinese international students at that time, Lan said.

“I once told Peipei that I wanted to become a person who could have more imagination about others’ happiness and suffering,” Lan said in Mandarin, referring to a quote from a Chinese author. “I believe that’s what Peipei has been always thinking, too.”

The pandemic was not the only source that anti-Asian discrimination originated from, nor the first time that she had personally confronted racism, Liu said. During her first semester at SU, she witnessed everything from racist graffiti found in Day Hall to the #NotAgainSU sit-in at the Barnes Center as an international student.

After the university attempted to control the information about the graffiti found in Day Hall, Black students at SU organized the #NotAgainSU movement and an eight-day sit-in at the Barnes Center. Liu said while many Black students had actively spoken out for themselves and their community against racism, there were few international and Asian students who chose to get involved, partially because of their cultural differences.

Liu, a Day Hall resident at the time, organized a campaign with her friends and other international students who lived in the building. They wrote anti-racist messages and positive phrases such as “love” or “smile” in different languages on Post-It notes and displayed them all across the building. Soon, people from even outside the hall joined their campaign.

Courtesy of Ava Hu; Photo Illustration by Maya Goosmann | Digital Design Director

“The most important lesson I’ve learned in Syracuse is to never be ashamed of your identity,” Liu said. “I wanted to create that space where everyone can fight back against racism in their own ways.”

Liu also wants to bring her identity as an international student into promoting intercultural understanding between Chinese international and the broader SU communities.

After her hometown experienced the lockdown and a severe shortage in medical supplies, Liu participated in “A Hand for Wuhan,” a fundraising campaign organized by Chinese international students at SU that raised over $50,000 in support for hospitals in Wuhan and later to hospitals in New York after the pandemic hit the U.S.

Ruohan Xu and Ze Zeng, two “A Hand for Wuhan” organizers and Liu’s friends, both said Liu has assisted the campaign by contacting medical supply manufacturers in the U.S. as well as local hospitals in Wuhan.

“Peipei is someone who really cares about others,” Xu said in Mandarin. “Anyone who really knows her would treat her as a true friend, and she definitely deserves it.”

As an editor at WeMedia Lab, a Mandarin-based media platform for SU’s Chinese international community, Liu has been actively connecting various campus resources she was involved with to the broader Chinese international audience, said Ava Hu, the organization’s editor-in-chief.

The founding of WeMedia Lab goes back to the 2016 murder of Xiaopeng “Pippen” Yuan, a Chinese international student at SU, said Zeng, who is also WeMedia Lab’s director. The tragedy shaped the organization’s mission of creating a more efficient connection between Chinese international students and the university. Liu’s talent and passion to help others makes her a perfect fit to fulfill that mission, he said.

“The way that she tells stories really can connect with the Chinese international students who are far away from home,” Zeng said. “I find that she’s always very pleasant to work with.”

Liu said the Unsung Hero Award validated her beliefs and efforts in “making the world a better place.” Though she had wondered if her work was meaningful and essential enough for the community before receiving the award, this honor motivated her in continuing to push these efforts forward.

“Dr. King spoke out for his rights and the rights of the community he belonged to, with the vision of making this world a better place,” Liu said. “Speak for yourself, speak for your community — that’s what I want to do.”

Published on February 6, 2022 at 11:50 pm

Contact Francis: btang05@syr.edu | @francis_towne