An elderly Asian woman fought back against her attacker in San Francisco on Wednesday morning, leaving the man suffering injuries to his face and having to be wheeled away on a stretcher.
In the video shared by a witness, the 79-year-old woman yelled, “This asshole, he hit me!” in Cantonese as she covered her swollen eye with an ice pack.
Just came upon an attack on an elderly Asian woman on Market Street San Francisco. Effort I got more details pic.twitter.com/5o8r0eeHE2
— Dennis O’Donnell (@DennisKPIX) March 17, 2021
With the wooden stick she had used to strike at the man, she gestured towards the attacker and accused him of assaulting her for no reason.
According to an interview with KPIX, the woman, Xiao Zhen Xie, was waiting for the traffic light when the attacker approached her. Xie, who is now living in a retired senior home in San Francisco, has resided in the city for 26 years.
US media outlets reported that the woman was speaking in Taishanese, which linguists say is closely related to Cantonese as they are both under the Yue Chinese branch native to southern China.
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The Taishan dialect is common in many Chinatowns in the US, where it is spoken by older generations of Chinese immigrants and their children.
The 39-year-old attacker, who has been arrested, also assaulted an elderly Asian man on Wednesday in San Francisco. Both reports of aggravated casualty are believed to be unprovoked, according to the police statement.
After the incident, San Francisco Mayor London Breed asked police to step up patrol in the area in light of the series of attacks on Asian Americans in recent months.
“Here in San Francisco, we have seen a rise in hate crime against our elderly Asian community. I want to make it clear that we won’t tolerate it,” Breed said.
The victim’s grandson, John Chen, said in a statement on GoFundMe, where he has started a crowdfunding campaign for his grandmother, that she is still reeling from the trauma. She has “two serious black eyes and one that is bleeding unstoppably,” he added.
The campaign has raised over US$590,000 (HK $4,582,340) as of Friday afternoon, exceeding its target tenfold.
Local media outlet Apple Daily also reported about the assault, drawing a flood of reactions from Hongkongers on Facebook.
Many condemned the attacker and praised the victim’s bravery and instincts in fighting back. “Don’t underestimate elderly Asian women,” one user wrote.
But some, galvanized by the anti-China sentiment that has amplified over the 2019 protests, criticized the woman and even suggested that she might have done something to provoke the attack.
Echoing the narrative of right-wing anti-immigration groups in the US, one person said: “Why doesn’t she go back to China?”
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