Sinophobia: How a virus reveals the many ways China is feared

Sammi Yang first realised something wasn't right when she showed up at her doctor's in Berlin, and was immediately barred from entering the building.

Other patients were buzzed in through the clinic's door, while Ms Yang, a make-up artist from China, had to wait outside in the January cold. Eventually her doctor emerged. Her first words were: "This isn't personal but..."

"Then she said: 'We are not taking any Chinese patients now because of this Chinese virus'," Ms Yang told the BBC. "I had no chance to explain myself and say that I was healthy." She had not travelled to China recently either.

In the weeks since the virus spread around the world, multiple accounts of discrimination against Chinese nationals or anyone who looks East Asian have emerged, including from Asia and Chinese-majority societies.

Even as sympathy has grown for the Chinese victims, particularly with the death of "whistleblower doctor" Li Wenliang, Asian minorities and Chinese nationals say virus-related racism and xenophobia have thrived.

Discrimination against China and Chinese people is not new - Sinophobia is a well-documented phenomenon that has existed for centuries.

But the varied ways it has manifested during the coronavirus crisis reveal the increasingly complex relationship the world has with China right now.

Unfamiliar in the West, too familiar in the East

Virus related vitriol has appeared all over the world expressed in subtly different way.

In places where Asians are a visible minority such as Europe, the US and Australia  the Sinophobia appears to be fuelled by superficial stereotypes of the Chinese as dirty and uncivilised.