【6】Thank you to my boyfriend. Thank you to that gentleman who spoke up to try to stop things from escalating further, and who helped explain what happened to others.
Lastly, I also want to thank Elon Musk for adding the instant translation feature on X. I want the world to know what my boyfriend and I went through tonight. I hope everyone who reads this post can draw some strength from it.
Today I met an especially “interesting” person in the Netherlands. I asked him, don’t you want Germany to be a better place? He said, doesn’t matter.
Tonight, on the way back from Maastricht in the Netherlands to Aachen in Germany, my boyfriend and I experienced the most severe racial discrimination I’ve encountered in my entire life — and that’s saying something, since I’ve already been through it many times. I ran into the most unrestrained, most reckless group in all of Europe. Yes — teenagers.
After we got on the 350 bus, my boyfriend and I were sharing AirPods, listening to Taylor Swift’s “The Man.” Suddenly I felt a hard blow to the back of my head — something had clearly hit me. Startled, I turned around immediately, and I saw a white man in a green shirt, looking embarrassed, trying to pick something up. I thought maybe something of his had fallen and the momentum of the bus had sent it flying into my head.
But I found it strange — I thought if something of his had hit my head, at the very least he should say sorry. But he didn’t. He just kept saying,like it’s fine, it’s nothing, something like that.
I thought this was rude, so I turned to look at him again. But Jensen Huang once said AI can’t replace humans, and maybe that’s because humans have intuition. Sometimes, when something feels off, you have to trust your gut. Because the instant I turned around, I saw the real culprit. The moment our eyes met, I knew — it was her.
Okay, honestly, I wasn’t that certain. My boyfriend asked, was it that guy? I said, I’m not sure. There was another girl behind us too, but I didn’t feel it was her. So I turned around and asked her, did he do that on purpose? Maybe her English wasn’t good, but right at that moment, she started.
She shouted something at me in Dutch. It was only then that I noticed there was another girl — another one of the people who’d thrown something at me — someone with dark skin, who was hiding, hunched down over her seat so I couldn’t see her.
I turned back around. Right away, they threw more things at me. I’m so grateful that my boyfriend immediately stood up for me and asked them, why are you doing this?
They immediately started filming us, while cursing, mocking, and intimidating us. They kept hurling abuse and throwing all kinds of little objects at us, so we started filming too.
This white girl was clearly a repeat offender — she knew exactly what she was doing. She held her phone up with the flash on right beside her own face, so she wouldn’t be caught on camera herself. The darker-skinned girl, by comparison, seemed much less experienced — she just covered her face with her that typical ‘white girl’ nails
, which suggested she at least knew she was in the wrong.
It seemed the white girl hadn’t briefed her partner on how to be a proper, textbook, run-of-the-mill racist. This whole thing had gone on for less than a minute when a guy in a black shirt came over to stop us. He didn’t care what was actually happening — the first thing out of his mouth was telling us we were too loud and we needed to stop.
I asked, why not tell them to stop? They attacked us and cursed at us. They started it. He said something completely illogical — basically, whatever they did doesn’t matter, they’re just kids. Ah, what a hopeful little word. Surely anyone who has ever been harassed by teenagers in Europe, in Australia, in America, knows exactly how much weight that word “kids” carries.
The driver came out and told everyone to stop. We all sat back down, but very soon they started again. We were harassed for a long time after that — I don’t even want to relive that part anymore. But we’ve called the police, and they’ve promised to obtain the bus’s camera footage.
【5】Last Christmas, when I went back to China for the holidays, I was in a friend’s car. They took me out to a mall. After we parked, they left a lot of stuff in the car — food, their coats, their bags. Instinctively, I said, aren’t you going to take your things? They had no idea what I meant. Then it hit me — this isn’t Europe. I explained to them that in Europe, after you park, if you leave things visible in the car, it might get broken into.
My friend asked a genuinely, achingly naive question: why would that happen? Are there a lot of poor people there? I remember feeling this strange mix of helplessness, dark amusement, and deep sorrow.
I told them, no, that’s not it — China has plenty of poor people too, more than enough. Our poor people might have it even worse than some of the homeless people here in Europe. The real reason is: nobody cares unless they become the victims.
Poverty might be one trigger for crime in some places, but poverty isn’t what makes crime persist. What actually makes crime persist is the absence of consequences.
The real reason is that nobody enforces anything. Politicians don’t act, so the laws don’t act either, so even if there are police officers with a genuine sense of justice, their hands are tied. Those officers with real integrity have long since had their sense of fairness and justice worn down by the same dull, bureaucratic routine, day after day.
Again — I firmly believe she’s bullied plenty of people before, and faced no consequences at all. And again, to anyone from an ethnic minority who has ever been hurt by her and her circle — I offer you my deepest sympathy.
【4】I’ve already reported this to the police, though honestly, deep down I know I’m never going to get an apology from them. But I want to tell anyone reading this post — if you live near this city, and you ever run into those two, or into discrimination in general, I hope you have friends by your side, and I hope you fight back bravely. Because it’s obvious this white girl thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing.
She’s definitely a repeat offender — she clearly knows exactly how to humiliate people, how to intimidate them, and she gets enjoyment out of watching others feel scared and helpless. So I firmly believe she’s bullied plenty of people before this, and never faced a single consequence.
To anyone from an ethnic minority who has been hurt by her and her circle before — I offer you my deepest sympathy.
【3】He went on and on. My boyfriend kept his patience and stayed polite. But I was truly sick of that kind of face people put on — so fake, so sanctimonious. I was really done with it. It’s exactly this kind of person who’s making Europe worse and worse, the kind who, in ways nobody even notices, ends up destroying the whole of Europe from the inside. I don’t know what he said to the guy in the black shirt from earlier. At first, the guy in the black shirt confronted us with a smirking, jokey attitude. But after he talked to the green-shirt man for a while, the black-shirt guy became visibly furious, glaring at us with real hostility. Not only that — later, several of his friends got on the bus too, and one after another they came over to talk to us, telling us to delete the video. I felt like my personal safety was seriously at risk. I couldn’t believe how a man who originally seemed to just think we shouldn’t be arguing with the girls could be egged on by others into becoming someone dangerous enough to potentially bring a whole group to intimidate other people.
Honestly, I think that man in the green shirt was the most terrifying person of all. If the first two people represented pure malice and stupidity, then this white man in the green shirt was the truly quintessential European white man. Men like him hide in the background — not only do they refuse to support the victims, they actually go looking for any possible angle, any tiny detail, to attack you with, to argue that you weren’t a perfect enough victim. I imagine a lot of people have heard some version of the line: “you’re the one who really hurt the feelings of people attacking you.”
He said a lot about how we needed to learn to keep the peace, insisting that we were the ones escalating the situation.
Stop pretending! You are not a philosopher.
All you’re really trying to tell us is that we used to be Chinese people who just quietly endured everything, and that we should keep quietly enduring it forever — that no matter what Europeans do to us, we should never fight back.
Of course he wants the world to get better — but only his world, the one that belongs to him. He genuinely doesn’t care whether anyone else lives or dies. Even if other people’s fates would eventually come back to affect his own life, to destroy his own world, he still chooses to look away.
The whole way back to Aachen, all the way to the police station, and even after we left the police station, my boyfriend said “I’m sorry” to me over and over. He also said “thank you” to me over and over. He was sorry he couldn’t protect me, and grateful for my courage.
I kept telling him, you don’t need to apologize, this isn’t your fault. I kept thanking him too. I told him, without you, I don’t know what would have happened to me tonight.
Since coming to Germany, I’ve traveled to a lot of places. When I traveled alone, I ran into a lot of racial discrimination — but I never experienced it when I was with my boyfriend. This was the first time since we’ve been together that something this intense has happened.
【2】There was a very kind man who spoke up for us several times, and we got his contact information — he agreed to be a witness for us.
There was also another man who chose to distance himself from the whole situation. Before he got off the bus, he did say, unprompted, that he was sorry we had to go through this, and that he sympathized with us. Maybe to make us feel a little better, he added that perhaps those two girls weren’t targeting us specifically — that they just harass everyone indiscriminately.
Unfortunately, I don’t agree with what that kind gentleman said, because this white girl was clearly a repeat offender. She clearly knew exactly how to use fake movements to intimidate people — she kept pretending she was about to hit me again, lunging forward, just like Nikki in Obsession. Every time I flinched away, she’d laugh triumphantly. I genuinely couldn’t understand it anymore, so I couldn’t help but ask them: is this how your parents treated you? Is that why you’re treating us this way? They got extremely angry.
Right up until they got off, they kept up the verbal attacks and kept throwing things at me. When they got off at Margraten, they grabbed heavier things — a lipstick, a hair clip — and threw them at me. Yes, still me, not my boyfriend. I couldn’t help thinking of that line from “The Man” — if I was a man. Europe is supposedly one of the best places in the world for women’s rights. People are always saying China has no feminism. But I want to tell everyone: if this place really had women’s rights, people would respect women first, instead of singling out the one who looks weaker to bully.
Between the two of us — two Chinese people they assumed would just take it — they chose the one who looked easier to pick on. The most basic principle of feminism is that women should be able to feel at least a minimum sense of safety.
Sadly, a woman walking alone here is not safe. I don’t want to go further into this — anyone who has lived in Europe knows exactly what I mean. I can’t imagine what would have happened to me tonight without my boyfriend.
A whole bus full of people — including several people from ethnic minorities themselves — and not a single one of them stepped in to actually do something to stop those two people. And yes, I don’t want to call them “girls” anymore. I am a person, they are people too, and we should be equal — not treated differently just because I look different from them.
After getting the first kind man‘s contact information, I went on my own to ask the man in the green shirt — I asked if he’d be willing to be our witness, since he was sitting right behind me and clearly saw them throw things at me. He said no. I asked, may I ask why? He said, no matter what, filming them was already something I did wrong.
I didn’t quite understand — I said, didn’t they start it? They cursed at me first, filmed me first, mocked me first. They enjoyed watching me be scared and humiliated.
He said a bunch of hollow, hypocritical things — that no matter what they did, my life was still my own, and that I needed to make peace with it. I completely didn’t understand. I said, don’t you want Germany to be a better place? He said, doesn’t matter. Later he got off while we were still in the Netherlands — so I guess that confirms it, the Dutch really don’t care whether Germans are doing okay.
I could understand him not wanting to get involved in something like this.
But what I didn’t expect was that he started lecturing us.
He started reciting poetry, showing us a drawing he’d made — he’d drawn a person with a hideous, twisted face. He read us a poem, and then translated it into English for us — the gist of it was, no matter what other people do, you just live your own life.