RUNNER’S WORLD: How Runner Leland Yu Is Helping His Chinatown Community Amid Racism and Xenophobia
At the beginning of 2020, as the COVID-19 virus began to spread worldwide, incidents of vicious, unjust attacks against the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community increased in the United States. And for Leland Yu, 30, a runner based in New York City, the attacks soon became personal.
Yu’s friend’s aunt, a woman in her 50s, was at a bus stop in New York City when a group of kids beat her up with an umbrella, while shouting racist and xenophobic remarks at her. She had to be hospitalized and get stitches because of the hate crime.
“It was sad to hear, and this was last year,” Yu told Runner’s World. “Now, what’s going on is a resurgence.”
On Tuesday, March 16, a 21-year-old white man in Atlanta fatally shot and killed eight people, six of them were Asian-American women working at different spas and massage parlors in the city. These murders have exposed the violence and hate incidents that have been directed at the AAPI community for much of the last 15 months.
“In the Asian-American community, the issue of Asian hate, racism, and xenophobia is, and has been, a very real thing,” Yu said. “Though our voices, stories, and struggles are largely ignored or quickly forgotten. They are pushed to the back burner. For many, the fire raging within has reached a tipping point with these murders, I can see it, and I can feel it.”
Yu has experienced similars aggressions over the last year, even when he and some friends were just walking down the street, or he was out running on his own.
“[Passersby would say] things like, ‘China-virus this, China that,’ and things like that have happened a lot more over the last year,” Yu said. “Racism is not a new thing. It’s just people feel like they’ve been given the liberty to act on these feelings right now.”
To combat the gross injustices brought upon himself and the AAPI community, Yu has been spending the last year supporting the New York City Chinatown neighborhood where he grew up through running. When Yu lost his job as a restaurant cook at the start of the pandemic, he decided to take on a personal challenge: a 12-hour run, to benefit a grassroots community organization called Welcome to Chinatown.
Though he admits he hadn’t been running long—he started in November 2019 as way to train for the New York City Fire Department Academy—he felt he could take on the timed run, especially for a good cause.
“In the restaurant, I’m on my feet for 12 hours anyways, so this was the same thing, just with your feet always moving,” Yu said.
Welcome to Chinatown was started by a few of Yu’s friends during the pandemic. With xenophobia and racism on the rise in the neighborhood, they wanted to help local businesses by having a place anyone could donate to that could then go back to those who needed it. They accomplished this by buying meals from businesses and giving those to frontline workers.
Knowing he could rack up a solid chunk of mileage in half a day, Yu asked a few friends and family if they could donate $1 per mile he ran, hoping he could raise around $1,000. Twelve hours—and 61.6 miles—later, Yu had raised $25,000, friends and family who had started a sharing tree of people who donated.
“The time for Asian Americans to speak out, take action, and to slam their feet on the gas pedal has been long overdue,” he said. “This can take many forms. For me, I run. I run for my community, I run for those who we’ve lost to COVID. I run for those who have been attacked and those who have been killed. I run for all these things and more. Especially during this critical time, I run to show the world that Asian Americans are human beings. Respect us as such.”
Because of the success he saw in May, Yu repeated the challenge in December, this time adding two additional charities: the New York Chinese Free Masons Athletic Club, in which Yu grew up playing sports; and the Chinatown Mural Project, which promotes the instillations of murals in Chinatown. Welcome to Chinatown also received funds from the second run, which it is now using to offer grants of local businesses.
“This all started as a challenge for myself,” Yu said. “I didn’t expect to raise a lot of money, but it has become something else and I want to keep it going and growing.”
Yu hopes to do two more 12-hour runs this year and make them a tradition.
“There are a lot of people doing things in order to fit in with the moment,” Yu said. “But what happens when that moment is gone? What happens when the hype for the ‘cause’ dwindles? I believe that it is what you do when no one is watching that matters. To take action without seeking recognition, without seeking reward. Then, whatever it is you are doing, is honest and true, and will bring you one step closer toward self-actualization.”
Yu just opened up a temporary pop-up restaurant that he’ll own and operate for a couple months. He’s also on to his next running challenge: the Virtual NYC Half, which runs from March 20 to 28. He plans to start in Brooklyn, head over the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan and finish in Chinatown on March 22 or 23.
This time he plans to raise money for Chinatown Block Watch, a kind of community watch group that patrols Chinatown and nearby areas because of the spike in attacks on AAPI people.
You can donate to Yu’s fundraiser here.
“My family has been in Chinatown, New York, for four generations,” he said. “My mom still lives in the same apartment that my great-grandparents settled in on Mott Street, where I also lived until recently. The essence of the neighborhood is embedded within my soul. I grew up playing in all the parks, eating in all the restaurants, and running around on all the streets. It is where I met all of my lifelong friends. If there is no Chinatown, there is no me. That is why I run for Chinatown.”