Illustration: Lu Ting/GT
"Life abroad on high alert!" read a recent headline in the Global Times Metro Shanghai. The depressing and rather alarming cover story featured Zhang Lei, a Chinese immigrant living in Brussels for over a decade, who said she lives there "in a constant state of fear and anxiety."
According to the article, Zhang wakes up every morning dreading that she'll learn of yet another terrorist attack.
The story also talks about other Chinese living and working in Europe, most whom say they look forward to returning to China where they feel safer and more comfortable.
The funny thing is, as I was reading this article, I was distracted by some news links on the sidebar of the Global Times website: "Hundreds dead, missing in North China floods;" "Private car services are death knell for Shanghai pedestrians," and so on.
The combination of all those headlines did not add up well compared with Zhang's paranoia of European terrorism.
Indeed, there is plenty wrong with the way netizens currently view the world. Our distorted gloom-and-doom perspective of everyone else's country but our own is ruining our imaginations of the exotic and limiting our freedom of global movement - all without us even noticing it!
I call this subconscious fear "travelophobia," a term I coined to describe people's internalized anxiety about traveling or living abroad due to the chaotic aura of our modern world created by the international media.
I will not go into why and how this gloomy mood has been perpetuated, but there it is anyway: keeping us up at night, making us cancel our flights and driving us paranoid about people with darker skin than ourselves.
Fear is an inherent human trait. It is futile for any person to attempt to completely overcome fear. But really, nobody should try to overcome their fear of something; we just have to put it in its right place.
One has the right to be shocked and dismayed at the constant stream of horrific news coming out of different parts of the world, but it doesn't mean that our own homelands are any less dangerous.
Over 130 people were killed during the Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015, and more than 80 people were killed in the Nice terrorist attacks of July. That's terrible and my heart goes out to all the victims and their families.
However, a recent report by the World Health Organization that failed to make any international headlines estimates that more than 200,000 road deaths occur in China each year. That's more deaths than any terrorist attack in world history!
But for those of you non-drivers who live here in China, don't think you are off the hook. As described in numerous TwoCents articles published by the Global Times Metro Shanghai over the past few years, just walking across an intersection in this city has been described by Chinese and expats alike as feeling like "Russian Roulette."
Official statistics confirm this, with 25 percent of all auto-related fatalities across China involving innocent pedestrians who were just going for a stroll when some maniac drove into them.
I myself have certainly had my share of brushes with death in China, many involving reckless drivers but sometime more surreal experiences.
And yet, having lived in Shanghai for many years, I would never describe China as "dangerous." This country has one of the world's lowest crime rates, strict gun control, and a heavy military presence to dissuade terrorism and fanatics.
News outlets by nature only report the most shocking events of the day, which in turn gets them clicks and advertising revenue.
Because of this, you'll never see an article in The New York Times (or the Global Times for that matter) with the headline "Totally uneventful day, nothing happened, everyone is happy."
The fact is that good and bad things take place around the world in perfectly equal proportions. Statistically, you have a higher likelihood of your IKEA Malm furniture toppling over and killing you than you do getting caught in a terrorist attack.
So perhaps Zhang Lei really should return to China, not to escape evil European terrorists but evil particleboard European furniture.
