African Places, Chinese Faces
I came out of the Covid-19 madness alright. In fact, I was more than alright. The lockdowns and travel restrictions in South Africa gave me the solitude to sink, think and sync. After two years of ethnographic research and another two years of reading and writing – mostly done during Covid – I finally submitted my PhD thesis, passed the examination, and became a Doctor who could not help much with patients and viruses.
Continue reading “Writing a PhD thesis in the time of Covid”
One sunny winter’s day, I travelled to Stellenbosch to give a guest lecture on China-Africa political relations to a class attending the university’s Winter School. Rather than listing a series of historical events that have influenced China-Africa relations, I planned to take an anthropological approach: to start the lecture with my own on-the-ground experiences and observations as a Chinese living in South Africa. Continue reading “CHINESE PEOPLE’S HURT FEELINGS”
Wang’s mother was able to marry her way to permanent residence, but she and her son had to jump through a few hoops to gain him the right to live in South Africa.
It all started with an adjustment to Wang’s high school grades to meet the requirements for admission into a foreign university, but that part was easy. “You just tell your Chinese high school you are going to a foreign university and they will let you adjust your marks. There’s no cost, they’re advertising you,” explains Wang. Every Chinese high school has an “honorary list” of alumni who get into foreign universities. It’s symbolic capital for the school.
Continue reading “HURDLES TO A NEW HOME: A CHINESE ADOLESCENT ARRIVES IN SOUTH AFRICA – Part II”
“I didn’t get admission into a very good university in China, so my mom suggested I study here in South Africa instead,” Wang tells me over a cup of green tea. “In China, even if you go to a good university, after graduating you still just get a job where you only earn 3000 yuan [approximately US$ 470] a month.”
Whether you’re moving to another country for work, studies, or to be closer to family, bureaucratic hurdles are inevitable. Wang wasn’t even sure he wanted the new life in South Africa that his parents had planned for him, but that didn’t make the accompanying bureaucratic hurdles any easier to avoid.
Continue reading “Hurdles to a new home: a Chinese adolescent arrives in South Africa”
“You guys must come from Taiwan…” said the foot masseuse as she submerged my feet in a bucket of hot water. She gave me a suspicious look. “You guys are very polite compared to locals. Too polite.”
My friend Danlei and I were in a typical Shenzhen foot massage parlour, with diagrams of the foot’s reflexology points on the walls and full-to-the-brim ashtrays on all of the reclining sofa’s armrests. The massage parlour was packed with people. At 9pm, most Chinese cities were going to bed, but Shenzhen’s night was just starting.
Danlei explained that we had recently returned from South Africa, not Taiwan. While we aren’t originally from South Africa, we had both just spent over a year in Cape Town, we explained. We had developed a strong emotional tie to the city, and considered it our African home. Continue reading “Wandering in Shenzhen: Danlei’s Post-Cape Town Chapter”
Zimbabwean Daniel Mugandiri had no Chinese contacts nor any knowledge of China when one day he sat down to write a letter to the outgoing Chinese ambassador in Harare. He had recently been named Entrepreneur of the Year in Zimbabwe’s equivalent of “Dragon’s Den”, and was faced with the challenge of turning his business idea into reality. The 26-year-old wanted to manufacture solar panels to help address the nation’s electricity shortage. He wasn’t certain how to go about it, but he knew where to start.
“China is the hub of manufacturing, so I knew I had to learn from them,” he says. “If you buy something in the US or in the UK, it’s made in China. Every country in the world looks East.”
Continue reading “Meet the African students lining up to learn Chinese”
On Chinese New Year’s Eve, a group of Chinese friends and I were feasting on dumplings in Cape Town while watching the CCTV Chinese New Year Gala broadcasted live from Beijing. A song called ‘I have a date with 2035’ was on air. TF Boys, one of the most popular adolescent bands in China, were happily singing “We will achieve modernization in 2035…”, while a group of artists dressed in spacesuits danced on a dazzling stage. Continue reading “A date with 2035: What does modernization mean for China and Africa?”
I first met George Shum, owner of Pagoda Restaurant, surrounded by ubiquitous Chinese restaurant paraphernalia: red-tasseled symbols of good fortune, golden good luck cats and a fish tank, in which lobsters and other sea creatures awaited their fate. It is the only Chinese restaurant in Stone Town, the old quarter of Zanzibar City.
At first glance, I assumed that the 44-year-old entrepreneur belonged to the substantial community of Chinese citizens that had begun to forge a life for themselves in recent years in East Africa. But when I asked where he was from, he replied in a thick Cantonese accent: “Wo shi sang ji ba er ren” — “I’m Zanzibari.”
Continue reading “Portrait of George Shum: A Chinese-Zanzibari Entrepreneur”
In response to President Xi Jinping’s New Year message to overseas Chinese students at Moscow University, a Chinese academic based in Cape Town shares his experiences from the Cultural Revolution, his thoughts on China’s development, and encourages China’s young generation to work hard for “mankind’s common prosperity”. Permission was given by the Chinese intellectual to translate and publish his thoughts – first shared in a closed social media group for overseas Chinese students in South Africa – on WhoKou. Continue reading “A Chinese intellectual’s response to Xi’s New Year message to overseas Chinese students”
Postcards from China is a documentary series that was produced for South Africa’s eTV, first aired in 2011. “The Art of Learning” (below) is one of four episodes, and follows the pursuits of three South Africans living in Beijing and Shanghai between 2008 and 2011, one of whom is me.
Continue reading “Postcards from China: A South African Documentary”