Tag: identity

Window onto a Chinese adolescent's life in South Africa

Hurdles to a new home: a Chinese adolescent arrives in South Africa

Posted on by Claire van den Heever

“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.

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Eating Chinese hotpot

Wandering in Shenzhen: Danlei’s Post-Cape Town Chapter

Posted on by Tian

“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” →

George Shum, owner of the Chinese Pagoda Restaurant in Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania

Portrait of George Shum: A Chinese-Zanzibari Entrepreneur

Posted on by Claire van den Heever

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.”

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Postcards from China: A South African Documentary

Posted on by Claire van den Heever

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.

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Vacation in the Third Space: Chinese tourists travelling on a European Cruise to African islands

Posted on by Tian

This is a presentation I gave on 1 February 2018 at the “Africa-China/China-Africa mobilities” workshop at the University of Cologne. In Vacation in the Third Space: Chinese tourists travelling on a European cruise to African islands, I ponder the issue of cross-cultural communication and understanding, drawing on the concept of “Third Space” (Bhabha, 1994). In the case presented, Chinese tourists, the Asian staff on the cruise ship, and residents of the islands visited (Mauritius, Seychelles, and the Reunion island) were able to create a ‘Third Space’ and engage in genuine conversations, despite cultural differences and ignorance.

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The Berlin Wall, Germany

This is my era

Posted on by Tian

There and then: Places and moments that shaped my here and now – Part III of III

Berlin, Germany, 2014

It started to rain when I arrived at the Berlin Wall, so I sat down at a cafe nearby. In the past few days, I had been randomly checking out segments of the Berlin Wall here and there, but in front of the cafe, I saw that one part of it was original, and protected as a historical site.

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The Dragon Boy

Posted on by Tian

There and then: Places and moments that shaped my here and now – Part II of III

Beijing, China, 1988

1988 was the Year of the Dragon. Chinese people believe that the dragon is a wonderful mascot that represents royalty, authority, and prosperity. My parents were probably among those who desperately wanted a dragon baby of good luck, rather than an energetic rabbit born a year earlier, or a sophisticated snake born a year later.

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Spring Festival - or Chinese New Year - in rural Jiangxi

South African in China

Posted on by Claire van den Heever

Shanghai is mainland China’s most cosmopolitan and outward looking city. In 2010, ahead of the World Expo, it was touted and re-touted ad nauseum as “China’s window on the world”, until most of its 200,000 or so expatriates never wanted to see or hear the slogan again.

The city has communities of Japanese and Koreans tucked away in neighbourhoods that they’ve made their own; in the old concession areas, there are Germans, French and Americans making a life amongst the buildings put up by their pre-1949 forebears. Chilean students mix with Nigerians, Norwegians, Turks and Scots in its dive bars on Friday nights, and there are even a few South Africans, who meet once a month at a pub called The Spot, to drink and complain, about China and home in equal measure, and to help each other find Prestik, Western Cape wines and boerewors, made by a butcher in a suburb on the city’s outskirts. For three years, from 2008 to 2011, my partner and I were two of them.

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