Dahai took one out of the box of Red Double Happiness cigarettes sitting on the table, took a puff and slowly leaned back in his chair. Not far from the cafe where he was sitting at the open-air cafe was the Inner Ring Road Viaduct. The sound of traffic continues to come in.
The cafe is about a five-minute walk from the Guangzhou Xiaobei subway station, with low prices, and is the place where the sea usually “talks things over” with others.
Most of the Time, “things” refers to business. “Fishing,” he says after a brief pause, and then explains it again in Chinese as “fishing” – a new business opportunity he sees, but one that has been affected by the Epidemic. However, due to the epidemic, he was out of work for almost an entire year.
Dahir is from Somalia, the eastern part of the continent with the longest coastline in Africa. His real name is Dahir, and when he realized that his name was not easy to pronounce for the Chinese, he simply took a Chinese name with a similar pronunciation.
This is Dahir’s 16th year living in Guangzhou. He speaks fluent Chinese and his main job is to translate for African businessmen.
Since the 1990s, an African-American business community has been forming in Guangzhou’s Xiaobei and Sanyuanli neighborhoods, and at its peak, the number of Africans in Guangzhou was 15,000 to 20,000, most of whom were businessmen, according to estimates by Gordon McDonald, an American anthropologist who has studied the city’s African-American community for many years. According to information from the Guangzhou government’s epidemic prevention and control press conference on April 12 last year, the standing figure for Africans in Guangzhou like Dahir was 13,652 at the end of 2019, while the count in April 2020 was only 4,553 after the emergence of the epidemic.
In mid-January this year, Tongtong Trade City in Sanyuanli
Linda, a Chinese businesswoman who has witnessed the heyday of Sanyuanli as a garment wholesaler, told All Now, “In the old trade city, it was all black, or else how could it be called Chocolate City?” “Chocolate City” is the Chinese nickname for the area around Sanyuanli and Xiaobei, with the color of chocolate to describe the gathering of black people.
In recent years, some scholars have found that the African-American trade community in Guangzhou has been in ebb since 2008, and Linda also feels that the number of African businessmen has been decreasing year by year, and after the epidemic, the Foreign Trade City has become even colder as many African businessmen are unable to come to Guangzhou.
Making money
The media and scholars often describe Africans who come to Guangzhou to do business as “Gold diggers” and “dreamers”, but Dahir puts it more bluntly – to make money.
Born in Somalia to a middle-class Family, Dahir did not speak Chinese when he came to Beijing to study more than 30 years ago. Around 2005, he came back to China, this time to Guangzhou.
But he was “too late”, as many African businessmen had already taken advantage of the “first opportunity”.
The Asian financial crisis in 1997 was considered a key opportunity for African businessmen to move to Guangzhou – those originally in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong were affected by the financial crisis and turned to mainland China in search of new business opportunities. After 1997, there was an explosion of African businessmen in Guangzhou, and the first place where they gathered was Xiaobei, where Dahir now lives.
In the early planning, Guangzhou’s foreign trade center should be the business district called “Taojin”, where there are bright city “facades” such as Baiyun Hotel, Garden Hotel and Friendship Store; and between Guangzhou Railway Station and “Taojin “between the Guangzhou Railway Station and the “Amoy Gold”, it is planned to develop the Canton Fair business district. However, the Guangzhou Railway Station to “Taojin” is four kilometers away, in the 1980s and 1990s, there is a large area between the two points to be developed. With the development of market economy, the originally designed Canton Fair business circle evolved into two distinct business circles – the high-end international business circle of “Taojin” and the low-end clothing wholesaler circle centered on Guangzhou Railway Station.
Xiaobei is located exactly between the above two points. In the 1990s, hotels, business buildings, wholesale cities and other commercial buildings were built in the Xiaobei area, but geographically it still belonged to the urban-rural area of Guangzhou and was not in the focus of municipal development, thus creating an area with low prices and a mixed flow of people.
In addition, the Guangzhou Railway Station was the terminus of the Guangzhou-Kowloon Line from Hong Kong to Guangzhou at that time. For African merchants from Hong Kong going north, the Guangzhou Railway Station, which had a certain scale, was naturally a convenient option for them, and the Xiaobei area, which was only two kilometers away from the railway station and had low prices, became the earliest gathering place for African merchants in Guangzhou.
The entrance of a foreign trade city in Sanyuanli
“Our young people, they are brave.” By “we”, Dahir means the African continent. In his opinion, unlike the well-protected Chinese youth, teenage African boys are brave enough to go to all parts of the world whenever they see an opportunity. Even after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, there are still African businessmen willing to look for business opportunities in China.
Boniface, who is from Nigeria, went to China alone to buy goods in February 2020 when the epidemic in China eased a bit – his first time in China. in May, a college student named Ersuan from a university in Guangzhou filmed a documentary on the evacuation of the Nigerian flight, recording this experience of Boinface The documentary documented Boinface’s experience.
According to Ersuan’s introduction and Boniface’s interview film, Boniface, 25, has a flat haircut, is stocky, speaks fluent English and is in the business of sourcing leather materials. His original calculations were that the material would become cheaper because of the epidemic and that it would be a worthwhile venture to China to stock up. However, when he arrived in China, he found that the shortage of supply from the epidemic had increased the price of the material.
This is how he describes the business trip in the documentary: disappointed, angry, and then very sad with himself. He did not have enough time to procure materials and ultimately was unable to purchase the goods at his preferred price.
“It’s like you had $1,000 in your pocket, and now you don’t.” Boniface made this analogy as he was about to leave China.
Nigerian businessmen leaving Guangzhou on an evacuation flight last May. Photo courtesy of Second Sugar
Boniface’s type falls into the category of short-term businessmen, who also have a figurative surrogate – migratory bird businessmen – and make up the largest group of African businessmen in Guangzhou.
Migratory bird traders usually buy goods at low prices in Guangzhou and sell them to African merchants, earning the difference in price. Each time they come to Guangzhou, they usually stay from ten days to several months, and then leave after they finish buying goods, regularly traveling between the African continent and Guangzhou like migratory birds. According to the Guangzhou Municipal Government’s statistics of the city’s ports, from 2017 to 2019, there were more than 320,000 departures and arrivals from and to African countries, and the trend is growing.
Lawson, also a young man from Nigeria, is also a migrant businessman. He first arrived in Guangzhou at the end of 2018 to do footwear trading and is now a seasoned buyer, visiting the Trade City two to three times a week to select goods.
One day in mid-January, Lawson was picking up goods at Tongtong Trade City in Sanyuanli. He speaks fluent English, but only knows the most common words in Chinese, such as “xiaobei” – where he lives. But that didn’t stop him from bargaining with the Chinese owner, using simple English words like “Colour” with hand and eye movements that seemed to be enough to understand each other’s meaning.
The sale didn’t work out initially, and Lawson turned around and walked out of the store to start packing up his purchase. After a while, the owner came over again, he glared at Lawson, and pointed out a few things with his fingers, and the two “talked” back and forth for a while before the owner finally gave in. When Lawson walked back into the store, two boxes of goods were already at the door, waiting for him to take them.
The purchase went smoothly. In less than a day, Lawson had already bought five or six bags of goods, which were stacked taller than him in green woven bags. “If there hadn’t been an epidemic, I might be in Africa now, but now I have to stay in China.” Lawson says, writing down the recipient’s information on the woven bags with an oil-based pen.
“One year and six months.” He clearly counts the days he won’t be able to return Home.
Nigeria did not resume international commercial flights until late August in 2020 due to the epidemic, at which time Nigerian businessmen who wanted to return home had to take an evacuation flight. In Second Sugar’s video footage of Nigerians evacuating, the evacuation flight was once delayed. One of her subjects was notified to rush to the airport only on the day the flight was scheduled to leave.
At the airport, there were people with woven bags of wrapped cargo and others waiting for the flight to video with their families. “They were all so happy, the way they finally got to go home.” Two Sugar recalls to All Now.
Inside the airport, Nigerians preparing to return home are videoing with their families. Photo courtesy of Second Sugar
A year of stagnation in Foreign Trade City
Most of those returning home on the evacuation flights were short-term businessmen like Boniface, who themselves had no intention of being based in Guangzhou and were holding relatively short visas.
But with the development of Guangzhou’s Afro-descendant business district, a considerable number of Africans have also set up store in the Foreign Trade City and become regular businessmen in Guangzhou. In a 2012 paper, Wuhan University professor Li Zhigang mentioned that African-American wholesale stores in foreign trade cities usually play a dual role, with store owners who also have stores in their own countries and who establish contacts with Chinese merchants to buy goods by setting up stores in Guangzhou, while being familiar with the whole process and being able to pull strings for other African-American merchants.
After the arrival of African businessmen, the Guangzhou Railway Station garment wholesaler circle gave rise to a foreign trade city dedicated to African trade, and the gathering place of African businessmen extended to the north of the railway station, along the convenient Sanyuanli, along Guangyuan West Road. Until now, Xiaobei and Sanyuanli are still their main gathering place, commonly known as “Chocolate City”.
The foreign trade city of “Chocolate City” opened around 2005 and reached its heyday in 2007, when the African-American economy reached its peak.
The layout is mostly similar – a large open space on the ground floor for loading and unloading goods, and a hotel on the upper floors where migrating merchants can stay nearby when they buy goods. Store signs are often a mix of different colors, and store information and contact information are mostly in English. African merchants are involved in a wide range of purchases, from door and window hardware to auto parts, and have also spawned barber stores and restaurants that specialize in serving Africans.
The streets around Xiaobei
In January 2021, when visiting the Foreign Trade City along Guangyuan West Road, we found that less than a quarter of the stores were still open, some of them were only used as warehouses, and some of them were completely closed or renovated. Most of the buildings have “rent reduction” notices posted inside, the notices mostly start with “sudden new crown pneumonia epidemic”, and some stores still have last year’s rent reminder notices left at the door.
Lawson into the goods of the Tongtong Trade City, is the old foreign trade city in Sanyuanli. According to the notification on April 15 last year, two odd workers in the Tongtong Trade City were diagnosed as new crown patients, and the Trade City was also identified as a high-risk site. At present, less than ten stores are still open for business on the second floor of Tongtong Trade City, and the shoe city on the second floor is also cold, with one shoe store having less than 20 customers all afternoon.
Joe, a Ugandan businessman, is doing wholesale business in Tongtong Trade City. He told All Now that throughout 2020, very few businessmen from Africa went to China to make purchases, making it difficult for them to develop new customers, and the business could only rely on the original familiar customers to maintain and complete transactions by phone or online. According to him, the year’s profits fell by 40%.
With fewer migratory bird merchants coming to purchase, the store owners’ turnover dropped a lot, and some gradually shifted their business to online. An African owner of a store in Tongtong Trade City showed All Now his current working model – uploading a set of commodity maps to customers, who then pick the right ones. This afternoon, he sat in the empty corridor of the trade city and returned messages to his phone for more than two hours.
On the outside wall of the mall was an Ethiopian Airlines advertisement, and the accompanying map was a map of the Asia-Africa-Europe region, with Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, as the center point of the map, and Guangzhou as another specially marked point. Between the Asian and African continents, there are icons of four planes and several dotted lines showing intensive flights between the two regions. It is the ease of transportation that has enabled what scholars call the “low-end globalization” of African traders to do business, but the epidemic has almost halted what used to be a smooth flow of traffic.
The shipping office in Foreign Trade City
According to Dahir, some African businessmen stopped doing business in China after the epidemic for two main reasons: higher airfares and logistics, and the quarantine policy upon entry – both of which multiplied the cost of doing business.
Feng Qidi, who has long conducted fieldwork in the African-American trade community in Guangzhou, told All Now that the Chinese New Year is the time of year when African businessmen go home for a break. Some of the African businessmen who returned home early last year as a result of the 2020 outbreak have still not been able to return to Guangzhou, and as a result, some vacant stores in the foreign trade city still have goods in them.
Dahir has often received messages from such African bosses recently, asking him about the current situation in Guangzhou. “Don’t come back,” Dahir tells them, “there’s no business even if you do.” He points behind him, indicating that many stores around him have closed down.
The African businessmen who are still in Guangzhou are afraid to go home, like Lawson, whose flights to Nigeria have resumed, but he fears that if he goes back, it will be difficult to return to China. “It may be easy to go back, but it will be very difficult to come back.” Joe, a Ugandan businessman, has also not been home for a whole year. He is not worried about visas or flights, but there are still new cases of new crowns in Uganda, and he fears difficulties in re-entering the country.
Although there are no explicit restrictions, these African businessmen still in Guangzhou all expressed similar concerns to Joe’s during the interview process. In an analysis by anthropologist Gordon McDonald to All Now, this has to do with the uncertainty during the epidemic itself, with restrictions changing all the time not only in China but also in other countries.
Before the epidemic, however, policy factors also influenced Africans’ willingness to do business in China. Yang Yang, co-author of South China’s World City: Africans and “Low-End” Globalization in Guangzhou, told All Now that some of the African businessmen she knew left Guangzhou after 2015. In addition to economic reasons, visa policies are an important factor, such as the need to leave or transition when visa times are shortened.
An analysis published in the China International Migration Report (2018) by Niu Dong, a postdoctoral fellow in international relations at Jinan University, and Zhang Zhenjiang, a professor, mentions that with the implementation of the Entry and Exit Administration Law and the Regulations on the Entry and Exit Administration of Foreigners, which came into force in July and September 2013, it has become more difficult for Africans in Guangzhou to renew their visas in China, and they face increased penalties when they are involved in illegal crimes This reflects a more severe management, discipline and punishment than before.
Vacant stores in Foreign Trade City
In a paper published in the journal Human Geography, scholars Li Zhigang and Du Feng analyze that the shift in the development of “Chocolate City” to decline since 2008 is related to new changes in the domestic and international economic and political situation, including changes in the macro international economic situation, national visa controls in response to major events, negative coverage in the local media, and increased local government control. intensification of local government controls.
As an example, the paper mentions that “the 2008 Olympics objectively affected the development of the economic zone in three ways: firstly, visa difficulties prevented some blacks from doing business in Guangzhou and the flow of people decreased; secondly, businessmen who obtained visas shortened their stay in Guangzhou and the high cost of return trips dampened their motivation; thirdly, blacks who had already arrived in Guangzhou became triple Africans due to the expiration of their visas and became the police object of strict control, their economy proceeds in flight and the quality of the economy decreases.” Subsequently, there was also a round of strict visa checks around the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou.
Some African businessmen are also extra concerned about policy changes and current news – Dahir often retweets videos of news statements from the Chinese government; Joe, who doesn’t often send friends, makes a point of retweeting the appointment of an African-American woman as director general of the WTO; and Lawson celebrates National Day by posting a circle of friends with the Chinese flag.
Guangzhou visitors
Most of the Africans who come to “strike gold” have no intention of settling here.
Some short-term businessmen in Foreign Trade City outright deny that they “live in Guangzhou,” even if they have lived there for months. During his field research, Feng Qidi also noted that many African businessmen only use the city as a “workplace” or a place to stay for a short time. A significant number of African businessmen, including Lawson and Joe, live in hotels for long periods of time.
Joe explained that he came to China to do business, so he had to choose the most comfortable and worry-free accommodation in order to have the energy to make money. And as a foreigner, staying in a hotel saves a lot of trouble.
“Coming from Africa to Guangzhou, he does not want to stay, so what is his purpose? It is to make money first, and after making money, run to developed countries, such as Canada, the United States or South Africa (editor’s note: not a developed country, but in the African continent with a high level of economic development), Europe. Very often, they use China, or other developing countries as a springboard, intermediate station.” Yuan Ding told All Now.
Yuan Ding, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology and has been involved in African studies for many years, got into the field at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. At the time, China opened its doors to welcome guests from around the world. “The easiest way to find Africans was during the Expo, in the African pavilion, where people from basically every African country could be found.”
He uses the concept of “passing” to understand these African businessmen, “passing” contains both the meaning of coming and going, implying mobility, and at the same time it means “fault” in Chinese. The frequent mobility is different from the Chinese society and Culture, which emphasizes stability, and naturally causes the locals to be defensive.
Since they are not looking to settle, a significant number of African businessmen do not take the initiative to learn Chinese. Jason, a Nigerian businessman, has lived in Guangzhou for nine years and has not learned a few words of Chinese. For most of the day, he is not interested in wandering around, and his daily Life consists of waking up, working, going home, and sleeping. For him, the city is nothing more than a large office.
Jason has no clear plans for the future, and the only thing that is clear is that he is not likely to settle in Guangzhou. He raised his hand to his eyebrow, indicating that the money to buy a suite in Guangzhou was enough to buy a building in his hometown. According to his “plan”, he will return home when he earns enough money, but this “plan” has neither a specific date nor a specific amount.
Dahir is also in this situation. After more than a decade in Guangzhou, he uses the term “half and half” to describe the extent to which he has achieved his goals. He can’t answer the question of how much money he has to make to be 100% complete, but instead asks, “Who would say they’ve made enough money?”
Jason’s friend Inno is a man who wants to integrate into Guangzhou on his own initiative. He came to Guangzhou two years ago to start a clothing business and now speaks a lot of Chinese and will initiate conversations with Chinese women. “I’m going to stay in Guangzhou, I like Guangzhou.” Inno says in Mandarin, pointing to the floor. The reason for liking it is simple – it’s a good place for him to make money.
Goods merchandise displayed in the Foreign Trade City
But it’s not easy to fit in with the city with a different skin color.
Dahir talks about how sometimes he asks for directions in Mandarin and passersby say they don’t understand. He has also heard people talk about the color of his skin. In his opinion, this is not discrimination, but more of a lack of understanding or curiosity.
Yuan Ding revealed that, in fact, there are more Japanese and Koreans, the Asian groups in Guangzhou, than Africans in numbers. However, it is the African group that receives the most social attention, and one of the important reasons is that they are the “visible” other.
“Most African groups are dark-skinned or dark-skinned, so you can easily find out that they are an Other, a different kind of person living in your neighborhood.” Yuan Ding said. More than a decade ago, there was little research on the African community in Guangzhou in domestic academia, and after 2008, Western scholars began to pay attention to this group. After these studies were cited in the country, domestic scholars and media came in droves, “precisely because they were easily discovered, and the attention they got later, that they became a (research) issue.”
There is also a segment of male African businessmen who will marry Chinese women. According to the book “South China’s World City: Africans and “Low-End” Globalization in Guangzhou,” African male businessmen believe that Chinese women are more helpful in business and that it will be easier to move around China after Marriage. It is not uncommon to see mixed-race children from such combined families playing in the foreign trade city.
Linda, a Beijinger whose husband is Nigerian, came to Guangzhou more than a decade ago because he was in college, and the two met and ran a wholesale clothing business together. linda told All Now that she knows that many people in society are prejudiced against Africans, and this prejudice can spill over into their kind of combined families. “When we go out to eat, some people will look at us with that kind of strange eyes, feeling as if you figure them (Africans) or something, in fact, it’s not like that at all, on the feelings of two people well.” She tilted her head sideways, stared down, looked to her right and made a “discriminatory look”.
Another scenario that Dahir doesn’t understand is that he is often told that he saw one of your “folks” today, when the so-called “folks” are just Africans with the same dark skin tone. “I don’t understand his language, and our cultures are completely different.” Dahir found in his daily life that many Chinese people see black people and think they are all the same, “In fact, Africa is very big, there are many different countries, and there are big differences between people.”
Yuan Ding reveals that the African continent is relatively complex internally, and there are complex historical relationships between different countries. For example, in Guangzhou, the largest African community is Nigerian, but there are many people from other African countries who will deliberately differentiate themselves from them.
But in the small circle of the FTT, the specificity of skin color is diluted on a daily basis, and dark-skinned African businessmen are just ordinary “bosses”. Most Chinese working in FTZ do not refer to Africans as “black”, but rather as “foreigners”. A local shopkeeper in Guangzhou found that these “foreigners” did not want to be noticed by others and just wanted to live quietly in China.
Unlike the daytime foreign trade city, where Africans are always in a hurry with their bags, Africans in Dengfeng often walk in twos and threes, choosing a bag of Food from fruit stalls and grocery stores, and taking the initiative to slow down when they see people of similar color passing by. When they see people with similar skin color passing by, they will take the initiative to slow down their steps and check if they are acquaintances. Those who are familiar with each other will stand by the side of the road and chat for a while before returning to their respective hotels or rented houses.
Dengfeng Street, the former African restaurant is now closed
Since the epidemic, Jason’s business has become very bad. When he had nothing else to do, he would sit in his computer chair and stare, occasionally chatting with friends by voice on his cell phone, with a CD player playing songs at his feet. Security guards will flirt with him in Chinese words he understands, such as “trouble” and “boss,” while Chinese merchants will ask him to look at their goods in English.
“Africans.” A Chinese kid on a scooter passed by and shouted at Jason, who gave the kid a hug and said “African” back in Mandarin, to which the kid laughed.
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