As a foreigner, the first thing you notice once you come to China are those gazes all around you. For an African, it might be really uncomfortable to have all these people looking at you. But as you learn the language and get accustomed, you come to understand why everybody was staring at you. Moreover, you understand, you are not the only one average Chinese people will stare at. China is a special place with a special way of doing things. The bottom line is to get use to it, which is not that easy when you have been brought up in a culture which is so much different from the chinese. In Benin for example, it is considered derogatory and impolite to stare at people, even worse if they are strangers. Eye contact and staring are commonly avoided. There might be a bit of a contradiction here because Chinese people, even though they like to stare at everything that is different from them, will still blush once you stare back or keep constant eye contact.
The exact beginning and the first contact between Africans and Chinese is quite recent, unlike the rest of the world, particularly Europeans who have been in touch with central Asia through the many trips of Marco Polo and his family, coming to Asia from Venice on the Silk Road as early as the 1260s. The first contact between Chinese and Africans might be the travels of Admiral Zheng He of Yunnan in the Ming dynasty (in the 1400s) to the eastern coast of Africa, where, still nowaday you can meet asian looking african or afro chinese, result of those chinese sailors of the expedition who have decided to stay in Africa. The relatively recent first contact between Africans and Chinese is a political event – the Bandung Conference of 1955.This is often evoked by Afro-Sinologists and Sino-Africanists to mark the beginning of Africa-China relations. Obviously the first documented contact between Chinese and Africans happened less than 60 years ago. Thus, the average Chinese will stare even more at a person of African descent. Unfortunately, those gazes are understood by many as derogatory and impolite.
The mass media does not seem to be helping to increase awareness about Africa, its wonderful people and its rich cultural diversity. I still remember the African nations soccer cup, a few years ago in Ghana. Most of the Chinese media focused much more on the pirate activities of the coast of Somalia, which they depicted without interest to the issue roots as per usual, rather than the positive events in the Accra stadiums.
The good thing is that when you stay around long enough, you learn how eager Chinese people can be in learning about different places in the world. They usually tend to be over-helping just to ask you few questions about your native place and your culture, to confirm or invalidate what they have seen on TV, heard on radio etc. Chinese people want to learn from real people, real experience and are quite amazed to know that Africa has such a long history, as long as the Chinese one. No one ever told them about the great Mossi or Soso empires, the legendary empires of Timbuktu and Oyo in West Africa, the south eastern Zulu empire which is seen like a great example of anti colonial resistance, to name just a few.
Eventually people understand that Africa is not just about animals, guerilla wars, starvation or whatever the media want to make believe to make money out of ordinary people suffering.
Edited by Thimoty Seekings and Published in Focus on Dalian (August~September Issue)