An estimated 500,000 African migrants live in China, taking advantage of the People’s Republic’s rapid economic growth. They are mainly middlemen – traders who buy from Chinese wholesalers, supplying Africa with cheap goods that can be anything from hair extensions to Gucci knock-offs, in a “pax economica” where both sides benefit.
The Chinese call these African migrants “hei gui” – black ghosts – and in this intriguing travelogue, British-Nigerian writer Noo Saro-Wiwa discovers what their lives are like. Her base is the city of Guangzhou in southern China, in the Xiaobei and Sanyuanli neighbourhoods, locally known as “chocolate city”, that is Asia’s largest African community.
Her book is a brave, funny and sometimes perilous investigation into the unknown. Saro-Wiwa meets people from the African diaspora: goods traders on short-term visas; students; a Ghanaian cardiac surgeon; a nightclub dancer from Niger; a Kenyan schoolteacher; and mixed-race families, where Chinese wives speak English with Nigerian accents. In a memorable passage, Saro-Wiwa visits an African Pentecostal church, tolerated by the Communist Party as long as they don’t proselytise. The pastor encourages his congregation to thrive in this foreign land, to “dream big!”.
As a woman travelling alone, Saro-Wiwa is candid about the seedier side too. Drug dealers and visa overstayers sometimes proposition her, as in these mainly male communities a thirst for women pervades a lonely existence. Political correctness is a foreign concept in China, and she writes of the curiosity and prejudice black visitors endure.
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The daughter of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, Noo was born in Nigeria but raised between England and her parents’ homeland. Her awareness, of her own privilege, moving from moneyed Western tourist to camaraderie with these migrants is what makes this book engaging. At times, I wished her to stay longer so she could build on her connections – something visa restrictions do not allow.
Overall, it is Saro-Wiwa’s understanding of our increasingly globalised world, of the in-between spaces where cultures overlap, that gives Black Ghosts it’s contemporary outlook and spirited intelligence.
Gráinne Lyons is the author of Wild Atlantic Women: Walking Ireland’s West Coast, published by New Island Books
