Somalian’s new documentary shows Africans achieving success in China
Hodan Osman Abdi, a Somalian in China, has many identities, all of which have a direct connection to China.
Abdi has lived in China for 12 years, and is a teacher, researcher and businesswoman. But since 2016, she has taken on a new identity: the director of the documentary Africans in Yiwu, which she made with Chinese director Zhang Yong.
The six-episode documentary, which took two years to shoot, documents the lives of over 20 Africans in Yiwu, East China’s Zhejiang Province, which is now becoming the world’s largest wholesale market and a hub for China-Africa trade as its African community thrives.
The protagonists in her documentary are all ordinary Africans who are pursuing their dreams in China, including successful African traders who have made their mark in Yiwu, those who are fighting stigma and misunderstanding through cross-cultural marriages, and African students trying to land a job in China’s competitive job market.
Abdi said she hopes the documentary will change people’s stereotypical and negative impression of China-African relations and document the real lives of Africans in China through the perspectives of Chinese and Africans. “Actually, Africa is a beautiful continent, and Africans in China are working hard,” Abdi told Qianjiang Evening News in Chinese.
Coming to China
Although Abdi identifies herself as a Somalian, she was born and raised in Saudi Arabia after her parents moved to the affluent Arab country in order to flee Somalia’s civil war.
Just like many African students in China, it was trade that first brought her here. After graduating from high school in Saudi Arabia, Abdi arrived in China in 2006, following in the footsteps of her uncle who opened a trade company in Yiwu. After studying Chinese for a year at Yangzhou University, she applied for a bachelor’s degree in business in Zhejiang Normal University.
During her time in Yiwu, Abdi saw many Africans coming to China with nothing but going on to achieve great success. “Why are there no films that show these people?” she told China Youth Daily.
While Abdi’s initial intention to come to China was to study business and help with her uncle’s company, as her knowledge of China deepened, she gradually changed her mind.
In 2016, after graduating with a PhD degree in media in Zhejiang University, Abdi refused job invitations from several multinational companies, choosing instead to become a teacher and researcher at the Institute of African Studies at Zhejiang Normal University, hoping she could help deepen China and Somalia’s economic and cultural exchanges.
Abdi’s 12 years in China were also a time when relations between China and Africa accelerated. From 2005 to 2014, the number of African students in China rose 34 percent annually, according to a report by CUCAS, an online portal for international students applying to Chinese universities.
Working habits
In 2016, Abdi, then a PhD candidate, was approached by Zhang Yong, director of The Center for African Film and Television Studies at Zhejiang Normal University, who invited her to make a documentary with him.
Abdi, who’s interested in filmmaking herself, immediately agreed.
The most challenging task as a director, Abdi said, was to convince her protagonists to agree to appear in front of the camera and communicate with them throughout the shooting process. Before each shooting session, Abdi would bombard interviewees with 200 to 300 questions, just so that they would get used to the camera.
Her purpose was to let the audience see Africans as they naturally are, rather than when they’re anxious or afraid.
In the documentary, Abdi and her team try to portray these people in a human way, allowing the audience to feel for these characters.
“Whatever one’s skin color and wherever one comes from, everyone has his dreams and goals, and everyone will experience ups and downs and hopes to gain understanding from others,” she told Zhejiang Daily.
Working with a Chinese crew also allowed Abdi to get used to China’s work culture. Abdi jokes that Zhang worked from 7 am to 10 pm every day including weekends, but it was difficult for her to get used to that pace in the beginning.
“So in the past two years I haven’t had a weekend, and I literally worked every day from 7 till 10 and sometimes 11 pm. There’s work to do and you have to do it. Just keeping up with the pace of work and how people move is very difficult, especially for people like us,” she said during a public screening of the documentary last year.
New identity
Last September, Abdi took on yet another identity. She was appointed a Special Presidential Advisor on national development and China-Somalia cooperation by the Somalian government, becoming one of the youngest presidential advisors in Somalia’s history.
As a presidential advisor, Abdi said one of her main responsibilities would be to provide counseling on how to boost investment and economic cooperation between China and Somalia.
She also hopes to bring China’s experience in lifting people out of poverty to Somalia.
One of her recent reads is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s book Up and Out of Poverty. Although the book is about poverty alleviation in China in the 1980s and 1990s, Abdi said a lot of the issues mentioned in the book are exactly the same as what Africa is facing today, and it can serve as an important reference for African countries.