BLACK MAN IN BEIJING
Sting felt out of place as an ‘Englishman in New York’. He had no idea …
‘H EY you, how many wife you have?” The scrawny young woman grabbed my wrist and shoved a piece of silk in my face. It was an item I had already seen a million times at this busy market in central Beijing.
“You must buy, is nice,” she insisted, brushing off my polite protestations.
My patience, normally a trusted travelling companion, had deserted me by then.
It had been a difficult week in the Chinese capital and the prospect of two more weeks in the country depressed me.
British rock star Sting penned a hit song in the ’80s about being an Englishman in New York. He was lucky: try being a black man in Beijing.
In our case, make it 23 Africans from 10 different countries criss-crossing mainland China.
Since the world’s been reduced to a global village and China is aggressively marketing itself on the African continent, you would think the average Chinese national would have had some exposure to folks from our part of the planet, who generally tend to be of a deeper melanin content.
But the stares were direct and intrusive. There was no attempt at subtlety; no stealing a glance at the strange, dark creature walking their streets. There were just blank stares or, worse, requests for photos.
A Kenyan colleague quipped that he would start charging for photos, taking advantage of his newly acquired star status.
Our two-and-a-half-week tour of China included a week in Beijing, with stopovers in Hefei and Xi’an, and ended in the financial capital, Shanghai.
China is not for the faint-hearted. The language barrier, the cultural differences, the food and the restricted internet access can make it frustrating for travellers. When they are made to feel like the only dark-skinned people in cities of 12-million plus, it can be even more painful.
Our group of African journalists mostly met for the first time on arrival in Beijing. And it wasn’t long before the egos came out.
The biggest drama queen turned out to be the Nigerian, a diva of note, this gentleman. By the end of the trip, everyone, including our generous Chinese hosts, was keen to see the back of him. We should have seen the warning signs from his grandiose title: “TV resource person and columnist extraordinaire”. Whatever than means.
A deeply delusional cat. At our modest hotel in Beijing, his bed wasn’t big enough or soft enough, his room wasn’t presidential enough. At every turn, he reminded us how important he was back home. He claimed to be a shoe-in for Nigerian finance minister at the next cabinet reshuffle.
The West Africans provided many of the light moments, the two Liberians
The stares were intrusive … no attempt at subtlety
being the Laurel and Hardy of our group. They spoke quickly, in Monrovian accents so thick it was near impossible to make out what they were saying. I nodded a lot, just to be polite.
The East Africans, a mixture of Kenyans and Tanzanians, formed their own Swahili-speaking eastern bloc. They didn’t have to say it out loud, but nonSwahili speakers were not welcome.
We Southern Africans — South Africans, Namibians, Zimbabweans and a Zambian — attempted to form our own southern bloc, but language and political differences made it an uncomfortable alliance. In the end, country allegiances prevailed over regional ties. One of the Namibians, a former Swapo guerilla with a sharp eye for a cold beer, tried to impose radical views on the rest. It almost ended in blows.
China wasn’t all depressing, it had its moments. But touring it in a little bus with a group of fellow scribes from my continent? Not in my future plans.