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Published: October 6th 2012
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This past weekend I was privileged to help organize two lectures at South China Normal University and Jinan University for Professor Adams Bodomo. Bodomo teaches at Hong Kong University and was launching a book titled
Africans in China.
click here for the book
In his lectures he presented photos of Guangzhou's Yiexiu District as central locations for African Culture in Guangzhou. Many students had never seen the locations before. Students were not learning so much about African culture as they were learning about the culture of their own city.
The following Sunday I was honored to attend a luncheon at a new restaurant in Guangda called, 广大非洲餐厅。 Guangda is a neighborhood at the edge of Baiyun District near Shunde. It's an endless landscape of garment ware houses. This upscale restaurant creates a tremendous contrast.
A majority of Guangzhou's African community are business professionals, though the book is marketed to young researchers. The book launch created a rare fusion between academics and business people. Most of the research he did for the book was in Guangzhou between 2008-2009 with the help of a research team from Hong Kong University.
Here is an English translation of my interview with Professor Bodomo
prior to his arrival.
Click here for Chinese Hong Kong University Professor visits Guangzhou to launch new book, ‘Africans in China.’
(Article first printed September 26, Guangzhou News Express)
By George McKibbens
Hong Kong Linguistics Professor Adams B. Bodomo is will be launching a new book this week at South China Normal University and Jinan University. The book is titled “Africans in China,” most of the research for the book was collected here in Guangzhou between 2008 and 2009. Professor Bodomo led a team of young researchers from Hong Kong University to conduct interviews with Guangzhou’s African Community along with other cities, like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, Yiwu, and Beijing.
This book gives a new perspective on Guangzhou’s local culture. It’s a fascinating cultural study most of the research done in Guangzhou. In the past ten years several books have been published about Chinese influence in Africa.
With so many major developments led by Chinese companies, such as the Africa Cup Football stadium in Gabon, the Organization of African Unity Building built in Etiopia’s Capital City Addidas Ababa, and China’s Civil Engineering Company’s High Speed Rail Link (高铁)which will connect Nigeria to Kenya. China in Africa
after the lecture
From left to right Yuan Ding, Sabrina Williams, George McKibbens, Sir Janice, Adams Bodomo is a big story, but not much attention is given to Africans in China.
Little attention is given to Africans who come to China and struggle to build a new life, and the fascinating mix of culture in cities like Guangzhou. Through email correspondences I interviewed Professor Bodomo and asked him when he knew he first wanted to write the book.
Bodomo:
“The idea came as soon as I arrived in HK (to take up a position at HKU in 1997) and asked for an African barber shop and I was referred to the ChunKing Mansions (equivalent of Tianxiu in GZ) where there are many people from many parts of the world, including Africans and South Asians. At first I just wanted to write an article, but then I discovered that there were even more African communities in other Chinese cities, so I started thinking of a book-length publication.”
With a team of young researchers Bodomo conducted surveys in Guangzhou’s Yuexiu district neighborhood were young men, 25-30 years old, and involved in the garment trade. Though Guangzhou’s African community seems dominated by traders, he pointed out that there are many communities
of students, teachers, cultural ambassadors, and other professions. Most Africans in Guangzhou hail from Nigeria or Ghana, while in Yiwu most Africans are Maghreb from North Africa, while in Beijing and Shanghai communities are from many different places. I asked him if as an academic he felt like an outsider interviewing Guangzhou’s African community.
“No and yes!” Bodomo replied. “No, I didn’t feel as an outsider since I was dealing with my fellow Africans and found it quite easy to approach them. But, yes, I sometimes found myself an outsider since I don’t belong to this business community. At first, some people, especially people from Ghana, my country of origin, thought I was an embassy official coming to gather info. But when they got to know I was doing academic research they were quite relaxed and also when I trained my Chinese and African students/research assistants about techniques of field research and how to earn informants trust, it was quite straightforward to administer the questionnaires. One lesson from my work for any academic is that to be successful you need a multicultural and multilingual team of researchers. I had both Africans and Chinese, men and women, doing the research and thus getting multiple perspectives from the community.”
As an educator myself I’ve used Bodomo’s articles and chapters from his book as teaching tools for my course in Sino-African relations at 华市,but I’m not the only teacher in Guangzhou interested in this story. When talking with my friends at Jinan University professor 张振江 was also excited about his book launch, and together we’ve scheduled two appearances on both our campuses.
Professor Bodomo will give a lecture on Thursday September 27
th at 8pm in the Social Sciences building at 8pm, and on Friday the 28
th he’ll cross Zhongshan 7 Road and give a lecture at SCNU’s History and Culture Building. Both lectures are free and it will be a great experience for everyone.
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