Transgressing Racial Lines in the Name of Love: An Afro-Chinese Family Story in China

Abstract Thousands of migrants from African countries have settled in China since the early 2000s, particularly in Guangzhou in Guangdong Province. While this population has steadily declined over time, the situation was exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak. Referred to as “Africans in China” by the media, they have created a vibrant context for discursive and critical engagements with race, racism, and anti-Black racism in 21st-century China and more broadly in East Asia over the long term. African experiences in various Chinese cities have inspired blogs, vlogs, media reports, and documentaries. A corpus of scholarly works has also emerged, tracing racism and race ideologies in China. Some have attempted to determine if there is such a thing as Chinese racism. Through these discursive developments, China has defended its credential as a racism-intolerant state, either for geopolitical reasons or to appease the so-called African Friends. Interrogating the “racism in China” debate, Kudus Oluwatoyin Adebayo observes that this simplistic debate obscures how the immediate and long-term real-life impacts of the race/racism question may shape the lives of Afro-Chinese families. Based on his rich yet accessible ethnographic account following his interaction with a Nigerian-Chinese family since 2017, the author envisions an inevitable future awaiting China—an Afro-Chinese future—which is not talked about enough. The author focuses on how the race/racism discourse shapes the experiences of Africans and Chinese people who are transcending racial lines in the name of love and the future implications for these families in China.

Femi and Mei had been married for eight years when I met them in 2017.¹ They were a Nigerian-Chinese couple, residing in Guangzhou, South China. On that sunny Sunday at the entrance of the Dengfeng community by Xiaobei Lu, the couple drove their minibus to pick me up. Their two daughters occupied seats between the middle and back rows. Femi sat in the passenger seat next to Mei, who, I quickly learned, was taking a driving lesson. The drive toward Foshan was slow, with Mei behind the steering wheel and Femi offering instructions and criticizing his wife’s driving on the highway. This scene was just one of the many configurations of Afro-Chinese love and family in China.

Thousands of migrants from African countries have settled in China since the early 2000s, particularly in Guangzhou in Guangdong Province. While this population has steadily declined over time, the situation was exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak. Referred to as “Africans in China” by the media, they have created a vibrant context for discursive and critical engagements with race, racism, and anti-Black racism in twenty-first-century China and more broadly in East Asia over the long term. African experiences in various Chinese cities have inspired blogs, vlogs, media reports, and documentaries. A corpus of scholarly works has also emerged, tracing racism and race ideologies in China. Some have attempted to determine if there is such a thing as Chinese racism. Through these discursive developments, China has defended its credential as a racism-intolerant state, either for geopolitical reasons or to appease the so-called African Friends. As a researcher, I, too, have followed the “racism in China” debate and contributed my perspectives.

My fear, however, is that, in debating whether China is racist or not, the immediate and long-term real-life impacts of the race/racism question sometimes get lost in the rubble of narratives. I arrived at this view after more than five years of reflecting on my interaction with a Nigerian-Chinese family in 2017. From the story of this family, I have become concerned about an inevitable future awaiting China—an Afro-Chinese future—which is not talked about enough. In this piece, therefore, I focus on how the race/racism discourse shapes the experiences of Africans and Chinese people who are transcending racial lines in the name of love and the future implications for these families in China.

Loving beyond Race, Marriage without a Future

Femi grew up in Lagos, a commercial city in the heart of Southwestern Nigeria, where he attended school up to the tertiary level before leaving to start a business. He later traveled to France and returned to Nigeria. By 2004, Femi was regularly visiting China for business but did not permanently live there until 2009 when he married Mei. Mei was traveling to Zhenjiang when she met Femi on the train. Accompanied by her sister-in-law and a friend, Mei recalled that the journey was long. Femi smiled, greeted Mei, and then left. As Mei got bored, she decided to look for Femi in his carriage, hoping to practice her spoken English with a foreigner. Mei wanted to order a big bowl of watermelon and share it with Femi, who accepted the invitation. Reflecting on their first encounter, Mei said, “The first impression for me was like [Mei sighs], this foreigner is really direct. You know Chinese people; we are modest.” Femi would send her love messages shortly thereafter. Initially, their romance developed slowly, but it later accelerated, leading Mei to leave her hometown and live with Femi in another city.

In general, interracial marriages may present challenges, but the experiences of dealing with difficulties are more intense in a society like China, where sensitivity to racial differences is substantial and historically and culturally rooted. Mei’s father was initially against Femi’s interest in marrying Mei. Mei explained, “My dad was against this. You know, as a father, he had a lot to say. . . . As a foreigner, maybe he has a wife already, oh! You’ll be cheated [Mei makes a rumbling sound].” Like her father, Mei’s friends did not support the relationship at first. Mei’s father viewed being a foreigner as having a secret that could hurt Mei, making Femi seem suspicious.

However, Mei’s mother supported the union, though not without her reservations. “She was worried. . . . She just warned me to be very careful and that I should think about it very seriously.” Regardless, Mei was insistent and persistent. To win over her father, she mentored Femi to appreciate Chinese culture and family values. Femi’s competence in Chinese, being a proficient speaker, also helped him gain Mei’s father’s approval. 

Some of Femi’s Nigerian friends also discouraged him from marrying a Chinese woman. Their discouragement, however, was based on stereotypes, false beliefs, and the notion that there were no material benefits to marrying a Chinese citizen. For instance, some warned Femi that Chinese men were jealous of African men and could harm or even kill any African man for dating their women. Another warned that Femi would not be able to afford the dowry. Yet another told him that Chinese laws forbade marriage between citizens and foreigners. More importantly, Femi’s friends considered it crucial to assess whether marrying a Chinese woman offered material benefits in terms of improving a foreigner’s status in China and facilitating integration into the community. Femi remembered being told that he was wasting his time and money by marrying a Chinese woman because he could never become a citizen or a permanent resident. 

The couple fulfilled their ultimate desire to marry against all odds. In Femi’s recollection, the wedding ceremony was “a royal wedding.” However, after the wedding, Femi faced challenges in securing employment, as he did not have a work visa. Mei was also affected, losing some of the students she was teaching due to her choice of marrying a foreign spouse. Later, like thousands of Africans in Guangzhou City, Femi ventured into business. He believed that having a legitimate business would expedite his integration into Chinese society, in addition to marrying Mei and improving his language skills. Nevertheless, despite his work, marriage, and acculturative strategies, Femi still faced challenges in integrating into China. 

Is It “Those Our Brothers” or Is China Just a “Racist Society”?

For the most part, Femi was ambivalent about Chinese society and people. He often struggled to reconcile his feelings. One moment, he described how great China and Chinese people were, appreciating the country for allowing him to marry the woman he loved, raise children, and run his business; the next, he complained about the many challenges confronting him and his family and attributed them to China and its people.

Especially when complaining about the challenges he faces, Femi tried to make sense of them in an interesting way. Instead of invoking “China/Chinese racism” and blaming it for his personal and family-related challenges, Femi attributed the issues to “those our brothers,” meaning his fellow Nigerians. Specifically, he pointed to younger men who arrived from 2009 and engaged in illegal and anti-social behaviors. “I am tired of those our brothers, the way they do, they will fight, shout everywhere,” he said.

When we delved into more intimate conversations, Femi’s “sense-making” shifted to the topic of racism and anti-Black discrimination. Femi narrated how he depended on a student visa to support his stay for many years after marriage. To meet the terms of renewing his visa, Femi traveled for days to the school in Northern China to clock in and “be a student” for a few weeks. However, when Femi went to a public institution for visa renewal, he encountered discrimination and racist treatment. He complained about being screamed at and receiving only monthly visa extensions at a time despite being legally married to a Chinese woman. Femi also pointed out that he was not integrated into the public health system through insurance coverage. Although he could opt for private insurance, he understood that “the visa that they are giving to people don’t allow them to work; when you don’t work, you don’t have any means of livelihood to pay for your health or to be in a system that will allow you to enroll for health insurance.”

In all, with these shifts in his sense-making, Femi’s stories, with contributions from Mei, come to reflect a heightened awareness of the reality and impact of systemic anti-Black discrimination and racism in China. Nevertheless, nothing worries the couple more than the treatment of Black and multiracial individuals while raising Afro-Chinese children.

Raising Afro-Chinese Children in an Unwelcoming Society

Mei perceives that local Chinese people in the city tend to look down on non-Guangzhou people, and this sentiment is exacerbated for Chinese individuals who have married Black foreigners. She also shares numerous stories about her children experiencing racist attacks in school. These issues sometimes make Mei feel exhausted, leading her to express, “I just think sometimes that maybe I should give up.”

Mei’s daughters endure abuse for their appearance, particularly their hair and skin color. Mei shares, “When they see them, they will call names, hēi guǐ, Fēizhōu rén [black devil, African].” Femi chimes in and says, “Chinese people like to call Black people, ‘black devil.’” Inside or outside the school environment, kids often refer to Mei’s daughters as “Africans.” Mei recalls a moment when her first daughter started refusing to use the hair cream she usually applied. When she pressed to know why, her daughter explained that on the school bus, “some boys said the cream [in her hair] was smelly, that is why she doesn’t want to put [sic]. And like before, they laugh at her hair, that it is curly, big nose, the problem with the face, the color.”

As Mei talks about the hair incident, Femi is on the phone. At the same time, however, he is cursing at the culprits for humiliating his daughter. Responding to his cousin on the other side of the phone line, who lives in the US, Femi mentions that his daughter only told her mother about this incident. Femi is particularly upset because he is the one who ordered the hair cream—a coconut hair cream—through his cousin in the US. Hearing about the incident has reignited his fury all over again. He says that he would have gone to the school to cause trouble if he had known about it sooner.

Mei’s solution is to tell her daughter that the kids pointing at her are jealous. Femi, too, feels that he has no choice but to encourage his daughter by telling her she is the most beautiful person in the entire class. However, Femi goes further by asking his daughter if the Chinese kids’ fathers are as tall and strong as he is. He also recalls asking his daughter how old she was. When she replied, “eight,” Femi requested to see her class photo. Upon showing him the photo, Femi assured her that she was the tallest person in the class, even taller than her oldest classmate, to which she agreed and confirmed. In Femi’s effort to reassure her, her tallness became a point of pride, making her feel superior to the Chinese kids at her school. “I always talk to them psychologically and tell them not to worry, emphasizing that others are simply jealous of them.”

To protect their daughters from getting bullied, Mei immersed them in the Afro-Chinese community. “Kids of mixed families befriend one another. Even if they see one another for the first time, they play together, they are happy, unlike Chinese kids.” Nevertheless, Mei does not always have control over which playmates her children choose, even though she feels the need to pick friends for them.

While recognizing that some Chinese kids and their parents may exhibit racist behaviors, Mei is always careful not to generalize everything as so-called “anti-Black Chinese racism.” She believes that in China, “It is not easy to maintain your marriage if you marry a foreigner.” Still, the couple worries and wonders about the kind of future awaiting their children. Femi is concerned about how racism will impact their lives. While on the phone with his cousin in the US, Femi expresses that experiencing racism isolates a child and makes them mean or forces them to withdraw from their parents. Sometimes, he imagines what their lives might look like if the girls were raised in the US, where they would surely see many kids who look like themselves. Although Femi tries to make light of his worries, he says, “I am doing my best to train my girls […] to be free from being bullied.”

For Mei, her primary concern is how her daughters will grow up in China, fearing that “they may have to experience the challenges of racism.” Nevertheless, they have tasks to perform as parents, to “protect them and prepare them because they are not pure Chinese. They are African-Chinese. They are from two different cultures.” Mei believes that while it is still possible for them to avoid experiencing racism, as parents, they “must build them to be strong. Whatever they face, they should be strong.”

Even though Femi faces exclusions and racial discrimination, he remains partially optimistic and expresses love for Mei, describing her as “very supportive, mentally, spiritually.” Mei, too, values her own open-mindedness when it comes to racial relations. “The reason we can be together is that I’m not racist; I don’t say this is white, this is black. I believe humans are humans. Destiny brings us together.”

Of course, whether Chinese society appreciates Femi’s partial optimism or sees the world as Mei sees it is another matter entirely.

Making Way for Afro-Chinese Children in the World

Femi is conscious of his Blackness. “My face is not yellow. I am a dark-complexioned man. I don’t expect Chinese to say that I am a Chinese tomorrow,” he told me once. Nonetheless, he is often worried about what his children could hope for in China. From the choice of school to his deliberate approach to acquiring language competency and the choice of church, he plans for them to go beyond China while not neglecting their roots as part-Africans.

Although he was not a churchgoer, Femi allowed his children to attend a racially diverse church. During our discussions, Femi showed me a video recording of his daughters at church. When asked about the identity of the Sunday school teacher, he responded, “He is Black. But in the church, there are American, European, and all types of children. I go there occasionally to observe their progress.”

Regarding their daughters’ education, Femi often complains about the difficulty of paying for school, but he values the exclusion narratively. He believes that by not allowing his children to enjoy social services like “pure” Chinese kids, he is motivated to work harder and harder. Because of such exclusion, he believes his control over his claim to their two daughters is absolute. As he said, “When it is time for us to leave this country, the person who does not help me train my kids cannot tell me that my kids should stay back [in China]. My kids are going to school, I have the receipts, I have everything. . . . So I don’t care about them [the Chinese government].” 

In a sense, Femi and his wife are raising Afropolitans² in China.

Conclusion

Will China ever be ready to embrace its Afro-Chinese future? Since meeting Femi and Mei and their daughters in 2017, a lot has happened to them. The couple welcomed a third child. The family survived the COVID-19 outbreak, during which Africans in Guangzhou experienced discrimination and racism, leaving many Afro-Chinese couples questioning their future in Chinese society. Femi was even separated from Mei and their children when the Guangzhou City authorities mandated compulsory quarantine for Black people, despite not having traveled out of the city prior to or during the outbreak.

Sure, Femi and Mei love each other. Still, I always wonder how much burden they feel and carry in their minds regarding the future of their children in Chinese society. I ponder how much fear they conceal from me as a researcher and what they will never voice to each other because of their racially transgressive love and family.

Ultimately, China should be motivated to prepare for its Afro-Chinese future. Through the story of Femi and Mei, I envision the potential emergence of an Afro-Chinese identity that could develop a series of cracks in the dominant Chinese identity. Chinese individuals married to Africans may find themselves compelled to either align with or distance themselves from Afro-Chinese identity and interests. If Afro-Chinese exclusions persist in China, families with such heritage may develop unique private and public identities—one for the household and another for engaging with Chinese society. Moreover, there is a danger that Afro-Chinese parents are inadvertently teaching their children “Othering” as part of household socialization because Chinese society may not fully accept them. Exploring how this possibility might shape future identity construction and racialism in China will be particularly interesting.

Notes