Art Barr
INVADING SOHH CHAMPION
Afro-Chinese marriages boom in Guangzhou: but will it be 'til death do us part'?
Guangzhou is witnessing many Afro-Chinese marriages, but the mainland's lack of citizenship rights for husbands and a crackdown on foreign visas means families live in fear of being torn apart, writes Jenni Marsh
Jennifer Tsang and Eman Okonkwo at their wedding in Guangzhou in April. Photo: Jenni Marsh
Eman Okonkwo's foot-tapping at the altar is not a sign of nerves. The groom's palms aren't sweaty, there are no pre-wedding jitters and certainly no second thoughts. Today he is realising a dream imagined by countless African merchants in Guangzhou: he is marrying a Chinese bride.
Seven days earlier, Jennifer Tsang's family was oblivious to their daughter's romance. Like many local women dating African men, the curvaceous trader from Foshan, who is in her late 20s - that dreaded "leftover woman" age - had feared her parents would be racially prejudiced.
Today, though - having tentatively given their blessing - they snuck into the underground Royal Victory Church, in Guangzhou, looking over their shoulders for police as they entered the downtown tower block. Non-state-sanctioned religious events like this are illegal on the mainland.
Okonkwo, 42, doesn't have a single relative at the rambunctious Pentecostal ceremony, but is nevertheless delighted.
"Today is so special," beams the Nigerian, "because I have married a Chinese girl. And that makes me half-African, half-Chinese."
In Guangzhou, weddings like this take place every day. There are no official figures on Afro-Chinese marriages but visit any trading warehouse in the city and you will see scores of mixed-race couples running wholesale shops, their coffee-coloured, hair-braided children racing through the corridors.
Watch: When Africa meets China in Guangzhou
While Okonkwo's dream of becoming Chinese through matrimony is futile - the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau (PSB) denies African husbands any more rights than a tourist - his children, should he have any and they be registered under Tsang's name, will possess a hukou residency permit and full Chinese citizenship.
The relationship with Africa that China has so aggressively courted for economic gain - 2012 saw a record US$198 billion of trade between the pair - is producing an unexpected return: the mainland's first mixed-race generation with blood from a distant continent and the right to be Chinese.
"CHOCOLATE CITY" OR "Little Africa", as it has been dubbed by the Chinese press, is a district of Guangzhou that is home to between 20,000 and 200,000, mostly male, African migrants (calculations vary wildly due to the itinerant nature of many traders and the thousands who overstay their visas).
Africans began pouring into China after the collapse of the Asian Tigers in 1997 prompted them to abandon outposts in Thailand and Indonesia. By exporting cheap Chinese goods back home, traders made a killing, and word spread fast. Guangzhou became a promised land.
It is easy to believe that every African nation is represented here, with the Nigerian, Malian and Guinean communities the most populous. But Little Africa is a misnomer; in the bustling 7km stretch from Sanyuanli to Baiyun, in northern Guangzhou, myriad ethnicities co-exist.
Uygurs serve freshly baked Xinjiang bread to Angolan women balancing shopping on their heads while Somalis in flowing Muslim robes haggle over mobile phones before exchanging currency with Malians in leather jackets, who buy lunch from Turks sizzling tilapia on street grills, and then order beer from the Korean waitress in the Africa Bar. Tucked away above a shop-lined trading corridor, the bar serves food that reminds Africans of home - egusi soup, jollof rice, fried chicken.
Whereas Chungking Mansions conceals Hong Kong's low-end trading community, in dilapidated Dengfeng village - Little Africa's central thoroughfare - the merchants, supplied by Chinese wholesalers, are highly visible. And it's in this melee of trade where most Afro-Chinese romances blossom.
“Today is so special … because I have married a Chinese girl. And that makes me half-African, half-Chinese”
Amadou Issa came to China in 2004. We meet in Lounge Coffee, a hangout popular with African men who like a cigarette with their croissant, while a Celine Dion CD plays in the background. Through the nicotine haze, the 34-year-old from Niger - rated by the United Nations as one of the world's least developed nations - tells me he arrived at Baiyun International Airport with US$300, simply wanting "to survive".
Police drive though Little Africa in Guangzhou. Photo: Jenni Marsh
Today, he owns a five million yuan (HK$6.3 million) flat in Zhujiang New Town, Guangzhou's smartest district, drives a car worth US$64,000 and speaks Putonghua. Issa ships 50 to 200 containers home per year - full of construction materials, because "they're the most lucrative" - and makes an average US$2,000 on each container.
Police drive though Little Africa in Guangzhou. Photo: Jenni MarshSo, there is another guy with my name.
Cool.
Art Barr
. How do you kill baby girls then wonder why there's a drought 
China is no place to be hard on hoes, women in China are now in complete control due to the huge gender gap. There is a huge scarcity of p*ssy in China.
