African Immigrants Talk About Life in Beijing
August 27, 2012
Chinese companies have invested heavily in Africa in recent years and trade among Asian and African nations has soared. As their economic ties have grown, so have the number of African immigrants to China, now estimated at around half a million people.
Turay Lamin owns Africa House, the sole restaurant serving pan-African cuisine in Beijing. Although many of Turay’s staff and friends are new to China, he is not. Turay moved here in 1989 and says China was a part of his life even as a child... in Sierra Leone.
“There was a time when the Chinese were building a cross border-bridge about 10 minutes away from where I grew up and there were so many. That was the first time I saw so many non-Africans,” Lamin said.
The construction workers were also the reason he began learning Chinese at 13.
“My home was a bread-making one, a kind of catering, and we were supplying them with bread. They actually gave me a book, a Chinese book. That’s when I first learned the word 'xie xie' (thank you),” Lamin said.
Many Africans say they come to China for the opportunity to build their entrepreneurial dreams. Adams Bodomo is a professor at Hong Kong University, who spoke to VOA via Skype.
“These two parts of the world, China and Africa, are having closer and closer relations at the government level. You are also having closer and closer relations at the people to people level,” Bodomo said.
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