Feeling at home in the Chocolate City: an exploration of

place-making practices and structures of belonging amongst

Africans in Guangzhou
Roberto CASTILLO
ABSTRACT Over the last two decades, the shifts brought about by the emergence of Asia as a key
player in global capitalism have led to countless Africans opting for Asian destinations as part of
their trade and migration strategies. The implications of the constant ebb and flow of African entre-
preneurs in Southern China and the transnational trajectories, connections, and practices they
enable have been relatively understudied. This article focuses on place-making practices and struc-
tures of belonging surrounding those Africans living in (and circulating through) Guangzhou.
Drawing on my fieldwork, I locate possibilities for place-making and belonging within transnational
multiethnic microcommunities and highlight practices that have emerged from the assembling of
transnational and translocal flows in residential clusters, community organisations, and religious
congregations. I contend that the presence and intermingling of diverse transient subjects (both
African and Chinese) nurtures alternative imaginations of self, place, home, and belonging
that alter extant notions of national and cultural identity, ethnicity, and race in twenty-first
century Asia.
KEYWORDS: Africans in Guangzhou, place-making, belonging, transnational, migration
A new land of opportunities
China is the new land of opportunities, I am told by Chuck, a 33-year-old Igbo from Imo in
Nigeria. After attending a Sunday evening Christian Pentecostal congregation, Chuck picks
me up to go to the restaurant he owns in the vast Guangda Clothing Wholesale Market in the
north of Guangzhou. Lost inside this massive compound of warehouses and stores is the
newly opened Guangda African Marketa commercial space allocated by the citys auth-
orities to leaders and representatives of the various African communities.
Chuck first came to China, without any contacts, in 2006; then, after moving back and
forth for two years, made Guangzhou his operating base in 2008. He recalls that, in the begin-
ning, it was not easy. The thing is that there is no real employment in China, here you have
to employ yourself, be creative. After almost five years in the country, Chuck has managed
to become a restaurant owner (Guangda African Restaurant), a trade representative (mediat-
ing business deals between Chinese and Africans), and a fashion designer (designing and
manufacturing clothes that he sells in his shops in China and Nigeria), along with actively
participating in the Nigerian community offices activities.
Whilst drinking a beer in his restauranta richly decorated space that juxtaposes
modern design with two gargantuan posters of fauna from the African savannahI muse
that Chuck and I may belong to the same generation of young people from developing
countries that grew up in a world where the possibilities for migration were relatively
rigid. If you needed (or wanted) to go abroad, the North was, almost inevitably, your
only choice. As a middle-class Mexican, I could have journeyed north to seek employment
Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2014
Vol. 15, No. 2, 235257, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2014.911513
2014 Taylor & Francis
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in the United States or Canada, or perhaps, with the luck I have had in Asia, been educated
in a university somewhere on the American East Coast. Chuck, on the other hand, could have
gone to Europe, South Africa or, perhaps, the Middle East. Times have changed, however.
Both of us arrived to China in 2006 (without previous knowledge of or connections to the
region) and began juggling a plethora of different visas to manage the then highly erratic
Chinese visa system, whilst trying to generate a measure of stability along with work/
business opportunities. From all appearances, Chucks entrepreneurial prowess (with his res-
taurant, representation office, fashion shop, and import-export business), clearly exceeds
mineat 33, I am wading through a PhD and living on a scholarship. China, or more specifi-
cally what we both knew from international media about Chinas growth/rise, represented a
refreshing (albeit challenging, risky and unstable) opportunity to build our lives in less estab-
lished/traditional, yet more transnational, ways. Over the last 15 years, the relative relaxation
of foreign entry and settlement in China and the increased accessibility and affordability of
international air travel, have led to waves of foreigners (like Chuck and I) arriving in
search of material and immaterial wellbeing.
Located within the context of the impact of diasporic cultural globalisation in twenty-first
century Asia, this article is an exploration of certain elements that structure the contemporary
presence of Africans in China. Drawing on preliminary findings in my fieldwork, I place par-
ticular emphasis on three issues crucial to sense-making in the city: place-making processes
(some of the ways in which Africans intersect with Chinese on a spatial level); structures of
belonging (built through organisations and communities); and strategies for settlement and
mobility (developed to counteract what is perceived as institutional barriers to their presence
in China). In the following pages, I argue that the continued and recurrent presence of Afri-
cans in Guangzhou, and their connections with other Africans and Chinese of diverse ethni-
cities, have resulted in the unintended emergence of multiethnic catering networks that
generate the necessary spaces for African communities and organisations (networks of
support) to materialise. These networks of support, in turn, facilitate place-making processes
and enhance the development of structures of belonging, which are central to the production
of identities and the articulation of (sometimes transient) feelings of at-homeness, amongst
Africans in the city. I contend that this dialectical process is central to the reproducibility of
the Sino-African ensemble in Guangzhou. Moreover, I claim that a better understanding of
the complex transnational and translocal dynamics enmeshed in this case study is crucial
to make sense of the implications that the rise of Asia has had, and will have, in Asia,
Africa and the world.
The article is structured as follows: in the next section, I locate this case study within the
macro-narrative of the contemporary rapprochement between Africa and China, before
tracing the histories and types of journeys that have brought individuals from all over
Sub-Saharan Africa to Guangzhou. In the second section, I discuss issues related to the lab-
elling of Africans in Guangzhou as migrants/immigrants, and then outline some of the pat-
terns and behaviours displayed by Africans in transnational settings. Finally, I examine how
place-making processes are undertaken at the individual and spatial levels and how this
place-making structures senses of belonging. Throughout all these sections, I illustrate how
the aforementioned networks are crucial devices in the reproduction of the African presence
in Guangzhou.
A cautionary note on terminology is in order here. While I have elsewhere criticised the
use of categories such as African and Chinese, as they tend to flatten out diversity and
complexity, I still use these categories in some situations, as they are efficient discursive
tools for explaining things. When needed, however, I unpack both categories and refer
specifically to the various ethnicities and nationalities subsumed into them.
Before proceeding, I must state that while I have started by comparing Chucks journey
to China with mine, this article will not be a comparison of our experiences in this country.
236 Roberto Castillo
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