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Draft paper V.1.

2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo



Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite "


African musicians in search of the Chinese Dream: beyond the
narratives of trade and immigration


Roberto CASTILLO


Over the last decade, the number of Africans arriving in Guangzhou (and surrounding cities) has
seen no parallel in the history of the region. As African presence in the city remains a significant
foreign presence, the number of Africans involved in different segments of the cultural scene has
gradually increased. Drawing from 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork amongst African
musicians in the city, this talk is an exploration of their trajectories, entanglements, hopes and
possibilities as they attempt to become celebrities both in China and beyond. In an attempt to
shift the focus away from the economic discourses that underwrite most accounts of 'Africans in
China', in this talk I argue that in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of African
presence in the region, it is crucial that we look into personal aspirations - and a little bit beyond
the pervasive trading and immigration narratives.


Personal aspirations: beyond the narrative of trade
Over the last fifteen years, as a consequence of the sustained economic engagements
between African countries and the PRC,
1
along with Chinas post-WTO gradual
relaxation of policies on foreign mobility (entry and housing),
2
countless Africans have
arrived to the southern metropolis of Guangzhou in the search for material and
immaterial wellbeing.
3
While trading is crucial in the lives of many Africans in the city,
and a number of researchers have focused on trade related activities (see Muller &
Rainer, 2013; Bertoncelo & Bredeloup, 2007; Bredeloup, 2012; Mathews & Yang, 2012;
Haugen, 2011; Le Bail, 2009; Li, Lyons, & Brown, 2012), I contend that the sole and
pervasive focus on trade reinforces notions of Africans in the city as merely profit
seeking subjects on the outlook for comparative advantages (Bertoncello & Bredeloup,
2007: 101). In the prevailing economistic narratives, Africans in Guangzhou are
universalised as a particular kind of subject of neoliberalism: mobile (diasporic)
traders/exporters that come to China to buy things, export (ship or carry) them back to
Africa, and then profit before returning to China perfect cogs in the wheel of South-
to-South economic globalisation/development. While I in no way intend to deny the
importance of trade for most Africans in the city (and I do believe that structural forces
in the study of transnationality and mobility around this case study require attention), in
this paper I argue that the overarching trading narrative (and its emphasis on structure)
has left little (or no) space for issues of agency, emotion and aspiration to enter the
debate. In other words, the explanations provided by extant research have failed to
interrogate the not-so-structural rationales behind trade: scant attention has been given
to the personal drives, desires, and passions that often lead individuals to engage into
transnational movement/activities. Moreover, I argue that knowledge production
informed by economistic lenses has precluded other types of imaginings and
conceptualisations about African presence in the city. It is my contention then that new
narratives (or more diverse ones) are needed narratives that do not render individuals
and their stories flat, or confuse their passions, desires and aspirations with their trading
strategies and rational calculations. Hence, in an attempt to shift the focus away from the
economic discourses that underwrite most literature on African presence in China, in this
Draft paper V.1.2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo

Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite #
paper I explore the widely overlooked area of personal aspirations. I do this from an
ethnographic perspective and by placing an emphasis on certain transnational strategies
that individuals design in order to fulfil their aspirations.
While aspirations are often imbricated with economies and economic discourses,
they are not necessarily economic calculations; and, it would be misleading or unfair to
frame them as such. Having said this, my analysis of aspirations does not ignore or
disregard the importance of economics. Indeed, the story presented in this paper shows
how certain economic forces traverse, articulate, fuel and constrain aspirations. Drawing
from my year-long sustained ethnographic fieldwork amongst African musicians in
Guangzhou, in these pages I follow the story of Sky
4
, a well-known Nigerian Igbo singer,
event organiser, entrepreneur, businessman and father, who has lived in the city for over
eight years actively pursuing his dream of breaking through into the Chinese music
market. Based on his life story, I illustrate how music and aspirations are not necessarily
ancillary to trade, and/or secondary to economic considerations (as extant narratives
would be inclined to suggest). Indeed, I contend that for some Africans in Guangzhou
trade is regarded (and utilised) not as an end in itself, but as a tool to achieve other (more
important) mid and long-term objectives.
5

Aspirations are crucial arenas where the rationales behind transnational
movement are gestated, developed, reproduced and transmitted. I conceptualise
aspirations as drivers (i.e. hopes and/or desires) caught between the burdens of everyday
life, and the imaginations we have about possible futures. Often, as Bunnell & Goh
(2012: 1) suggest, these drivers give temporal direction to passions and energies and have
the power to move and motivate people. Put another way, aspirations are sense-making
(narrative) tools that give meaning and course to our journeys. Indeed, as anthropologist
Arjun Appadurai (2004) suggests, aspirations can be thought of as navigational devices
that help certain individuals to work through a series of obstacles to achieve their goals
or reach for their dreams. For many individuals, aspirations function as critical
transformative drives that not only have the potential to help them find the necessary
resources to contest and alter their living conditions, as Appadurai (2004: 59) explains,
but that unveil possibilities for new ways of being and becoming. In his essay on the
capacity to aspire as a cultural capacity (in the context of Indian poverty), Appadurai
(2004) suggests that rather than mere rational calculations produced by individual actors,
aspirations form part of wider systems of ideas that are assembled contingently by a
multiplicity of actors. Building upon Appadurais notion of aspirations as never simply
individual and as products of the interactions of discourses, traditions, family matters,
educations, imaginations, and beliefs about life, death and the self (the thick of social
life) (2004: 67), this paper (part of a wider piece) is an attempt to sketch the contours of
individual and collective horizons of hope, desire, and possibility (Bunnell & Goh, 2012:
1) or, what I call, affective landscapes of aspiration amongst Africans in Guangzhous
music scene. Finally, by sketching out these landscapes, I intend to take up the task,
recommended by Bunnell and Goh, of conceptualis[ing] the cultural forces that drive
people to build and rebuild their worlds in the face of often daunting challenges (2012:
1). By doing so, I hope to provide a more complex and nuanced account of the lives and
experiences of Africans in Guangzhou, and a better understanding (both conceptually
and empirically) of how individuals actually navigate their social spaces (Appadurai,
2004: 84), and guide their transnational journeys.


Guangzhou as a crossroads of multiple mobilities and aspirations
Now, some contextualisation is needed. Guangzhou has a long history as a trading centre
in southern China, and its historical and contemporary importance in (re)connecting
Draft paper V.1.2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo

Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite $
several Chinese economic processes to those of other parts of the world cannot be
overstated. Every year, countless individuals from across the country, and the world
over, arrive in the city looking for opportunities in the many transprovincial and
transnational value chains that converge there. Arguably, Guangzhou and its surrounding
urban centres are sites of heightened mobilities exemplars of the contemporary
intersections and interactions between individuals on the transnational and the translocal
move in China.
6
These interactions have gradually resulted in the emergence of highly
visible multiethnic social spaces and in the articulation of several incipient but thriving
subeconomies in the city: take for instance foods, transportation, and entertainment,
along with informal exchange markets and certain illegal activities, amongst others, in
which foreign and local subjects interact with varying degrees of intensity (see Castillo,
2014).
7

However, in order to understand the complexity of the mobilities intersecting in
the emergence of these spaces, a rescaling of the notions of the city and of the
migrant/immigrant is needed. If only for a moment we think of the city/region beyond
the traditional nested scales of city/region/country and think of it as a crucial site of
pilgrimage, or a crossroads, in (and through) which multiple transnational and translocal
(i.e. foreign and internal) flows of human bodies, things, technologies, beliefs and
aspirations converge, then the multiple human (im)mobilities that crisscross the
city/region can be seen from a different perspective. This is, if only for a moment, again,
we think of individuals on the move (migrants, if you want) beyond the lens of
methodological nationalism (the practice of using the nation state as a natural unit of
analysis), and we bring together the multiple mobile subjects converging in Guangzhou
onto the same plane, then we see that, based on the precarity and liminality that
characterise both foreign and internal migrant emplacements, the distinction between
nationals and foreigners loses currency.
8
This comparison is not unfounded and needs
to be taken seriously by researchers. Indeed, since 2008, foreigners in China have been
paired to the category of floating population and are supposedly subjected to the rules
and regulations controlling its management (Lan, 2014). Put another way, as a group (and
a minority, as Bodomo (2012) has it) Africans have been inserted into the complex
systems and dynamics of population control that the Chinese state imposes upon
Chinese ethnic minorities: erratic but systematic control/repression (perceived by some
specially those unaware of the treatment of other minorities as racial profiling and
discrimination).
9
In short, in the case of Africans in Guangzhou, the spaces in which they
are highly visible are not only multiethnic transcultural spaces, but also sites where
transnational African flows meet/collide with those of the transprovincial and
transethnic Chinese systems neighbourhoods, hotels, markets and bars where the local,
translocal and transnational converge. Hence, in order to understand better the dynamics
of African presence in Guangzhou, it is not only imperative that one goes beyond the
binary logic of the local vs. foreign, but, perhaps more importantly, to attend to the
cultural and structural conditions that have led Africans to insert themselves in spaces
where transiency is the norm, rather than the exception - in simple words, many Africans
in Guangzhou tend to hang out with Chinese internal migrants, and share, to a certain
extent, some of the problems they face: social exclusion, economic vulnerability,
impaired mobility, and so on.
10

It is in one of these spaces of heightened intersecting (im)mobilities, transiency,
precarity and migrancy, that Sky has been trying to structure his artistic career, and
where, in 2007, he met Cherry, his wife.
11

Before proceeding, it must be noted that the stories and trajectories of the
individuals I met in Guangzhou are multifarious. The case of musicians is similar. There
are those who were musicians for many years prior to their arrival in China. Others claim
Draft paper V.1.2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo

Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite %
to have discovered their passion for music and other artistic pursuits after arriving in the
country. Most of them are not only musicians; they perform a number of roles and juggle
a variety of responsibilities (i.e. fatherhood, study and family businesses). While the most
prevalent cases are those of individuals balancing music and trade, not all musicians do
business by day and take the stage by night though, as Mu reported (2013). A number of
the individuals I met prioritise their artistic careers and devote most of their time (and
sometimes money) to find a way to break through. Sky himself agreed to participate in
my research project under the proviso that I understood that he was a musician, and that
while he was involved in several other activities in the city, his main drive was an artistic
one: I came to China to break into the Chinese markets with my music, he repeatedly
pointed out.
12



A singer is a singer is a singer
When you are born, your destiny is already there waiting for you. One thing is what your
parents want you to do and the other is what you actually came here to do. I came here
to be a singer, Sky told me during our first formal interview, explaining how it was
difficult for his parents to accept that he would not become a priest a common
expectation amongst Christian Igbo families in Imo State in south-eastern Nigeria, where
Sky was born. From an early age, Skys passions led him to explore his artistic drives. He
dropped out of high school and found a job as a freelance songwriter for radio stations
in Lagos. He kept doing that for a few years, hoping that someone would discover him
as a singer. While the freelancing was enough to keep him afloat, he soon realised that he
was not on the right path to affording the lifestyle that he desired. At that time (the early
2000s), word of mouth had it that Nigerians were making it big in China, and coming
back to set themselves up in Nigeria. As a breakthrough did not seem to be on the
horizon, Sky found himself contemplating the possibility of restarting his life in that
China he had heard of hoping to be discovered there. However, when he finally made
it to China in 2006, he realised that things were not as easy as he had imagined. His first
reality check came when he realised that casual employment for foreigners in China is
almost nonexistent. Jobless, but with money he had from Nigeria, he joined a language
school, hoping that language would open doors. Soon, he realised that the game was
different, and that there was no option for him to start making a living from music. As a
last option, and only for survival, Sky started trading with whatever he could find, just as
most of his acquaintances in the city back then.
However, a couple of years into his marriage things started to gradually improve.
By mid 2010, Sky felt that he was finally getting on top of things. Using some of the
profits from his trading activities, he reignited his musical aspirations.
13
By late 2011, he
finalised the production of his (self-funded) album Its Real, an album entirely
written/imagined in Guangzhou, produced in Lagos, and mixed/mastered by a
Congolese producer back in China. With his new album in hand, Sky felt that it was time
to break into both the Chinese and West African markets. The Chinese side proved to be
truly challenging, however. Sky sent copies of his album to practically all record
companies in the country and even flew to Beijing to personally hand out his promo
copies. At that time, he believed that to be the way to break through. Funny enough, the
way he became relatively known in China came in an unexpected form. As he walked
from company to company, Sky spent some time handing out his promo CDs to young
people in the street. One of them, a university student, uploaded the single, I Feel
Good, to Weibo and the post was re-weiboed several times. Soon after, Chinese media
contacted Sky and a couple of journalistic articles were written about his artistic
Draft paper V.1.2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo

Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite &
aspirations in China (Xinhua, 2013) Western media followed suit and some short
radio/TV snippets about his life in China were produced.
Encouraged by his incipient but increasing popularity, in early 2013 Sky took the
decision to stop waiting to be discovered and to do what he could to break into the
Chinese market alone. His solo attempt to break through took off simultaneously in
several directions. Having realised that if he was going to make it in China, he needed to
sing in Chinese (similar to what Beijing-based, Nigerian artist, Hao Ge does
14
), he began
writing songs in pinyin, and looking to organise collaborations with local Chinese artists.
He also started promoting his music locally amongst Africans. Since early 2013, he has
organised more than a dozen shows in the citys main clubs.
15
Sky is aware of the
difficulties of breaking into the Chinese market and quotes the lack of audience openness
to foreign styles as the most complex challenge. However, he still aspires to (and works
toward) making it big in China. Interestingly, he sees China as a gateway/platform
toward other Asian markets such as South Korea, Japan, and Singapore.
16


My dream is to make it in China. I dont give a shit about America. Everybody
thinks that because Im a Nigerian man, I want to go to the US. No, no, this is
another time. Im for making it big in Asia and in Africa. Im not interested in what
people were interested in before. The world has changed and America doesnt move
me. (Sky)

While late 2013 to early 2014 marked the height of Skys romance with
international media, he soon realised that the media attention was not translating into a
breakthrough in Asia. He felt that media were only using his image to tell their stories
about Africans in China, which he perceived as of little or no benefit for his career.
After all, the Chinese dream might not break for me, he told me once. Maybe I should
go somewhere else in Asia, or go back to Africa. I need to keep moving and trying to
fulfil this dream, for the sake of my children. During the time I spent with Sky, he spoke
many times about the dilemma between his dream and his family. He felt that he needed
to succeed as an artist, in order to leave a legacy for his children. Yet, at the same time,
he worried that his urge to succeed could take him away from his children either
because of leaving China to seek better opportunities, or because of failing to be a
proper father to them by not realising his dreams. This place is not my home. Im just
trying to make my dream come true, he acknowledged. The only thing that keeps me
here and gives me energy is that, thank god, I have a wonderful and very supportive
family.

Multi-tasking while on the move: serious entrepreneurialism
Skys life in Guangzhou is multifaceted. Not only is he a musician, an event organiser, a
father and a husband, and a foreign volunteer,
17
he is also in the process of becoming an
important voice amongst Nigerians, and Africans, in the city. In early 2014, he decided
that he was getting into politics. One evening during my fieldwork, Sky called me to
cancel our dinner plans at the last minute: the reason he gave was that a very important
meeting would take place that night. When I inquired further into the nature of the
meeting, Sky told me that he was going to a political meeting. After the meeting, he sent
me a Whatsapp message informing me of his intention to run for President of the
Nigerian community office in the upcoming elections.
18
A second message came with the
following text:

Fellow Nigerians: join hands to support the way forward Sky. It has been my concern
to see a new Nigerian community where equity, justice, discipline, transparency and
accountability will become our logo. We need a leader who can speak freely the
Draft paper V.1.2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo

Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite '
language of the land we live in. Lets say no to personal community and vote for
general community. VOTE SKY FOR PRESIDENT 2014!

Clearly, Sky is aware that his linguistic skills, along with his social position (a spouse
residence permit), represent a capital that not many other Nigerians in the city have.
Through the use of these skills and position, along with his entrepreneurial drives, Sky
has managed to become an important figure. The possibility of him becoming a top
community representative evinces how the mobilisation of the capital he claims to have
(i.e. knowledge, connections) could improve his social mobility and thus broaden his
opportunities. While sometimes Sky seemed uncertain about his future, one thing in his
personality always came across as certain: whether in the music scene, or perhaps
eventually in the micro-politics of African community offices, he knows that the key to
his success is him/self his artistic, or political personae. Finally, I contend that as the
story of Sky shows (of which these pages are only an abbreviated version), if attention is
put upon aspirations (and the associated entrepreneurial drives, community engagements,
life entanglements, and mobilities), the widespread labels of trader and/or immigrant
come across as partial and flat representations of the lives of individuals in this case
study. I am not arguing that Sky is only a musician and not a trader. He is both those
things and many more. Perhaps one day even a politician, or a film-maker, as he has
recently hinted.
19



The paradox of aspirational mobilities: to move or not to move
Aspirations are also reconfigured by transnational journeys. While individuals in
Guangzhous African music scene may have long aspired to become musicians, their
journeys and the experiences of other places have opened up new horizons of hope,
desire and possibilities some of these horizons more immediate than others. As the
story in this paper shows, the initial ideas some musicians had about mobility (moving to
China) tended to be conflated with opportunities to be discovered or to become
something different (becoming through mobility/movement). However, as soon as they
found themselves on the move, and headed somewhat in the direction of artistic success
in China, they felt the need to become more mobile. In this sense, mobility appears to
produce a paradox. For individuals that aspire to be transnationally mobile, attaining a
certain degree of mobility leads to a desire/requirement for heightened mobility. So,
although an individual may already be (to some degree) mobile, enhanced opportunities
to realise their dreams are conflated with an even heightened degree of mobility. As
Uteng (2006) suggests, being mobile is a real and genuine opportunity. However, being
more mobile brings more opportunities and thus is a requirement for someone looking
for transnational artistic success failing to become more mobile (to expand your own
spaces of mobility) increases the chances of failure. Take Skys (im)mobilities, for
instance. Although he considers himself privileged to be able to move between Nigeria
and China at will (a mobility that has produced genuine opportunities for him), he feels
trapped by the obstacles (immobilities) that his Nigerian passport generates so, while
he can move in and out of China at will, he can only go to Africa. Most other Asian
destinations he is interested in exploring artistically require visas for Nigerians and he has
been systematically rejected from entering Hong Kong and Macau, for example. Sky
indeed has a heightened awareness of the complex connection between success and
mobility. While he knows that his partial immobility hampers his artistic pursuits, he
hopes that by breaking fully into the Chinese market, other spaces across Asia will finally
open for him and his partial immobility would, in that case, fade. Hence, mobility can
be thought of as a capacity/capability (susceptible of being acquired through efforts)
Draft paper V.1.2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo

Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite (
intrinsic to the materialisation of aspirations (Kronlid, 2008). In this way, being mobile is
both a requirement and an opportunity to become something else and to make it big
in China.
The paradox of mobility becomes clearer when the desire to move (to fulfil
aspirations) leads individuals away from certain positions to which they once aspired and
to jeopardise what they have achieved. Skys perseverance/stubbornness to pursue his
dream, for instance, could potentially lead him away from the social and familial
positions that he not only dreamed of, but also carved out for himself in Guangzhou. So,
while aspirations used as navigational devices generally guide those on the transnational
move to ride through the currents of global capitalism, these navigational devices do not
preclude possible shipwrecks. Sky, for one, sometimes sees his aspirations as a burden:

My problem is that I can never give up. Pursuing my dream is something I will
do here or anywhere until I see this life no more. Unfortunately, I ended up in
entertainment a very difficult industry. It has cost me a lot of wasted years
and large sums of money, and I have not yet achieved what I want. But I know
that something will come. (Sky)

During the last few months of my fieldwork, Sky hinted many times that going
back to Nigeria, to pursue his dream there, was becoming a possibility. When I asked
him about his children and wife, he explained that his main concern was his family, but
that if he went to Nigeria, they would not follow. Skys story shows that even when
individuals have more developed capacities to mobilise resources towards the fulfilment
of their aspirations, the precarity and liminality conditioning individual attempts to build
futures from transnational spaces are still difficult to overcome.


By way of a conclusion: and thinking of China as a platform, rather
than a destination
As the story in this paper shows, China at least in the imaginations of some foreigners
is in the process of moving beyond the trope of the worlds factory (understood as a
place for the exclusive exploration of economic opportunities) and becoming a space
where individuals attempt to pursue their dreams and aspirations. And, as I pointed out
before, these aspirations are not only about economic advancement, but also about
building a better life (artistically, culturally and even politically, as we have seen). Within
the logic of transnational mobility, China has increasingly been imagined as a platform
(rather than a destination) a platform of hope and the future. This is true not only
for its own diasporic subjects, as Chow (2011) suggests when discussing the return of
diasporic Chinese who attempt to make it big in the countrys cultural industries, but also
for the many foreigners who attempt to kick-start their careers in (or through) China. So
for many individuals, China is now seen as an important landmark in global landscapes
of aspiration and, perhaps more importantly, as a gateway to many possible futures.
From a more structural perspective, African presence in China coincides with a
time in which the apparently inevitable rise of China has prompted the reconfiguration
of internal and external imaginations about the countrys future. In 2013, Chinese
president, Xi Jinping, kicked off his rule with a daring, and somehow controversial,
political campaign: The Chinese Dream. The political use of this slogan is about
inscribing the role of the individual in nation building and revitalization leading to
Chinese prosperity, but at a time when China is striving to become a world power and
when economic interconnectedness requires that countries open up to flows of capital
and culture, it is important to ask how the Chinese Dream will articulate the increased
Draft paper V.1.2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo

Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite )
presence of foreigners in the country. At a symbolic level, the Chinese Dream has posed
itself as an obvious counterpart to the American Dream as if the rise of China
heralded a new era in which the American one had lost currency and a different world
was possible. However, the American Dream is (or was) perceived to be a dream of
migration an apparently open-ended opportunity for all nationalities and ethnicities to
dream of a new home. Conversely, the difficulties that Africans (and many other
foreigners) encounter in China suggest that the Chinese Dream (if it ever becomes more
than a political slogan) might be closer to an exclusionary ethno-nationalistic fantasy of
Han prosperity than to a dreamland of opportunities for outsiders.
Moreover, while some foreigners have managed to carve out spaces (homes) for
themselves in China with relative success, many others soon discover that the Chinese
Dream is like a glass ceiling: one imagines they can easily succeed or move forward, but
the obstacles make it almost impossible to pass. For many Africans in Guangzhou, it is
clear that there are still boundaries they cannot cross, doors they cannot open. Will the
Chinese Dream emulate its American counterpart in producing prosperity at home (for
the nationals) but reproducing precarity inside and elsewhere (for the strange others)?
Or, will it open up possibilities for different futures? Place your bets.
Finally, the need to do some re-scaling, and to think of Guangzhou (the
city/region) as a crossroads and/or a platform, rather than destination, is an important
step in the process of breaking away from sedentaristic models and approaches to human
movement that tend to unproblematically assume that settlement is a normal feature of
human experience (something we all strive for), and treat distance, change, instability
and placelessness as abnormal. Moreover, this re-scaling has a twofold advantage. First,
it allows us to see more clearly how the conditions of transiency, precarity, and migrancy
are shared, and similarly affect the lives and experiences of diverse mobile subjects; and
second, it highlights how these conditions impact on the restructuring of urban spaces
and economies. In short, I follow Glick Schiller & aglar (2009) in thinking of this re-
scaling as an attempt to contribute to a better explanation of how urban life is described,
restructured, and reinvented by (and through) transnational processes. As suggested by
Glick Schiller & aglar, the intention is to bring together migration and urban studies
with the analysis of transnational mobilities to be able to better asses the roles played by
migrants/individuals on the move, and their practices and aspirations, in the rescaling
and restructuring of cities, economies, and subeconomies.


!"#$%


1
It is not news that Chinese investments and commercial migration to Africa have had a profound impact
on the continents economies and on the livelihoods of its people (see Alden, 2007; Brautigam, 2009). Take
for instance commercial exchanges. ChinaAfrica trade volume has had more than a twentyfold increase
over the last decadereaching US$200 billion in 2012 from US$10 billion in 2002 (Africa.news.cn 2013).
Over a slightly longer period, direct exports from Guangzhou to African countries (mainly manufactured
products) have increased more than tenfoldup from around US$165 million in 1996 to US$2.1 billion in
2010 (Li, Lyons, and Brown 2012, 57). As a consequence of these structural macroeconomic pushes, and
of individual microeconomic efforts, only a decade after the intensification of AfricaChina economic
relations, China is now Africas largest trading partner, having surpassed the United States in 2011
(Wonacott 2011) .
2
A final liberalisation push in Chinas housing markets in the early 2000s, lifted most restrictions on places
of abode for foreigners (D. Wang & Li, 2006; Wu & Webber, 2004). Prior to this time, foreigners in the
country were only allowed to live in approved residencies.
3
No one really knows how many Africans are there in Guangzhou. Interestingly, despite a lack of reliable
data on the numbers, nationalities, and activities of these subjects, the hype about Africans in
Guangzhou has led several researchers to either lay claim to non-rigorous calculations or accidentally reify
Draft paper V.1.2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo

Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite *

rumours resulting in figures ranging from 1500 to 20,000 to over 100,000 (see Bodomo 2010; Li, Ma, and
Xue 2009; Zhang 2008). Unfortunately, these widely quoted figures are nothing more than speculation
bolstered by media claims (ubiquitously reproduced) of an African population growing at a rate of 30 to
40% annually since 2003 (see Branigan, 2010; Osnos, 2009, amongst countless others). For more on
figures see Castillo, 2013.
4
Names in this paper have been partially modified.
5
The story depicted in this paper is representative of some, but certainly not all types of artistic/musical
engagements in the city.
6
Including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Shenzhen and even Macau and Hong Kong, amongs
many others, in what Castells (1996) calls the Pearl River Delta metropolitan system: a mega-city of over
50 million people linking segments of the regional economies to wider global networks (436).
7
Although these subeconomies often have strong ethnic affiliations, I do not define them as strictly
ethnic economies as I conceptualise them as operating within multiethnic assemblages on translocal and
transnational scalesand not only within one ethnic identity registry.
8
From different emplacements and in different situations, many Africans go through difficulties similar to
those experienced by people on the move in China: internal migrants lack of belonging, no residential
rights (no hukou), amongst others difficulties.
9
This surveillance generates a complex interplay (a spatial dance of power) that affects distinct subjects at
different intensities and it pushes some individuals to the margins, forcing them to live with irregular
statuses and work in informal activities both within Africans and Chinese. It is in these spaces that
Africans have been getting a taste of how Chinese systems of population control attempt to regulate what
is perceived as otherness. In short, while I am not arguing that Africans in the city do not suffer some
particular forms of discrimination, my intention is to highlight that the discrimination issue against
Africans is more complex than only saying Chinese discriminate against Africans.
10
It is important to note that although they share certain degrees of precarity, transiency and liminality, the
journeys of these internal and foreign migrants, traders, and/or entrepreneurs, are organised and
regimented by multiple and generally distinct systems of control and surveillance. Put another way, there
are multiple regimes of mobility (Glick Schiller & Salazar, 2013) at play in this case study.
11
On a trip to Beijing in 2007 (a year after arriving), Sky met Cherry a woman from the northern
province of Hebei. After maintaining a long-distance relationship for several months, Sky finally convinced
Cherry to relocate to Guangzhou, and in mid-2008, they got married. After their wedding, Sky taught her
what he had learnt about trade and together they opened retail and online stores selling hair, wigs,
ornaments and childrens clothes to mainly African clientele.
12
Throughout my explorations of Guangzhous music scene, many of my contacts made similar remarks.
They agreed to interviews under the proviso that I would not represent them in untruthful ways. And,
they were particularly concerned about being depicted as immigrants struggling in China.
13
Sky has written over a hundred songs, and almost half of them were written in Guangzhou. He even
wrote a song for the Beijing Olympics back in 2008, but it was never produced.
14
Hao Ge (Uwechue Emmanuel) is a Nigerian born singer who rose to fame after his participation in the
2007 Lunar New Year Gala, a popular show seen by hundreds of millions of people on Chinese New
Years eve. Emmanuel is one of the most notable foreign singers in Chinese mediascapes (Wang, 2011).
15
Sky explained that while there are many talented African musicians in Guangzhou, the lack of venues or
cultural centres impacts negatively on the showcasing of their talents, and the promotion of African culture
in general. Over the last two years, in order to promote and showcase African culture, Sky has organised a
couple of Pan-African shows. He contends that his artistic pursuit in China is not only about him, but
about opening doors for all Africans in China.
16
The central position that Sky had carved out for himself in Guangzhous music and cultural scenes
coincided with a revival in media and academic interest about Africans in China. During the six months in
which I followed Sky, I witnessed how some of his efforts appeared to be paying off. Documentary
filmmakers and journalists from the United States, Denmark, England, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong
Kong, along with photographers from Germany and Slovenia, and a couple more researchers, all contacted
Sky within a couple of months. The sheer number of people contacting him was unprecedented. Indeed,
2013-14 seemed to be bringing a breakthrough in Skys career. He received so many requests to film his
performances that he was forced to assign each performance to a specific media team. Despite his earlier
proclamations about not collaborating with western media, Sky initially opened up to almost anyone
interested. Before long though, he began to resent some of the ways in which he was being treated and
represented. At one point, flooded with requests but seeing little benefit or return, he even considered
charging media fees for interviews and shows as some highly mediatised Africans in the city do.
Draft paper V.1.2 July 2014 / Roberto Castillo

Draft of a talk given at the Asia Art Archive in HK, please do not quote or cite "+

17
During his years in China, Sky has negotiated several times with the authorities on behalf of detained
overstayers of distinct nationalities. Because of this, he now holds the title of volunteer translator and his
contact number and photograph are posted on the walls of several police stations around the city.
18
As African presence in the city has consolidated, dozens of national community offices have emerged
claiming to represent the rights individuals from their countries in China. The most salient of these
organisations is, without a doubt, the Nigerian Community Office, led by Ojukwu Emma. Nigerians have
organised electoral procedures for choosing their cabinets, according to Emma, in last election there was a
turnout of over three thousand electors.
19
See this video: http://bit.ly/skygz


References
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