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Afro-Chinese marriages boom in Guangzhou: but will it be 'til death do us part'?
Guangzhou is witnessing a huge rise in Afro-Chinese marriages, but the mainland's lack of citizenship rights for African husbands and a crackdown on foreign visas means families are living in fear of being torn apart, writes Jenni Marsh.
www.scmp.com
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
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.
"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).
Linessa Lin Dan, a PhD student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong researching Afro-Chinese relations in Guangzhou, says many African men who propose already have wives in their home countries - Muslims are permitted by their religion to take multiple spouses. Furthermore, Lin has heard tales of husbands returning to Nigeria on a business trip, leaving a mobile-phone number that doesn't connect and disappearing.
"The Chinese wife is left with their children, and shamed for marrying a hei gui [black ghost]," says Lin.
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