Letting Our Hair Down

I’ve known that I was Black as long as I can remember.

There was that one time in Kindergarten when I asked my mom if I could have “down hair”;  she promptly told me I could not, painted all my Barbie dolls brown, and then before I knew it, we’d moved to a more diverse school.  Other than that, I’ve been pretty clear.

Then I moved to Guangzhou.

Guangzhou, surprisingly, has the highest African population in China; estimates for the number of Africans who reside in Guangzhou vary, but when including short term visitors, it may be up to 100,000.  They hail from all over the continent – Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa – you name an African country, they are probably represented in Guangzhou.

So, seeing a brown face here isn’t as rare you might think it is.  Don’t get me wrong, the city isn’t teeming with diversity, but a sprinkle of color isn’t a completely odd sight.

This was one of the things that made us think we could survive living in China – a Chinese city that wasn’t as homogenous as the rest of the country.  But when we started meeting people in Guangzhou, we quickly realized that although this was at one time dubbed “The Chocolate City of China”, we were somewhat novel in that we are African American.  Meeting new people usually goes something like this:

• New Friend:  Hi Rhonda, nice to meet you, where are you from?
• Me:  Hi <insert name>, I’m from the US
• New Friend:  But, I mean where are you from, before the US?
• Me:  <Blank Stare> <Intense Thinking>
• New Friend:  You know, where is your family originally from, before the US.
• Me:  We don’t know anything before the US, we’re American (as I ponder whether they know about the whole slavery thing, which in many cases they don’t...)

I’ve had this same conversation with all kinds of people – Chinese people, a student from Rwanda, it really hasn’t mattered – many people just don’t put Blacks and Americans together.  These conversations were so common during our first year here, that we began to think we were the only African-Americans in Guangzhou.

Then, for some reason that I’ll call a blessing, all of that changed in 2018. Since the start of the new year, we’ve meet several African Americans here – families, children, couples – you name it.  And, we’ve started to build a community with the African-Americans who are here. We eat, we laugh, we compare crazy China stories, give each other advice and just try to hold each other up.

So, while we’ve treasured meeting people from all over the globe, bonded with other Americans who will become life-long friends, honestly, it has just been good to connect with this group of Americans.  With them, we can really let our hair down :).

Here is a picture of our new and growing(!) extended community here in Guangzhou.

PS – We’ve had lots of fun letting our hair down in other ways over the past few months, check out our picture page for some more of our adventures!