19. Little Africa

In the early days of this millennium, I graduated university in England and set out for a new life in China. Here, I share the quiet stories of my journey, a chronicle of discovery and displacement, woven into the fabric of a land vast and unfathomable.

INTRODUCTION | FIRST CHAPTER | PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER

There were parts of Guangzhou that still resisted easy definition. For all its breakneck development - the steel and glass vaulting skyward, the incessant sprawl of new construction - some corners held on to an identity not yet absorbed by the city’s hunger for reinvention. One such place lay only a few stops from where I lived. I’d passed it many times on the bus, catching glimpses through the window: a dense knot of storefronts with signs in English and French and Arabic, crates of plantains and sheaves of dried cassava stacked beneath canvas awnings, and figures in robes or headscarves weaving through the crowds. One afternoon, I decided to step off the bus and walk.

The neighbourhood was known informally as Little Africa, though its name on the map was Xiaobei. Xiaobei had become a point of arrival for thousands of African traders and migrants who had come chasing the idea of China as an emerging El Dorado: a place where containers brimmed with cheap electronics and textiles, and where business could be done, fortunes made.

The heart of the area lay a short walk from the bus stop. I followed the movement of men in long robes, of women wrapped in brilliant Ankara prints, down a narrow street lined with money changers, shipping agents, and vendors hawking mobile phones. The air was dense with voices - English, French, Hausa, Lingala - and the sharp tang of grilled meat.

The street was alive. Crowded, urgent. I moved through clusters of men, some arguing in high, impassioned tones, others laughing, lounging, smoking. Conversations overlapped. Phones rang. Deals were struck. The shops were small but loud, and the pathways between them tighter still. From a shopfront, a man in a Chelsea football shirt spoke rapid French into his phone; outside another, someone flipped through a wad of banknotes, his glance guarded as a Chinese vendor looked on. I passed a barber’s, a grocer selling yams and other vegetables I struggled to recognise, a café offering jollof rice and fufu. The signs above the doors bore a collision of languages. English, Chinese, French. Business names that invoked faith or fortune: Grace Trading, Zion Electronics, Miracle Hair World.

I felt eyes on me. Not hostile, exactly, but assessing. I was used to being the outsider, but this was the first time in China that my foreignness didn’t make me special. Here, I wasn’t even unusual. In Xiaobei, I was not the foreigner. I was something else - adrift, unaccounted for. A Brit among Nigerians and Congolese and Ivorians, walking the tight corridors of a parallel city.

I stopped at a restaurant with a peeling sign above the door: The Good Shepherd. A biblical name, like so many African eateries, and promising at least a conversation. Inside, the ceiling fans spun sluggishly, failing to cut through the humidity. A few customers lingered over their meals, their voices low. On the walls hung maps of Nigeria, a portrait of Christ, a faded calendar still turned to September.

Behind the counter stood a man with a face carved in calm reserve. He was tall, broad-shouldered, his skin luminous in the dim light. He looked me over, his expression unreadable.

“You want to eat?” he asked, in English.

I nodded. “What do you recommend?”

He gave a slow shrug. “Depends what you like. You know Nigerian food?”

“I’ve never tried it.”

He considered me, then gestured to a table. “Sit. I bring you something good.”

I sat. The fans whirred. From the corner, a small television played an old Nollywood film, the volume barely audible beneath the scrape of cutlery and murmured talk. The restaurant felt like a liminal space - neither entirely part of Guangzhou nor entirely apart from it. A waystation. A small holdout of home for those still working out where home was.

The man returned with a plate of egusi soup, thick and golden, flecked with pieces of meat, and a mound of pounded yam. “Try,” he said, placing it before me.

I did. The soup was unfamiliar - dense, spiced, oily - but it stayed with you. The yam was smooth, bland, the kind of food that filled the stomach and calmed the mouth.

“You like it?”

“Delicious,” I replied, wiping my hands on a napkin.

He nodded, satisfied. “Where are you from?”

“Britain.”

The man exhaled through his nose, a quiet sound of recognition. “Many Nigerians go there. But me, I come here.”

“Why China?”

He shrugged. “Business. Opportunity. You know, it’s not easy back home. Here, maybe we make something for ourselves.”

I gestured to the restaurant. “And has it worked?”

He gave a half-smile. “Some days yes, some days no. Life here is not easy for us. The police, the rules. They don’t want us to stay too long. But we try.”

It was a reality I’d heard about. The African diaspora in Guangzhou had grown alongside China's rise as a global export hub. Many came on short-term business visas - legally three months, sometimes less - and then stayed, undocumented. Some overran their visas deliberately, believing they could disappear into the trade networks. Others had no choice. Raids were common. Police sweeps. There were stories of men pulled from their flats at night, of phones that stopped ringing. The man was polite, calm, but I could feel it behind his words: the strain of impermanence.

“And you?” he asked. “You are a businessman too?”

I shook my head. “No. I teach English.”

He laughed, short and dry. “So you teach the Chinese how to speak like you. And me…” he swept his arm towards the restaurant. “I feed my countrymen while they buy Chinese products to send back home. All of us, making China richer.”

There was no bitterness in his voice. Just pragmatism. A man who had made a choice, and who now bore the consequences of that choice with quiet calculation.

A group of men entered the restaurant, clapping the man on the shoulder, offering handshakes and broad smiles. He greeted them warmly, slipping into a blend of Yoruba and English, his whole posture loosening in their presence. I watched, unnoticed now, finishing my food slowly. The pounded yam sat heavily in my stomach, comforting despite its unfamiliarity.

Later, I stepped back into the dusk. The streets of Xiaobei calmed with the last transactions of the day. Men carried boxes to waiting vans. Vendors packed up their stalls. Neon signs flickered to life, lighting up in sharp pinks and greens. The street felt no less foreign than before, but I understood a little more of its logic.

As I walked back toward the bus stop, the man’s words returned to me - about business, about being useful, about not being wanted for long. I thought about what it meant to live at the margins of a city that had no plan for you. I had a legal job, a visa, a college that handled my paperwork and housed me comfortably. I could leave tomorrow if I wanted. That kind of mobility was an invisible shield. It protected me from suspicion, from scrutiny. I was a foreigner, yes - but a white European one, and that made all the difference.

For the man in the restaurant, and his customers, China was not an adventure. It was a calculation, a wager against poverty, a place to hustle until the margin ran out. Their presence here was tolerated but conditional. Mine was welcomed, even encouraged. I had not earned that comfort, only inherited it.

And yet, for an hour in a restaurant tucked down a side street in Xiaobei, I’d seen another Guangzhou - one that moved according to different rules, carried by different hopes. I had entered as a stranger. I left still a stranger. But changed, somehow, by the encounter.

Another world, within a city still defining itself - and me, for now, caught somewhere between them.

A Moment of Gratitude

If the words of Ill Grandeur have resonated with you, consider buying me a cup of tea. In China, tea is more than just a drink - it is a symbol of connection, warmth, and reflection. A one-off tea is a way of sharing in the journey, supporting the story, and keeping the spirit of discovery alive. Every cup helps bring the next chapter to life.