Afro-Chinese marriages boom in Guangzhou: but will it be 'til death do us part'? 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 commended that realizing a dream imagined by countless African merchants and immigrants who live in Guangzhou: He is marrying his Chinese bride, after spent several years together. Seven days earlier before the wedding, 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 nevertheless he is more delighted to be next to his wife.
While Okonkwo's dream of becoming Chinese through matrimony is appear difficult - the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau (PSB) denies Africans any more rights than a tourist - his children, should he have any and they be registered under wife's name, the child will possess a hukou residency permit and full Chinese citizenship. Guangzhou "CHOCOLATE CITY" OR "Little Africa", as it has been dubbed by the Chinese press, provides home to the population ranging 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). Africans began pouring into China after the collapse of the Asian Tiger and other Asian countries in 1997 prompted them to abandon outposts in Thailand and Indonesia. By exporting cheap Chinese goods back home, Guangzhou has became a promised land to many Africans.
It is easy to believe that every African country is represented here, with the Nigerian, Malian and Guinean communities the most populous residents. But the Chocolate city is a misnomer; in the bustling 7km stretch from Sanyuanli to Baiyun, in northern Guangzhou, myriad ethnicities co-exist together. Uygurs serve freshly baked Xinjiang bread to Angolan women balancing shopping on their heads while Somalis in flowing Muslim robes haggle over mobile phones before exchanging currency with Malians in leather jackets, who buy lunch from Turks sizzling tilapia on street grills, and then order beer from the Korean waitress in the Africa Bar. Tucked away above a shop-lined trading corridor, the bar serves food that reminds Africans of home - egusi soup, jollof rice, fried chicken. Whereas Chungking Mansions conceals Hong Kong's low-end trading community, in dilapidated Dengfeng village - Little Africa's central thoroughfare - the merchants, supplied by Chinese wholesalers, are highly visible. And it's in this melee of trade where most Afro-Chinese romances blossom.