Arise Chinaman — thine hour is nigh!

‘China—our imitation white men.’ 

The rise of the Asian as an economic powerhouse, his emergence as a force to reckon with in recent years—has presented the African proletarian with a new dilemma. For while the latter fought to liberate himself from European hegemony in the last century, his long years of proximity with his conqueror—for all their painful subservience—served to etch him with an almost incurable awe of the men and society that had so effectively emasculated him.

But today, the fact that, as Kenya’s Lumumba (P.L.O) has said in one of his many viral speech excerpts—‘the Asian has got his act together’—the oriental has slowly but surely filled up the vacuum left in the retreating European’s wake. He is renovating colonial hospitals that had gone to waste, extending the road network built by British Governors and French Prefects alike, and multiplying the number of dams constructed before Africa’s independence.

Yet despite Asia’s diversity, one particular people have risen to the occasion more successfully than their kin. For while the Arab is despised for his anecdotal cultural jingoism and historical role in black slavery, the Indian known to harbor a caste-inspired racialism, to say nothing of a coarse and self-promoting arrogance; and the Japanese thought too paranoid and inward-looking following too slow a recovery from post-nuclear trauma—the Chinese charms us with his shy smile, and disarms us with a near-featureless face.

Where his fellow Asians threaten and scorn us, the Chinaman—ah, the Chinaman is harmless as the proverbial puppy in his stew.

He is Africa’s new white man. Alas—an imitation white man.

You see, away from those hoary accounts of medieval-era sea commerce along her Eastern Coastal stretch, Africa’s interaction with China seriously begins with Sino-Cinema and Kungfu films in the early years of our independence.

In our unequably impressionable minds, the Chinese, through the wonder of this cultural export, became almost synonymous with the dynastic-epoch characters in their movies—nimble and acrobatic, yet giddily clownish and unendingly ridiculous.

They became the butt-end of countless jokes and allusions to eccentricity and oddity—not least on account of their funny-sounding language, dot-sized eyes and stereotypic short height.

Gradually, through the screen, faraway red China worked her way into our conscience as some exotic land of innocuous citizen-cartoons with neither ambition for, nor interest in, what was happening in the wider world.

In reality though, behind the scenes and far removed from any movie camera—while we were making jokes and ordering more popcorn from the kitchen before Master Chi embarked on his next martial art folly—China was undertaking a social and industrial revolution greater than any the world had ever known. She was skilling her dwarfs, changing their mindsets, redistributing ill-gotten wealth—and rising.

Yes, rising—if not in height or stature, then in substance—to become Africa’s new white man; the yellow mzungu, as East Africans would call him.

Yet for all China’s ascension, it is awfully hard to stand in awe of a master who was the subject of ridicule only a stone’s throw into the past. Even today, when you go to the villages, you won’t fail to notice how differently barefoot peasant children treat Chinese road contractors and Christian missionaries from Europe.

The latter are approached freely with chants of praise and outstretched arms begging for sweets, while the former are fled from for fear that they will cook and eat you. This despite that before the next decade, China will have more millionaires than Europe and America combined.

Perhaps every stratagem succeeds at a cost—and while China’s ‘‘Drunken Master’’ distraction allowed them room to grow inconspicuously, away from the nosey eyes of the world—they’ll always be harmless little midgets to us.

Yes—midgets with nuclear bombs and two million soldiers, but midgets all the same.

 © Surumani Manzi

PS:
Only anonymously may this be entered into New Vision’s ‘My China Story’ competition.