Author: Xing Wei
Translator: Luwen Song, Laiyin Yuan, and Albert Zhu
Published on: 08/04/2014
Source: Dongfang Daily
Original text (in Chinese): http://www.dfdaily.com/html/51/2014/8/4/1172805.shtml
After intermittent phone contact for several days, Howard W. French and Hao Shengli finally met.This scene could never happen a decade ago: an America journalist meeting with a Henanese farmer, not in Washington D.C., New York, Beijing, or Zhengzhou (the capital of Henan Province), but in an African city faraway from both China and the United States – Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.
Hao was barking into his cell phone when his white chauffeur-driven, late-model Toyota pickup pulled up in front of my hotel. It was clear that he was in a hurry and angry. There was a brisk handshake, followed by a lot more shouting in salty Chinese as he struggled to make himself understood to a countryman whom I could grasp he wanted to buy goods from.
"'China is a big, fucking mess with all of its fucking dialects,' the shaven-headed, stocky Hao, in his late fifties, said as he hung up.With these vivid descriptions, French’s new book China’s Second Continent – How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa focuses on the at least one million Chinese living in Africa, embodied by Hao Shengli, who in most cases come to Africa voluntarily, rather than sent by the Chinese government.
As I stood there with my bags, already sweating in the mid-morning heat, Hao’s frustration caused him to train abuse on John, his tall and sinewy Mozambican driver, who had been coolly smoking a cigarette while he rearranged the supplies loaded onto the Toyota’s flatbed.
'You, cabeça não bom, motherfucker,' he said, the curse word coming in Chinese, as the grizzled immigrant farmer angrily employed three languages in one short and brutal sentence…”
