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• Guangzhou Diary: Week 4
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Guangzhou Diary: Week 4 Written on October 21, 2008, by .

19th October

In search of a bank. The continued spending of time and money is beginning to hang over me. I suppose I have to remember I cam here knowing nothing and have planned as I’ve gone. The 10 week practical in six. In fact I’m trying to cram the whole of term 2 and term 3 into 6 weeks. It isn’t all going to fall into place overnight, either on the ground or in my head. If all I get are 20-30 good portraits plus questionnaires, that’s enough for the course. If I get a more reportage style story as well to go with it, then even better. But really, already, at this stage, limited finances and an essay deadline on the 14^th November means I need to be thinking about heading back up end of October, say two more weeks. I’m doing ok, really, so I’ll get what I can get in the next two weeks, however rushed it is. Although I’m enjoying shooting it, its hard, physically and mentally, and the relief of going back up on the train with enough (or not) for a book is one I am relishing. That isn’t to say I wont be back later. I have a feeling that in order to really do it justice it would require me re-locating permanently to Guangzhou and work on it long term, two years, at its own pace, but there might be another project looming by then…find out banks aren’t able to transfer money from abroad on Sundays. They never ever were before…website said otherwise though…confusing…

Get French copy of questionnaire printed out. Seems to make a difference. Head to Dongfeng foreign trade centre. Hand back a couple of questionnaires in French. Introduce myself to a few shop owners, unsuccessfully, might have more portrait opportunities there tomorrow. Problem is though that

Get talking to people on the chairs outside the shopping part, but still inside, a collection of plastic chairs. African guys are always hanging out there, every time I go past, chilling, drinking beer. I talk to a group, they’re from various places, one guy is from Zambia via Denmark, he’s studying at South China normal university, another is from Cameroon,a very charismatic guy, a bit older, a real character, studying in Nanning, Guangxi province, but down in Guangzhou most weekends to do business. I guess its an overnight trip on the train. He likes the idea of someone doing a documentary, these guys seem to get the whole idea of what there is here and why someone would want to document it. He notes that there’s lots of Chinese in Cameroon, and they get given all the best treatment, either by their company or by their host governments, certainly better than the Africans get from the Chinese he reckons. The guy from Cameroon doesn’t have his business card on him, but takes a questionnaire, and we exchange emails, he’s going to type it all out and add his own typed answers below, apparently, plus send me a jpg of his card. he’s a tidy worker he explains, likes to do everything properly. I’ll be astonished if the email arrives. I mean retype it all himself ?Isn’t that just the sort of talk you give in the moment and forget about next day, especially after a few beers ? We will see. Still, his inter-province commute and businessman-student existence is a potentially interesting story. I take portraits of them all, hopefully some good ones,a range of compositions, one even with a mixed Chinese-African baby on his knee, although not his baby, that of a Chinese woman working nearby. Suddenly the Chinese working there all want portraits too, but my shooting and developing costs are 80 Yuan a roll. I’ll return with my DSLR and do more some other time.

Next guys I speak to are outside an African restaurant, from Niger (and not Nigeria). They’ve been here a while speak good Chinese. Chatting to them, they tell me a lot, along with others that form in a group around, about the various “hang-outs”. The more I’m here, the more I see the African guys, usually the guys – you see plenty women walking around, often in groups, but they’re always in shops or shopping - socialise in definite spots, its not always the same people outside “their” shop, its more a shifting, moving social group, chatting, drinking, laying the grounds for business, and there seems to be several defined “zones”, which are no doubt tolerated by the authorities. In fact the guy from Angola told me before about Africans existing in “gaps”, so these hang-outs are in some ways gaps in the Confucian system, trees which provide shelter from the authoritarian flow that the authorities know better than to dislodge. As far as I know, the “gaps” are the following spots

Moka Coffee in the Tianxiu building, although its somewhat more formal, business-like, and also got lots of Middle-East & Central Asia folk, and probably Lounge Coffee shop too, but Moka seems busier, right on the corner and open to the inside of Tianxiu mall

The seats & tables by the African restaurant at the back of Dongfeng Hotel foreign trading mall

The steps outside shops owned by the friendly beer-selling Chinese up on on Baohan Jie.

plus three other places, but the key is time, different places at a certain time.

Xiatang Xi Lu beside the Volvo garage at night, in the evening.

Sanyuanli from 2-7, specifically at a place called Guangxi Lu called Jia Na market, which is apparently run mostly by Nigerians…and this would also explain my lack of success in finding Africans when I went out to Sanyuanli before…

and finally, he mentioned a place in the Da Xiang or Elephant Mall, a place I had walked past umpteen times but for some reason never gone into. He called a Chinese guy working nearby to go and take me to it, and off I went…

…it was the same place I’d read about in the original article and had been trying to find since I came here, the barbers. And not one but two, a hairdresser for the ladies as well. Just as well I got the French photocopies done, they prove successful, all these guys and girls are French speakers, all from Congo, brightly clothed, fashionable, and extrovert. They spoke enough English to get basic ideas across, and I was just going through the usual procedure for explaining why I wanted to take photos when a guy ran over “hey, a camera, cool - you can take my photo”and he was already there posed on the coolest shot-but-cool Chinese-bus-station-style plastic seats,and then suddenly everyone wanted a photo, shot a whole roll in ten minutes. The barber stopped cutting and came over asking for a photo of him in mid-cut, yeah, great. So this was the Congo hangout it seemed. These guys were pretty vocal, very visual in their clothing and styles, all here doing business for 6 months, a year, but mostly had had enough of China, were going back soon, and it was easy to see why – their exuberance, with Congolese traditional dance music blaring out intermittently with hip-hop and R&B and them breaking into dance every ten seconds, passing a microphone around, there was no way they would be able to accept Chinese-style conformity for long. Meeting them was as if a major jigsaw of the project had suddenly fallen into place. I just have to find out more about Congo’s politics now. Watch Marcus Bleasdale’s “Rape of a nation” on Mediastorm again. They gave me a quick tour of the building, showing me another African restaurant where i’ll surely eat tomorrow,and I asked if they’d be there tomorrow, sure, we’re always here.

And off I went, and having given away all my French copies of the questionnaire,with probably no hope of getting them back, i passed through the Dongfeng mall again on the way to the copy shop. The guy from earlier was still there. I told him I met the guys from Congo ”Hah, the Congo guys - everyone knows them- they’re crazy, maybe too crazy”.

It was too late to check out Sanyuanli again, but I had time to head up to Xiatang Xilu. Not much to see, a few people sitting around, but not, in terms of being a condensed community in a condensed space for documenting, anything like the Congo haircutting corner of the DaXiang mall. So I headed back, and on the bridge back over to the Tianxiu building I bumped into the guy from Ghana whose portrait I started of my shooting with in Moka coffee, back on the 15^th. I had been awkward at the time, first portrait and all that, and not sure how it would go, had no doubt been worried I was intruding on him somewhat at the time, but now, relaxed as I was after a day’s shooting, he seemed more open, and I gave him the questionnaire, and he suggested meeting for a chat tomorrow. Sure.

20th October

You know the more I do this project the more I’m convinced that my natural inclination for laziness is working in my favour. Take today for example. I slept in, had been extra tired last night for some reason, two or three days of walking around in 30 degree heat and humidity laden with tripods and a bulky Kiev caught up with me. So I got up late, checked email and what not, left the hostel at a tardy 1 pm, and headed across town to Tianxiu for 2pm, having planned to do all the other stuff such as bank transfers,and picking up scans etc, beforehand. But later it was to be. The guy wasn’t there in any case. No problem. So bank done, went to Tianhe area, only to be told the scans weren’t ready anyway. Honestly, you will not keep your sanity in China if you are not amenable to the “tomorrow” ethos. On the other hand they will chew your balls off if you are late without an excuse. The key is to practice your excuses. Sometimes vague appeals to shit happening are the best, which is what I got from the soon to be returner of late film. You said three days, no you said two I said two possibly three, so three it became, thus it was my fault. But a good guy. I swap three rolls of Provia100 I bought last week for his last three rolls of provia 400, as far as I know the last three in Guangzhou.

Over to Sanyuanli then by about 6:30pm, packed in like a sardine on the metro. Unlike my previous wander around Sanyuanli, I have directions this time, and in fact find the CanNa or JiaNa Market very easily by the two hundred or so Africans standing around outside discussing. Talking and discussing is really pivotal to the general culture it seems. It’s a good thing I guess. I go inside. It’s end of day messy, paper adverts & bags of abandoned takeaways everywhere. At the back a group of guys are counting money, lots of it by the looks of it. I’m concious of my own recent bank withdrawal still being carried on me. “Hey, what you looking for ?”, the tone seemed non-committal, but anything but neutral. I explained. They were fine with me though. I gave them the sheets, they were mostly Nigerians, so no use for my new photocopies in French. The whole market was run by Nigerians apparently, more so than the others, Chinese were definitely the minority here. They were closing up though, tomorrow would be better, although right now, exactly now, was ideal for getting them all in one place. I handed out half my paperwork. Went upstairs and handed out the rest, 30 sheets away in five minutes, people standing around, asking, demanding whatever information there was to be given. Easy as that. But of course, there will be no photos tomorrow without completed questionnaires…but do I really want 30 portraits from the same mall, all of Nigerians ?

I head across the road, this strip on either side of Guangyuan Xi Lu really is as much of a focal point complete with “hang-outs” as the Tianxiu-Dengfeng-Xiatang hub. It’s almost too much. It expands the scope of my project yet again, confuses me, presents me with another distraction, but if I’m handing out sheets so easily, I might as well pursue it for a day at least. I nip into a tiny netbar/copy shop and translate my main project description sheet into French and replenish my supplies of sheets lost in the last market. Get speaking to Africans also on the computers, they’re from Liberia. They like my project, but not sure about a photo, will get back to me. I sense they won’t. I ask an African woman and she ignores me. The Liberian guy repeats my question, and she ignores him, again dismissively rather than shyly. I tell myself it’s nothing to do with my maleness or my whiteness, she’s just got an attitude problem, today at least.

I set my camera up on its tripod and head back out into the street. On one hand it’s going to startle people, on the other hand, I’m being upfront about my intentions. I figure that having the camera out, and respecting their wishes in not using it, and coming back if needs be, is better than keeping it concealed, making contact, then springing the camera. I approach a group of about 15 guys hanging out on makeshift seats by a small shop. The light is fantastic at this spot, multi-directional with fluorescent, tall tungsten streetlights from the raised motorway, and a wash of neon The lighting alone could almost place it in China. My photographer’s urge is killing me, but I’ve got to be patient. I introduce myself to a guy sitting on the wall. Someone in the middle shouts something derogatory in an African language, but the others silence him, tell him to shut up, listen to what I have to say first before judging me, or words to that effect. This makes me a little more relaxed. I’m trying to balance being confident with seeming too glib and salesmanish. I notice they’re talking English to each other. They’re all from Nigeria and South Africa apparently, the biggest and wealthiest African countries. I start handing forms out. The same happens, crowd forms round me, passers by with hand out, all paperwork gone in five minutes. They’re not sure about photos though. One guy says ok, but I had five guys asking for forms at that time, and would have kept being hassled until they had forms in their hands. Same deal though, many paranoid as hell about what the Chinese authorities might potentially do with a photo of them, but two or three quite glad to speak away, told me come back tomorrow, they’ll go away and think about answers to write, and then we can maybe take some photos. Another guy advises me to watch out myself for trouble with police, if I’m taking photos in China. And my ability to empathise and talk of my own, genuine, worry about running foul of some arbitary clampdown, helps give me some common ground with the African guys. I tell them about police coming round my door twice in a month before the Olympics, and my website getting blocked…but still, they really seem to have some pretty entrenched attitudes towards China, they seem to be having some real negative experiences at the hands of authorities. I can well believe it, but I also reserve a little judgement. Is it maybe just because of a larger community of Africans, so more incidents, and more stories ? Or are they perhaps all just going through that phase all foreigners in China go through once the honeymoon has worn off but before proper integration and acceptance is yet to happen. How much Chinese have they learnt ? How many other parts of the city have they been to ? Whatever, it makes me more resolved to get the perspective of more longer-term Africans as well.

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