Africans in China: A Sociocultural Study and Its Implications on ...

Although a canopy African community in China does not currently exist, there is much interaction and networking among Africans in China along regional, national, religious, and linguistic groupings. Indeed, my use of the term community is very close to Gumperz’s (1962) use of the term linguistic community as “a social group which may be either mono-lingual or multilingual, held together by frequency of social interaction patterns and set off from the surrounding areas by weaknesses in the lines of communication.” Patrick (1999) stated that linguistic communities “may consist of small groups bound together by face-to-face contact or may cover large regions, depending on the level of abstraction we wish to achieve.” Many other linguistic and anthropological linguistic works, such as those of Hymes (1972) and Labov (1972), have similar definitions for conceptualizing the term community, which for linguists revolves around designations such as “linguistic community” or “speech community.” These categories do not necessarily imply that the individuals who are involved speak the same languages but rather that they have similar cultures of communication and interaction.

Thus, the term African community in China is defined in this book as involving groups of Africans in China who constantly communicate and interact with each other and have organized themselves into formal and informal sociocultural groups, networks, associations, and clubs based on regional, national, religious, racial, ethnic, institutional, educational, trade, and recreational interests and commonalities. There are Nigerian communities in Guangzhou and other cities. There are Ghanaian communities in Hong Kong with registered members. There are church communities in all the African settlements in China. Muslim communities exist in Guangzhou and Yiwu, and these include Africans and people of southern and western Asian backgrounds. There are African soccer clubs and teams. There are dance clubs and bars by and for Africans. In short, there are African communities in China.

What Is a Diaspora?

Diasporan studies constitute a hot topic in many disciplines, but the term Diaspora itself is steeped in many meanings. The etymology of the