Guangzhou in focus

Li Dong, a chemical engineering graduate from Zhejiang University, is renowned in China and Europe for documenting the experiences of foreigners in Guangzhou. The former engineer, who was born in the 1960s, thinks the presence of African migrants in Guangdong's capital city represents a milestone in the China-Africa relationship.

Li first encountered foreigners in the 1970s, when they used to visit a local wet market in Chongqing, where his parents lived. There was a great deal of curiosity about foreigners at that time, boosted by the opening-up and reforms of the late 1970s that led to increased outbound travel from China. Now Li thinks the position is reversed and that people are coming to China to learn about its culture, language and traditions.

"When I communicate with foreigners, especially Westerners, I found there is a psychological switch between them and us during the last two decades, so I am quite curious and sensitive as to how we understand each other nowadays," he says.

He started photographing African communities in 2011, without any pre-set theme, focusing on their highs and lows in Guangzhou. The project is not yet finished, but his previous work has been exhibited in France, Germany and Italy.

But documenting their life by camera is not easy because Africans in Guangzhou are wary of public exposure. Some may have problems with their residence documents, and others are afraid of media reports that might give a misleading impression of their lives.

He lived alongside Africans for eight months on Baohanzhi Street, which has the highest concentration of African residents in Guangzhou, to gain their trust and learn about them.

He says Chinese people tend to take a more active approach to learning about Western culture, so they are not afraid of Westerners.

But they are not interested in learning about African culture and its traditions, which in turn increases their fear toward this community. A piece of bad news or a negative event can therefore affect a whole community due to a lack of understanding.

"We are all the same. Africans are like any other immigrant community from China or abroad, coming to Guangzhou for a living and a better life. Once you realize this, there will be no fear or confusion," he says.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 05/01/2015 page7)