Black Ghosts
By Noo Saro-Wiwa
The three of us were gathered around a counter, eyeing pornographic imagery. A Chinese vendor, a veiled-up Muslim lady from Niger, and me. We were standing in a low-lit corridor in the Tianxiu Building in the city of Guangzhou, among a series of mildly shabby market-style stalls piled high with bottles and boxes that bore photos of oiled flesh and lustful eyes promising pleasure and endurance. I and the Chinese man looked on as his Nigerienne customer inspected a box of aphrodisiac pills, its packaging displaying a photo of a man (with what I pray was a prosthetic penis) in session with a naked woman. Seized by embarrassment, my ears grew hot and I developed a phantom itch on my nose. The lady from Niger, however, didn’t give a toss. She was here on a shopping mission and had little time to waste on coyness or prudery.
‘Many, many,’ she told the Chinese seller, using the international phrase for wholesale purchasing. The lady ordered a thousand packets of ‘Brother Long Legs’, secured a delivery date for the merchandise, then walked off with her friend, chatting away in French.
The Tianxiu Building is a magnet for African wholesale buyers. Dotted around me were glass counters stacked with all manner of ‘sexuality enhancing’ products, sold by Chinese people who stood by nonchalantly while I checked out their merchandise. I saw vagina-tightening gels, ‘extra strong delay sprays for long-lasting excitement’ and – most intriguing of all – a ‘high-grade professional female oestrus induction toner’ called Spanish Gold Fly. The packaging of another aphrodisiac had Arabic script printed on it and a photo of a Black man being ‘entertained’ below the waist by two white ladies. I scarcely knew where to put my eyes. The vendors slouched behind their counters and fiddled with their phones.
Very few things surprise Chinese manufacturers and wholesalers. They are the eyes and ears of the consumer universe. They know all our secrets and desires, and produce for them accordingly. They have the low-down on the condom sizes favoured by various nations; they know which toys our children prefer. One third of all Christmas trees are manufactured here in Guangdong Province in southern China.
There is nothing Chinese vendors haven’t seen before. Motivated by an all-consuming desire to make money (this non-Christian nation runs the world’s biggest Bible printing press, after all), they were unoffended by my camera and time-wasting inquiries. So long as they made sales at some point in the day I was allowed to snoop, prod and ogle to my heart’s content.
And so I checked out ‘hip lift’ massage creams and hair wigs and Malaysian hair weaves. Some of the Chinese vendors had adopted the African method of hissing to get my attention – ‘Hello, my sista,’ they said, while showing me buttock-enhancing yansh pads and packets of ginseng tea, formulated to strengthen the kidneys, supposedly.
The second floor was the place to buy underwear. Some of the packaging displayed faces of famous footballers that had been photoshopped onto Y-front-clad torsos: an improbably buff Zinedine Zidane showed off his bulge. Buck-toothed Ronaldinho looked especially pleased to be wearing his 100 per cent combed cotton singlet. David Beckham, meanwhile, sizzled in a white vest and briefs, his left hand cupping his crotch. But by far my favourite was the ‘Black Power Obama Collection’ – a pack of men’s underpants decorated with a photo of America’s finest president, fingers on chin, eyes gazing eruditely into the distance. In the free-for-all that is the China–Africa small commodity trade, matters of trademark protection and image rights do not enter the equation. Just shift the product.
Excerpt from “Black Ghosts: A Journey Into the Lives of Africans in China” copyright © 2023 by Noo Saro-Wiwa. Published by Canongate Books.
About the book: Award winning travel writer and author, Noo Saro-Wiwa goes in search of China's 'Black Ghosts', African economic migrants in the People's Republic, who live in separate communities and are vigorously involved in the trade between the continents. Her fascinating encounters include a Ghanaian cardiac surgeon, a drug dealer, a visa overstayer, a Nigerian popstar who sings in Chinese and men married to Chinese women who speak English with Nigerian accents.
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Noo Saro-Wiwa was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England. She attended King’s College London and Columbia University in New York. She is an author and journalist currently working for Conde Nast Traveller. Her first book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria, was published in 2012 and was named Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year, nominated by the Financial Times as one of the best travel books and included as one of the 10 Best Contemporary Books on Africa by the Guardian. It was also shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award in 2013 and won the Albatros Travel Literature Prize in 2016.
You can read our interview with Noo Saro-Wiwa here
