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Text Box: ON CHINA'S GREAT WALL: IN SEARCH OF THE AFRICAN PRESENCE   BY Dr. RUNOKO RASHIDI*   DEDICATED TO JAMES E. BRUNSON AND WAYNE B. CHANDLER   "How do we explain such a large population of Blacks in Southern China, powerful enough to form a kingdom of their own?" --Chancellor James Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization   "Most of the population of modern China--one fifth of all the people living today--owes its genetic origins to Africa." --Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1998   2001 was one of my biggest travel years ever.  It was a year that I decided to visit some of the world's world great antiquities including those in China, Egypt, Peru, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam.  China was the first leg on the journey.   How many of us have wanted to visit China?  I certainly did, and when the opportunity availed itself in March 2001 there I went.  I was already in Hawaii anyway and I was excited about going farther.  Not only was China the center of a great and ancient civilization, it was a land with a deep history of African contributions, and me being a man with a keen interest in the global African presence, especially Asia, I felt that I simply had to go.   And so it was that, buoyed by the fact that the trip had been handled by an African travel agency (I love to recycle Black dollars), I arrived, all alone, in Beijing on March 4, 2001.  Sure enough, sisters and brothers, it was not long after landing in China that I found myself on the "Great Wall."  It was another dream come true--I was actually standing on the Great Wall of China.  But beyond the excitement of being there, how was it really?  Actually, I was not that impressed.  I suppose that I had been spoiled by Egypt and I've come to the conclusion that after you've visited Egypt a few times everything else pales in comparison.    Indeed, since my first trip to Egypt in 1992 I have visited India's Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri and Pink City, mighty Angkor in Cambodia, Great Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, Bagan in Myanmar, the rock churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia, Cusco and Machu Picchu in Peru, and a whole lot more.  And these are impressive areas indeed but nothing really matches up to the pyramids, tombs and temples of Egypt.  But at least I could say that I was there--that I stood on the Great Wall!  Good for me.    Following the Great Wall I journeyed to the Ming Tombs, which I found interesting but not really awe inspiring.  But it was during my visit to the Ming Tombs that something happened that in many ways set the tone for the entire trip.  People started to follow me! Both men and women, but especially young women, started following me!  Finally, I just stopped in my tracks and asked my tour guide what was going on.  He told me that my followers were in admiration of me and thought that I must be some kind of celebrity!  Well, with that explanation handed to me I quickly calmed down and went about the important business of sight seeing.  But the people continued to follow me and it soon got to the point where folks were shaking my hand and asking to take photographs with me.  Well, worse things have happened to me and I pretty much took it in all in stride.  But a lot more was to follow on my Chinese odyssey and not all of it was as pleasant.   And so I got through my first day in China.  I had had a long trip, checked into a fabulous hotel, climbed China's Great Wall, visited the Ming Tombs and been mistaken for a celebrity.  All in a day's work in the life of Runoko Rashidi, fast on his way to becoming a legend in his own mind.  Next day, fresh and relaxed I went to the Forbidden City.  I remember a lot of things about that second day.  First, that it was cold and windy.  Second, I found not a scrap of litter on the streets.  Third, that language was going to be a big barrier.  Fourth, I never saw any women in tight and revealing clothes.  And, perhaps more than important than all of the rest, I had not seen any Black people yet--neither depiction nor actual person!  There were none in the Forbidden City, just as there had been none on the Great Wall or in the Ming Tombs.  So much for antiquity.  And then it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't seen any in the hotel or in the restaurants or in the streets or anywhere.  What was going on here?  Trust me when I say that a brother was starting to feel a little lonely.   Next day I visited the Temple of Heaven and the Lama Temple.  I was impressed with both places.  And this was followed the next day with a trip to the Reed Moat Bridge, the Summer Palace and Tianamen Square.  I went to different restaurants every day and the food was great.  So far, pretty good.  But still, no Black folks!  What could have happened to them I wondered?  Wasn't this the place where Chancellor Williams said that we were once powerful enough to build a kingdom of our own?  And didn't my brothers James E. Brunson and Wayne B. Chandler document the existence of Black people here?  Hadn't Clyde Ahmed Winters done some pioneering work on the subject?  And hadn't Rev. James Marmaduke Boddy written about the African presence in ancient China way back in 1905?  And what about that 1998 DNA study that concluded that most of the people of modern China had African genetic origins?  What was going on here?  I was starting to feel confused.   Next day I took an excursion about 128 kilometers out of Beijing to visit the East Qing Tombs.  I thought that if I couldn't find Black people in Beijing itself that I might have better luck elsewhere.  The tombs were splendid and it was well worth the journey, although I still had not found what I was looking for.  On the other hand, the people that I met that day were said to be peasants of Manchu stock and they weren't friendly at all.  Indeed, for the first time on the trip I met folks who actually seemed cold and even a little hostile.  I didn't like it.  When I asked my tour guides what the local people were saying about me they just shrugged and requested that I not worry about it.  I liked it even less.    Well, I guess that you could say that by this time I had seen about enough of Beijing and the surrounding areas and it was more than time to go.  And so away I went to city of Xi'an.  You know the city--the one with the terra cotta soldiers.  I didn't see the soldiers that day but I did make a long anticipated visit to the the Shaanxi Provincial Museum of History--said to be China's best museum.  What a disappointment!  Not a sister or brother--ancient or modern--in the place.  Damn!    And then I went to the Tang Dynasty Museum.  The Tang Dynasty represents one of the great high points in Chinese history.  But there was nothing that I could say was distinctly Africoid in the Tang Museum!  They even brought the Museum Director himself out to meet me.  I was told that it was his official day off but when he heard that I was coming he showed up anyhow.  He told me that he was honored to meet me and that I was the first Black man to ever visit the place.  But when I asked him about African people in the history of China I drew a complete blank.  He claimed that he knew nothing about such a possibility.  At least he was consistent.     Of my three guides, all of whom professed great stores of knowledge regarding early China, I could jar nothing loose from them regarding an ancient African presence.  At the same time, however, they all knew about the anti-African riots that took place in China in the mid-1980s.   I was beginning to wonder if all of this, I mean the whole experience, was a kind of dream or something.    The following day was my best in China!  I went to the Banpo Neolithic Village and drove past the the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, and finally got to the museum of terra cotta soldiers and horses.  They were magnificent and represent another high point in Chinese history, and I was impressed by the fact that both the tomb and soldiers and horses all belonged to the same man who began construction of the Great Wall, and I thought that closest comparison that I could make was to the great pyramid builders of Old Kingdom Egypt.   For lunch that day in Xi'an I went to another great restaurant followed by a visit to an actual Chinese tea house.  This time all of the waitresses paused in their attention to the needs of the other diners to give me a peep and even the chef came out of the kitchen to take a look.  And, oh yes, by this time I had seen a couple of African-American tourists and what appeared to be an African diplomat and one of them actually talked to me!  Wow!   The next two days I saw the Xi'an city walls, a Han tomb complex, a drum tower, and another museum.  And I noticed a few other things too.  It seemed that the Chinese, in general, smoked like chimneys, that they were highly disciplined, that there were lots of unemployed laborers, that there was a great deal of industrial pollution and the skies always seemed hazy, that there were many things to buy with aggressive vendors at every site, and that the people as a whole seemed very proud to be Chinese.      Well sisters and brothers, my trip to China was coming to an end and I suppose that it was just as well.  I was glad that I had gone but I had found no documentation of the African presence and had spent quite a lot of money in my search.  I suppose that I should have been better prepared but based on all the work that had gone into my African Presence in Early Asia anthology I really thought that it would have been a simple process with an obvious African imprint everywhere.  It turned out to be far from the case.  Even the artifacts that I saw dating from the Shang Dynasty period did not seem Africoid.  At least they didn't to me.    And so, rather downcast, I returned to Beijing for one more night before an early morning flight back to the United States.  After settling down in Beijing's Mandarin Hotel, where I got a  beautiful suite, I went out in search of what I hoped would be a really special meal before I departed the People's Republic of China.  But it did not turn out that way.  As a matter of fact, I never did get to eat that evening.    The first two restaurants that I went to were in the hotel itself.  In the first one I waited about thirty minutes for service and never having received any I simply got up and walked out.  In the second hotel restaurant I felt distinctly unwelcome.   I don't believe in spending money where I don't feel comfortable and so I soon left that place too.  And then I walked around the block, thinking that I would have more success outside of the hotel.  But the result was just more of the same.  At one restaurant that I stopped at I was quickly ushered in with a smile and what appeared to be words of welcome.  But then all of a sudden all of the waitresses started to giggle and laugh and I soon got the heck out of there too.   Sisters and brothers, I was livid!  I not only let the front desk at the Mandarin Hotel have it at what I considered my overall rude treatment at the hands of the Chinese but I had plenty of venom left for my tour guides the next morning too.  All they could do was tell me how sorry they were and rather lamely explain that the local people were just not used to seeing Black folks.  And so I blasted them some more.   So I guess that you could say that my trip to China was a kind of bitter sweet affair.  I was glad that I had gone because there is nothing like seeing it for yourself.  And many of the monuments that I saw there were indeed impressive.  But I left China thinking that I would never go there again and I could not help wondering again and again about what happened to all of the Black people in China.   May 10, 2004   *Runoko Rashidi is a historian and world traveler engaged in a life long love affair with Africa.  He is very active Online and is the editor, with Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, of the African Presence in Early Asia.  Runoko is currently coordinating educational-cultural tours to Brazil in November 2005 and Turkey and Jordan in October 2006.   For information on the tour and/or to follow Runoko's doings please email him at Runoko@yahoo.com or call him at (210) 337-4405 or visit his award winning Global African Presence Web Site at http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html

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