BLACK CHINESE (AFRO-ASIAN): HISTORY AND COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The black or Afro - Asian Chinese are people of Asian and African origin interracial. They are also individuals from African communities who have been living in the Indian subcontinent for several hundred years, and have settled in countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India.

These communities are the sheedis or siddis, they settled in Karnataka and Gujrat 400 years ago. The largest communities of Africans in India and Pakistan are the Siddis.

Jean Ping,, Ethiopia, Feb. 2, 2008.

The term also encompasses the ethnic group of “negritos”, such as the Andamanese, who are the aboriginal inhabitants of South Asia and Southeast Asia. Tribes such as the Daasanach have also been found in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Sudan, speaking Cushite dialects of Afro-Asian origin.

History

The Ethiopians came to southern Arabia in the 2nd and 4th centuries. In 532 AD they had invaded Yemen.

After this, many more Africans came to South Arabia as slaves, the men were generally sold, and the women were kept as servants for the Arab leaders.

Mixed-race children were most valuable in South Arabia. Two of these children became princes of the Abbassides. At this time, the Arab army, known as the Sabaens, moved to Ethiopia. In Iraq, Bantu-speaking Africans were called Zanj.

The large number of ditch slaves working in poor conditions in Iraq leads to the famous Zanj rebellion for over fifteen years (AD 869-883). These African rebels took over many cities in Iraq forcing Arabs to flee to African countries such as Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania.

Today someone of African and Arab origin is considered Afro-Arab. But it was a former slave by the name of Najah who took power in the 10th century and established the Banu Najah dynasty, the first royal Afro-Asian family.

Afro-Asians from Katanga

Katanga is a province located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is very rich in minerals such as copper and cobalt. In the 1970s, several Japanese men lived in this region working in the mines, confined to a male-only field.

These workers, who arrived without a family, began to interact with local women and thus fathered children with the native Congolese. Many of these children who were born as a result of interracial relationships died shortly after birth.

Apparently a Japanese doctor from the local mining hospital poisoned the infants since most of the Japanese miners had families and did not accept that the children were to stay alive with their mothers.

The Afro-Asian children who survived and who were interviewed do not have birth certificates.

This is because they were not given birth in hospitals but in bushes due to the fear of grandparents who feared that they would end up dead like other children. 50 children are believed to have survived but there are no details on the number of children who died.

Equatorial Guinea

In the mid-19th century, some 500 Chinese laborers and hired servants, along with a handful of Indians, were sneaked to the island of Fernando Po through former Portuguese-occupied Macao.

While most of these servants returned to their lands at the end of their servitude, a few remained, who settled and married people from the local population.

Zheng He's fleet

In 1999, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reported a surprising encounter on Pate Island, where he found a village of stone huts. He spoke with an old man who lived in the village and said that he was a descendant of the Chinese explorers who were shipwrecked there centuries before.

The Chinese had traded with the locals, and had even loaded giraffes onto their ship to take to China. However, the Chinese ran aground on a nearby reef.

Kristof found evidence that confirmed the man's story. These descendants of the Zheng fleet occupy the islands of Pate and Lamu, where the Asian characteristics of the people and Asian-looking porcelain artifacts stand out.

South of Asia

As early as 1100 AD, Bantu-speaking African slaves from East Africa were brought to India by Arab traders. These Africans became known as Siddi or Habshi, an Arabic word that means black African.

Today, marriage has made the Siddi population in India much smaller. Someone of Indian and African origin is considered an Indo-African. In South Asia there are more than 15,000 people who identify as Afro-Asian.

U.S

In 1882, the China Exclusion Act was passed and Chinese workers who decided to stay in the United States could no longer be with their wives who stayed in China.

Because white Americans viewed Chinese workers as immigrants who stole jobs from Americans, they were commonly abused. Many Chinese men settled in black communities and, in turn, married black women.

Tiger Woods, the famous golfer, is of White, Chinese, Native American, Thai and Black descent. His father was half African American and his mother was half Thai.

R&B singer Amerie is another famous African-Asian American, her father is African-American and her mother Korean.

Hines Ward, an NFL soccer player, is also an African-Asian. He currently plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers. In the 2000 census, 106,782 people of Afro-Asian origin were counted in the United States.

West Indies

In the 1860s, many Asians from China came to the Antilles to work, mostly as merchants. It was more common for a Chinese man to marry a black woman, as there were more black women than Chinese women.

According to the 1946 census, 12,394 Chinese were between Jamaica and Trinidad. 5,515 of those living in Jamaica were Chinese Jamaicans and another 3,673 were of Trinitarian-Chinese origin living in Trinidad.

In Guyana and Haiti, there is also a very small percentage within the minority who are of Asian descent. Haitian painter Edouard Wah was born to a Chinese father and a Haitian mother.

UK

The UK has a large mixed race population, which is around 1.4% of the population (around 850,000 people). The largest groups are mixed between white and black, and white and Asian.

However, there are over 70,000 UK citizens who are mixed race and do not fit the descriptions above, a large percentage of these being Afro-Asian. Famous British Afro-Asians include Naomi Campbell and David Jordan.

China

Today, African-Asian births are on the rise as a result of the arrival of African-American students in cities like Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai.

Another factor contributing to this rebound is the strengthening of trade relations between Africa and China, which has invited an influx of African immigrants to China, mainly Nigerians who have formed a small but progressive community in the country.

Officials estimated around 500 mixed marriages between Africans and Chinese. In places like Guangzhou, a growing population of about 10,000 African entrepreneurs continues to thrive.

Among China's most famous Afro-Asian natives are Shanghai-born Lou Jing and half South African, half Chinese volleyball player Ding Hui.

References

1. Piss. A. (2011). 'Katanga's Forgotten People'. 1-27-2017, by The blasian narrative. Website: blasiannarrative.blogspot.com.
2. Reinolds, D. (2012). Afro-Asiatica: An Odyssey in Black. 27-1-2017. Website: afroasiatics.blogspot.com.
3. Moreno, G. (2015). HISTORY OF AFRO-ASIAN COUNTRIES. 27-1-2017, from ucm.es.
4. kidzsearch.com. Afro-Asian. 1-27-2017, from kidzsearch wiki Website: wiki.kidzsearch.com.