Dwelling in Drifting: Kenya–China Life Writing Feipiao

Abstract

With an increase in interactions between Kenya and China at all levels, transnational encounters in everyday life add shades and nuances to the understanding of these recent Africa–Asian encounters beyond the grand narrative. This article focuses on the life writing Feipiao (Drifting in Africa) by a Chinese businessman, Deng Changwu, in Kenya. Deng uses the book as a stage to perform his social identities and offer business and psychological advice and popularises the term as an identity marker of Chinese drifters in Africa. The article emphasises how literary narrative as a tool for knowledge production reiterates and challenges prevailing discourses related to Kenya–China relations. Through the concept of dwelling in drifting, this article maps out individual efforts and translocal, transethnic, and transnational networks, revealing new dynamics and modes of relationship building. This perspective transcends the traditional China–Africa–European triangulation, highlighting the hybrid and multi-dimensional nature of knowledge sharing and production in everyday life.

Introduction

The China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University estimated that “the number of Chinese workers in Africa by the end of 2018 was 201,057,” with 9,131 in Kenya in 2018 (CARI, 2020). Since the 1990s, the ongoing waves of immigration from China to Kenya have been accompanied by the Chinese government's “Going Out Policy” and Belt and Road Initiative. With the increasing interactions between the two countries, the meaning of China is constantly under negotiation (Kimari, 2021). Beyond the grand narratives, the transnational encounters in everyday life add shades and nuances to the understanding of these recent Africa–China interactions. Yet, the Chinese community in Africa is often depicted as a unified entity acting on behalf of the Chinese state, which ignores the “hyperdiversity of the Chinese flows” (Park, 2022: 895) and internal distinctions and various types of relations within the Chinese community (Huynh et al., 2010; Sullivan and Cheng, 2018).

Different from Chinese expatriates or workers who move through organised networks from Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or state-funded institutions, Deng Changwu went to Kenya in the early 2000s and has been living there as an entrepreneur for almost two decades. He owns Danaff Kenya Co. Ltd., a real estate construction company based in Nairobi. His autobiography, Feipiao (Drifting in Africa; Deng, 2019), focuses on the lives of migrants from China to Africa and their drifting routes from the perspective of a private business owner. The state of drifting is a metaphor to capture the precariousness and marginality of being an outsider in a place far from home. Through the concept of “drifting,” this paper focuses on the autobiographical account of a Chinese entrepreneur in the construction industry in Kenya to show the transnational and transregional movements and networks of Chinese individuals.

Autobiography, as narrated by the author himself/herself, is often marketed on the back of its proximity to authenticity regarding real events and personalities. Yet in an interview, ¹ Deng defines his book as a non-fictional novel (jishi wenxue), acknowledging his creative work of narrating his experiences while also emphasising the real names and stories in it. He claims to bring a “real” Africa to the readers but also denies a full mimetic relationship to reality. Deng as the narrator and protagonist, encounters this blurry line between reality and fictionality created by the embedded aesthetic intervention of life writing. Autobiography as “a public exposure of the private self” (Anderson, 2001: 7) is a selective remembering and narration of self and events in the past from an individual perspective that can deviate from, or even counter, other narratives. The purpose of this article is not to check the truthfulness of Deng's accounts. Rather, it aims to examine the narrative and discursive patterns that he uses to rationalise his actions, summon emotions, perform his social identities, and represent the diasporic community. Through close reading and analysis of both the book's themes and its reception, this paper demonstrates how autobiographies of Chinese people in Africa could serve simultaneously as ethnographic accounts and literary interventions in understanding the people-to-people interactions of China–Africa relations beyond the grand political and economic discourses.

Life writing is often defined as a genre concentrating on the recording of (auto)biographical experiences, memories, feelings, and so on in various forms, such as memoirs, diaries, and social media posts. Chinese travel and life writing about Africa are not new in addressing these transcultural interactions. In the 1960s, Chinese and African travelogues were both an integral part of the official discourse about Afro-Asian solidarity and an account of individual bonds and affections (Sun et al., 2023). In the 1970s and 1980s, poems, novels, and memoirs about the Chinese-built Tanzania–Zambia (TAZARA) railway, such as The Rainbow of Friendship: An Anthology of TAZARA Railway Workers (1975), recorded historical moments and documented these “new” Afro-Asian encounters through a project-based and state-initiated process. In the twenty-first century, with more Chinese people going abroad, the life writing genre has tended to document the narrator's adaptation to cultural differences and transformations in Africa. Most accounts focus on diplomatic lives in Africa, such as Zhang Yiwang's Days and Nights in Bamako (2014), or trips of journalists, such as Liang Zi's book I Love Africa (2012) and Gui Tao's This is Africa (2012). Others include life experiences such as teaching at the Confucius Institute in Africa in Jiang Lingyue's Tales of Two Cities in Africa (2018) or pilot training in Tanzania in Mi Bin's Flying in Africa (2007).

The narration of travelling has been a way for writers to reflect on and survey the development of the self, nation, and world. It is “deeply embedded in the historical imagination of both modern and contemporary China” (Cai, 2004: 128) and integrates all other ways of writing (Coetzee, 2013). Deng's work is special in the sense that it narrates everyday life in Africa through the perspective of an individual who does not work for the Chinese government or Chinese SOEs. His account shows an alternative picture of interactions and networks across ethnic, national, cultural, and racial borders. He does not live in a working compound (Fei, 2023) or “self-segregate” (Yan et al., 2019). Through various situations and events, Deng's writing shows the jointly constituted and changing worldviews and complex relationship between the Chinese individual and the home state.

Current literary studies on China–Africa tend to focus on fictional narratives (Shi, 2021; Yoon, 2023), while travel narratives, creative non-fiction, or (auto)biographies are not very often the subject of analysis. For one thing, these personal life writings are not widely recognised as serious literature due to their “lack” of a style, their small number of prints (normally 1000–2000), and their limited circulation. Some of them are available only online. The life writing genre is often taken as an “authentic” (auto-)ethnography or statement of “facts.” It is typically analysed without consideration of the genre's literariness, even though how one event or scene is narrated is closely related to the discursive formation and epistemological positioning. Furthermore, studies on the China–Africa literature focus more on Anglophone or Francophone narratives than on those in other languages. These factors combine to explain the dearth of academic attention to life writings in shaping Chinese conceptions of Africa.

This article draws attention to individual perspectives of developments in China–Africa relations that are often missing in grand narratives and recognise the informal or unofficial networks of knowledge produced by literature, especially life writing. Karen Thornber's article (2016) outlined the importance of literary studies in understanding perceptions and knowledge that shape the mutual understanding of and interactions between Africa and China. In this sense, literature constitutes not only an object of knowledge but also a way of making it. Literary writings are understood here as a form of knowledge production and a reflection of politics that reveal transcultural encounters on the ground without the need for “triangulations” (Castillo, 2020; Cheng, 2019) of Africa–China via Europe as a reference point.

By focusing on an individual's perspective and the framing of their own experiences in Africa, this article asks the following questions: How does individual life writing reiterate, diversify, or even resist the dominant discourses of Kenya–China relations? How does the concept of drifting (re)define the understanding of Africa–China beyond grand narratives? How do literary narratives as a practice of knowledge production help shape networks and lead to the formation of shared identities among Chinese migrants in Africa? This article will first review the concept of drifting and then talk about both the content and reception of Deng's book. It also maps out a transethnic, transnational, and transcontinental network of the Chinese community that transgresses boundaries to survive and succeed in Africa. In conclusion, it reflects on relational and situational encounters between Kenyans and Chinese migrants in everyday life. It emphasises the multi-level, multi-directional drifting of multiple agents in Kenya–China everyday encounters. Not only can the individual and the nation-state not be rigidly separated, but neither can literary genres and epistemologies.

Dwelling in Drifting

The name of Deng's book Feipiao – meaning “Africa drifters” (though translated as Drifting in Africa) – uses the same linguistic pattern as the established term Beipiao, which refers to people who migrate from the rural area to Beijing in pursuit of a better life. It emphasises the grassroots nature of these China–Africa transcontinental travels beyond those trips organised by the government or SOEs. Drifting is used to describe the lack of security and stability, the sense of rootlessness and powerlessness, and the intelligibility and uncertainty of the future. There are other variations, such as Hupiao (Shanghai drifters), Shenpiao (Shenzhen drifters), and Gangpiao (Mainlanders in Hong Kong). The state of drifting is a metaphor to capture the precariousness and marginality of being an outsider in a place far from home. Political, economic, social, and cultural regulatory regimes constantly define and shape the liminal living state of these social groups, such as the hukou or household registration system (Zhang, 2018), the stereotypes of peasant workers (Dooling, 2017; Sun, 2014), and the discourse of suzhi (Jacka, 2009; Murphy, 2004; Yan, 2008).

Chinese migrants in Africa, especially those travelling on their own for individual reasons, use the term drifting to signify the difficulties they face in Africa and their state of mind as members of the Chinese diaspora. Visa issues, culture shock, linguistic barriers, and both internal and external migration policies influence overseas drifters’ decision-making processes and life experiences. Driessen (2016) described the idea of sacrificing the present for the future as well as anxiety over missing out as the drivers of young, rural Chinese men going to Africa. Hanisch (2022) pointed out the “sweet” side of sacrificing the present for the future. Yet, with the increasing popularity of “lying flat” (Gullotta and Lin, 2022), going to Africa is gradually starting to be regarded as a choice to escape the anxiety within Chinese society due to Africa's relatively relaxed working pace in the present. In Deng's account, “sweetness” is often narrated alongside “bitterness.” Thus, a future-oriented temporality might ignore the mixed feelings and experiences in the process. Meanwhile, the assertion of lacking cultural and social investment might not fit the situation of Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa, who, in fact, rely on their local contacts or employees for their businesses to thrive. Driessen defines drifting as a means to “generate stability through mobility” (Driessen, 2021), yet some African drifters in Deng's book might have achieved financial or social stability before their arrival, not necessarily through their entrepreneurship in Africa.

Thus, inspired by “dwelling in travelling” (Clifford, 1992: 108), this article proposes “dwelling in drifting” to capture the constant living and mental state in regard to belonging and uncertainty of the future. It means accepting and being prepared for uncertainty, (im)mobility, and insecurity. The feeling of uprootedness, as well as the preparedness for changes, cuts across professions and classes. Drifters’ living situations and mental states may be similar to what Swider (2011) described as “permanent temporariness,” in which migrants feel detached from both home and host communities, but this in-betweenness emerges from different reasons and might lead to different destinies. Different from the strict hukou system in China that restricts people's settlement in the city, Chinese people living in Africa face other forms of constraints, such as migration policies, linguistic and cultural differences, political and economic instability, and other sudden circumstances that could not have been predicted at an individual level. In the face of these challenges, drifters in Africa demonstrate their agency in adapting to or avoiding these situations and, at the same time, acknowledge and coexist with the uncertainty. In this sense, drifting does not always imply movement but includes (un)wanted stops and waiting. Diverging from the perception that Africa is only a transitional place rather than the destination for Chinese migrants, this article argues that the indecisiveness of staying or leaving should not be interpreted as an unwillingness of the Chinese community to root itself in Africa. The unintelligibility of the future is exhibited through the uncertainty of settling down, but it does not rule out the possibility. Dwelling in drifting is not only a mental state of drifting but also another kind of dwelling.

In the book, Deng classifies drifters in Africa into three categories (397–398). The first group consists of diplomats and employees of governmental and international organisations, including news agencies, the United Nations, and international financial institutions. For him, these are not drifters in a strict sense due to their elite positions, relatively short-term stays, and transnational mobility as expatriates. The second category includes employees of SOEs at both national and provincial levels. Despite the hierarchical differences among themselves, they have stable salaries, relatively secure working conditions, and career prospects, enjoying a certain degree of stability and security. Most come to Africa on limited-term contracts via company-organised schemes. The last category consists of the owners and workers of private companies, not only businesses owned by individual Chinese people but also by Africans. Those who belong to this group lack institutional protections and often face unforeseeable challenges, shouldering all risks and responsibilities on their own.

For Deng, the last category is the main group of drifters in Africa or, in his terms, “full drifters,” his book's intended audience: “They are distant from their homeland without any kin to turn to when facing difficulties and can only rely on their own hands and feet” ² (Deng, 2019: 398; all quotations from Deng's book translated by the current author). Undeniably, individuals can move from one group to another. However, according to Deng, only those who “have good luck, choose the right industry, have money and the capability to establish themselves [… are successful staying in Africa]. They comprise 20 per cent of all African drifters” (Deng, 2019: 398). ³ Clearly, Deng positions himself among those very few. His conceptualisation of drifting is defined by the distance from state institutions. While Deng pays attention to class differences across these categories of drifters, he maintains that security is the most salient distinguishing marker between them. According to Deng's definition, drifters within the last category are similar to global hustlers, facing uncertainties and insecurities and trying to survive through various routes “where ‘crises’ become unexceptional, and where coping with uncertainty is normalised” (Thieme, 2018: 530). The state of drifting recognises the eventfulness of their stay in Africa and entails “the search for openness” (Di Nunzio, 2019: 3). Yet, different from young, urban African hustlers, Chinese African drifters have resources that can be marshalled to achieve mobility and chase trends of investment and employment opportunities within the Chinese ethnic network. It is also from these encounters that new relations or practices of relationship take shape and generate impacts on Sino-African discourses in one way or another.

Deng's own life drifts across local and global networks, as does the process of the book's publication. The book shows how distinctions between nation-state and individuals, and differences between Chinese migrants and Kenyans, are blurred in everyday interactions; in this way, life writings embedded in transnational print networks become a venture and an outlet for knowledge production. Deng's book is an autobiographical account, self-help business manual, survival guide, and mental consolation for Chinese people who live in Africa or plan to come to Africa. It is about Kenya and even Africa in general, but also about how Chinese migrants deal with issues when facing cultural differences, unknown historical and socio-political contexts, and racial questions.

Drifting from the Nation

Drifting in Africa follows a chronological line in narration from 2005 to 2017 with flashbacks and citations from Deng's diary and letters. Even though his childhood is not the main plot, his recollection of the past echoes the dominant historiography. Born in a remote village in Sichuan, he was raised with five brothers in poverty during the Mao era. In 1981, he graduated from high school but took another five years to get into university, for which his father had to borrow money from neighbours to pay his school fees (341–342). After university, Deng was assigned to the Sichuan Provincial Supply and Marketing Cooperative. All these turns in his life matched the changing contexts of China from a socialist state to a post-Maoist era. Deng first came to Kenya as an accountant for the Chinese Centre for Promotion of Investment, Development and Trade in Kenya Ltd. (abbreviated as Chinese Centre) in 2005. In January 2006, he left his position due to his strained relationship with his superior and dissatisfaction with the bureaucracy. Deng's exit from the state system distances him from the supervision of the Chinese governmental institutions, but this does not mean he is absent from Chinese business networks. Later that year, Deng started investing in the construction industry in Nairobi, around the same time as the president of China at the time, Hu Jintao, agreed during a state visit to Kenya to conduct a feasibility study on revamping Nairobi's roads. Deng and his business partner obtained the information for their land purchase from the vice president of a Chinese SOE in Kenya, whose wife was Deng's colleague at the Chinese Centre (Deng, 2019: 35–36).

Deng may have had various reasons for drifting in and out of the state system, including his calculation of gaining economic or social capital benefits. As a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (CCPPNR), Deng values his image as a Chinese investor in Kenya. This is underscored by addressing his target readers as “we” instead of narrating from a singular first-person “I,” as he calls for a joint effort in maintaining a good reputation and positive collective image of Chinese people to gain the support of African friends and be welcomed by them (67). Considering the role of social respectability in economies and the racial profiling and targeted crimes against Chinese migrants in Africa (Huynh et al., 2010), Deng's emphasis on a joint endeavour could be based on the logic that a positive image will boost or smooth their profit procurement and capital advancement in the foreign land. Even though vast heterogeneity, tensions, and competition exist among Chinese communities in Africa, Chinese businesses are often racialised as one entity in Africa (Lee, 2017). Chinese economic activities in Africa, for Deng, are not simply a matter of individual enterprise management but closely related to the image of China, especially for the construction industry, which receives more media attention.

Despite Deng's efforts to distance himself from government institutions, Drifting in Africa is excessively full of Chinese state narratives and political slogans to the extent that the text becomes a show or performance of his loyalty to the state. Deng uses confession to swear his allegiance to the nation and loyalty to the party. In fact, from the beginning, he and his business partner decided not to get involved in any Chinese local communities or networks (84). He attributes this to their introverted character and preference for being low-key and self-restrained. Before the Chinese embassy's survey during the Kenyan 2007/2008 election crisis, Deng had no direct contact with the embassy or any other governmental institutions. Deng explains this decision as out of consideration for not bringing troubles to the embassy and other Chinese migrants. If one links Deng's reasoning regarding the calculation of possible risks with his experiences within state-owned companies, the more convincing reason for this self-distance is his concern over being “troubled” or getting involved in troubles within the Chinese community. Yet later in the book, Deng chalks this decision up to “not knowing the rules” (84) ⁴ and confesses that he feels deeply guilty and blames himself for having made the “wrong” decision (83). ⁵ The confessed guilt and self-blame are a declared repudiation of self-isolation from the Chinese government and an attempt to reduce the possible interpretation of his action as non-identification with China or being Chinese. Through public political sentiment and self-censorship, Deng uses the book to perform piety towards the nation and government. Deng's “conversion,” which occurred via meeting with the Chinese ambassador and joining the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), becomes a sign of allegiance to the government and his Chinese identity, even though this conversion might have been motivated by the prospect of getting more business opportunities and gaining better access to the Chinese network in Africa. Deng proudly narrates his subsequent attendance at the respective annual sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the CPPCC in 2016. This shows the liminal state of African drifters, who have a complicated and dynamic relationship with the nation-state – a relationship that constantly changes according to personal relationships and calculations of interests vis-à-vis state institutions.

Another thread in the performance of the text is Deng's expression of gratitude. He excessively writes that he would like to sincerely thank certain persons and institutions, his business partners, the Chinese ambassador in Kenya, some leaders in the CCPPNR, and the motherland. These direct and explicit formulaic phrases reinforce the “face giving” ritualistic practice, demonstrating the narrator's awareness of his social positioning as a Chinese individual relying on various networks to ensure his business and social success. This intentional use of the book aims to maintain these relations by acknowledging others’ contributions to his achievements. It balances the individuality in the business and further refers to African drifters as a collective community and rising China as the drive that makes all these possible. The book becomes a way for him to keep his networks and institutions so that he might benefit from them again at a point in the future.

Deng also uses Drifting in Africa as a way to “write against” the West, especially against negative Western media reports about China's engagements with Africa. He offers a different account from the Western media and is strongly against the narrative of Chinese “neocolonialism.” Since he writes in Chinese, this “writing against” is circulated in a loop and confined to an echo chamber. Instead of directly confronting the Western media reports, it mainly serves to satisfy the anti-West feelings among Chinese readers and allows Deng to play the victim. Deng's book repeats Chinese state discourse, which diminishes the strength of this “writing-against” paradigm. Its absorption and recycling of the state narrative also appeal to a market that capitalises on nationalism. Antagonistic feelings and anti-Western sentiments are further strengthened with the rising logic based on a Cold War binary and conspiracy theory.

One example that Deng records is a demonstration against Chinese shops and businesses in Nairobi in 2012. According to Deng, the demonstration was said in Daily Nation to target Chinese hawkers in the retail markets and against the absence of related government regulations. Chinese street hawking was not distinguished from other Chinese businesses. Thus, Deng takes the demonstration as a racialised attack on Chinese businesses in Nairobi. Deng wrote that the CCPPNR in Kenya took the event seriously, organising meetings within the Chinese community to foster self-critique and reflection, in addition to meeting with the protesters to discuss a solution. Aside from these interactions, Deng connects the protest with Hillary Clinton's visit to Kenya around the same time (221). He does not mention her name directly and only refers to her as a “state leader,” but he intentionally leaves enough information for the readers to identify this information. During her trip to Africa in August 2012, shortly after the fifth ministerial conference of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Clinton, as the US secretary of state, criticises China's engagements with African countries, alluding to her previous warning of China as the neocoloniser in Africa that she had voiced in a 2011 television interview in Zambia. ⁶ Deng clumsily skirts Clinton's identity to avoid a direct accusation that might cause a diplomatic spat while at the same time launching a criticism of the West.

A Cold War binary between the East/China and the West/United States is established here. Deng writes that after more comprehensive research, “we” members of the CCPPNR and the Chinese community in Nairobi realised that this anti-China protest was actually “bought and used” ⁷ by a Western NGO. On the one hand, despite the doubtful reliability of this claim, it repeats Cold War thinking about a Sino-American rivalry by blaming the United States as the hidden hand of local anti-China sentiments. Deng even categorises Western NGOs into two kinds: those really working hard to improve social welfare, and those harming Kenya's interests under the guise of helping it. Clearly, for Deng, Western NGOs who report negatively on China in Africa belong to the latter category that deliberately pull strings with ulterior motives to influence China–Africa relations and should be rendered under the administrative power of Kenyan governments. This suggestion of government intervention through the Kenyan government to impose a positive image of China shows the logic of using governmental or institutional power to influence civil society. On the other hand, local movements and local NGOs are portrayed as naïve, inexperienced, and unsophisticated in politics, unaware and ignorant of Western conspiracy against China. Deng records that they informed a relevant Kenyan association of their findings and warned them not to be used by Western media and organisations as the foot soldiers of the United States to harm the friendship between Kenya and China (221). This Cold War binary with an assumption of anti-China sentiments from the West diverts local criticism and undermines African agency. It hinders serious reflection on the issue and ignores local contexts. Meanwhile, the CCPPNR's intervention and agreement to restrain Chinese street hawkers betrays power hierarchies and class differences within the Chinese community. Nationality divides the have-nots, while it is also used as a regulating frame to ensure an internal class hierarchy. In the end, Deng suggests local protesters go directly to the CCPPNR next time to exchange opinions and negotiate instead of going to the street and exposing it to the media. However, he does not note the reality that the Chinese community or company in question is not always accessible and receptive to popular opinions and complaints from the local underclass.

In this sense, autobiography as a genre offers Deng a space to express and perform his loyalty to Chinese governmental institutions and networks by reiterating a popular nationalist narrative, even though he constantly drifts from China out of an economic calculation and pragmatic aspiration for high social status among the overseas community. By narrating stories that were not reported in Western or local media, Deng also tries to establish a positive image of China to smooth the operations of Chinese non-state businesses and African drifters’ daily lives. He offers counter-narratives from the perspective of the Chinese community but (un)consciously repeats a binary logic that triangulates China–Africa relations with the West while hindering critical reflections on these interactions on the ground.

“Do as the Romans do”: Navigating Local Networks and Practices

“Do as the Romans do” is what Deng concludes in one of the chapters about his confusion and fury over Kenyans’ lateness for meetings. The differences in living, business practices, and worldviews are reflected in Deng's records of his changes in attitudes and life philosophies. However, he mobilises “psychological imagination” (Nehring and Frawley, 2020) as a way to justify the process of acculturation as national and individual progress and to configure socioeconomic issues as personal problems and concerns. How to find peace and happiness when living in Africa is narrated through business tips and psychological advice. Through these accounts, his local networks surface and show his crossing of, or drifting in, different circles.

The book serves as a business manual on how to do business successfully in Africa. Drifting in Africa follows a non-surprising plot of a self-made man from China in East Africa, featuring himself as an accomplished public figure who obtains fortune through arduous work in the face of all kinds of difficulties. Many chapters in the book follow a problem/solution narrative formula that highlights the difficulties of drifting in Africa and the wisdom, perseverance, hard work, and bravery of Deng himself. Deng narrates how his local managers cheated him, his partners swindled him, his security guard attacked him with a machete that almost killed him, his workers and workers’ union surrounded him in protests, local legal authorities “harassed” him, and Indian Kenyans’ monopolies blocked him from obtaining critical raw construction materials. As a consequence of these experiences, Deng learns to change his practices; in the book, he recommends setting up a piece-rate system instead of hourly wages (and details how), using M-pesa instead of cash for paying salary, going to court instead of negotiating privately under the table, and following the military's stance when assessing the situation in politically unstable times. Almost all the cases in relation to him are solved in the end. Deng also mentions failures on the part of his friends, whom he warned of the difficulties and obstacles of doing business in Africa, which include their short-sighted investments, unwise business decisions, and underestimation of political and social risks. This contrast renders his success rare and obtained through wisdom and hard work. In Deng's book, Africa is stereotypically depicted through presentations of problems as a place that, while “wild,” is full of business opportunities. He emphasises the uncertainty, insecurity, and eventfulness of Africa drifters’ lives: they face scams, violence, disease, and corruption. But the solution parts of the book describe the logic of survivalism and hustlers’ capabilities of “navigating various rhythms and states of emergency” (Thieme, 2018: 531), which manifest African drifters’ agency in dealing with crises and emergencies. Similar to the American-style narration of the frontier, this narrative pattern promotes a spirit of individual entrepreneurship deeply embedded in neoliberal capitalism. Any socio-political or economic structural problems are buried under individual capability and charisma, creating an illusion that everyone can make it. If something happens, it is one's own lack of ability or bad luck. Issues in welfare systems or inequalities in legislation are not under consideration.

Through these narratives on business, Deng's close network of African partners surfaces. Deng forms alliances with Kenyan lawyers, policemen, land brokers, government technocrats, and managerial-level staff in big local companies. He bought his first piece of land through a local agent called Annie, cooperated with police officer Ochieng, and solved legal disputes through one of his influential customers, a chief financial officer at a famous Kenyan company and another friend at the Criminal Investigation Department in Kenya. With the help of these relationships, Deng was able to resolve the protests on his construction site and peacefully coexist with Mungiki (a local youth gang). Deng's local connections are concentrated within the elite level, most are propertied, English-speaking, and university-educated, regardless of their nationality or ethnicity. In line with the idea of “people as infrastructure” (Simone, 2004), his partner network is the infrastructure for his business and safety net amid crises and emergencies. To some extent, whether one is Chinese or Kenyan is not the most important factor for Deng; to survive and succeed against all odds is a primary goal for drifters.

By contrast, his local employees are seldom mentioned unless Deng is betrayed or attacked by them. Deng rationalises those attacks or violence towards him as stemming from personal grudges or individual jealousy, ingratitude, or malice; he positions himself in these scenes as the victim of corruption and violence. Narrating these events from the autobiographical “I” easily sways the reader into sympathising with the narrator's perspective, reinforcing the motivational and entrepreneurship dimensions of the book but veiling alternative accounts of these events and avoiding consideration of deeper structural reasons. For instance, when a worker died on the construction site of Deng's company, Deng blamed the machine and operational mistakes while emphasising how generous he was in terms of compensation and funding the funeral. Similarly, when his Chinese employees were attacked by local employees or contracted malaria, Deng mainly writes of his deep concerns and efforts to save them instead of his overlooking of safety risks or the mismanagement that caused these issues in the first place. All these episodes form an image of Deng being a responsible and empathetic employer, while they also obscure or minimise the oversight of the management board of the company and the relevant class differences. He treats each incident as an isolated case instead of relating them to structural issues such as strained labour relations, legal loopholes, or power imbalances.

Deng's book also serves as a psychological and mental guide to navigating different cultural venues in Africa. He offers tips on how to understand and adapt to local culture as well as advice on how to be happy and enjoy life in Africa, including where to travel and go sightseeing. These “happy” chapters are narrated alongside the “bitter” events, exhibiting the coexistence of sweetness and bitterness in the drifting life. One issue is the conceptualisation of time. Deng records his complaints about the unpunctuality of Kenyans, which even led to conflicts with business partners (34). Similar to colonial understandings of “African time,” Deng associates it with Kenyans’ religious beliefs and calls for the adaptation of “doing as the Romans do” as the best strategy. He explains his way of dealing with lateness: he informs his counterpart shortly before he leaves the house; since implementing that tactic, he reports, his “drifting life has [had] more sunshine and happiness” ⁸ (34). However, his explanation of these cultural differences is based on economic determinism whereby “poverty and underdevelopment make people not take credence and dignity seriously” ⁹ (34). He thinks that the Chinese would not do better than Africans under similar conditions. This comment seems different from the racial reasoning of these cultural differences in the colonial discourse, but it still reflects the economic determinism and linear developmental view of classic Marxism, whereby societies are categorised based on development levels, with nations accordingly placed into the hierarchy. Different cultural practices and rituals are taken as a marker of civil manners and social development levels.

Drifting in Africa uses some narrative patterns and the motivational style of the self-help genre to offer tips and guidance for living in Africa. It is embedded in a capitalist logic of entrepreneurship, development, and economic success. Through the narration, the uncertainty and insecurity of drifting life are documented, while Deng's networks are also revealed, which are not based on nationality but joint interests. Tips for adaptation and cultural understanding offer a mental map. Deng regards these tips as helpful for learning how to smooth people-to-people interactions; the advice is not only intended to help reduce friction and conflict, but it is also framed within the win–win rhetoric of the Chinese state.

“Should I Stay or Should I Go?”: The Purpose of Drifting

Besides being a Chinese businessman in Africa, Deng is also a father, son, husband, and friend. Thus, he uses the confessional dimension of life writing to expose his own vulnerability; in this way, not only is the text's emotional flow maintained, but the reader also gains empathy for Deng and perceives his recounting of events as authentic. There are several moments when Deng questions the purpose or meaning of drifting. He is constantly drifting between the pole of settling in Africa when things go well and the opposite pole of leaving Africa at the low points. Drifting is the state that he dwells in.

Deng often doubts his drifting when facing low points in life. The book's narration is interrupted only twice. Both are moments of mourning when Deng cites his letters to his deceased son and father. In the letter where Deng cries over the death of his youngest son from illness, he uses “you” to address the deceased and “your dad” for himself. This direct speech towards “you” adds emotional strength and intensity to the narration, while the use of “your father” also builds a distance between the narrator and the event, allowing more space for reflection and introspection. The adjectives in the title “My biggest failure, the most heartbreaking, remorseful, and blameworthy event in Africa” (158) ¹⁰ voice his great pain and regrets over his deceased son. Deng attributes the death of his son to the incompetence and structural deficits of the Karen hospital and medical system in Kenya, whose staff did not take timely enough measures to save his life. Partly diverting from the narrator's self-blame and internal guilt, blame is launched at the hospital, a blame that extends to the whole continent, a geographical location symbolised as a heartbreaking place filled with unpleasant memories. The death of his son is interpreted as a punishment, reminder, and warning vis-à-vis his activities in Africa, especially his previous negligence of his family (160). For the burial ceremony, Deng brought the remains back to his hometown. Returning home after death in a distant place is part of the Chinese customary practice of “falling leaves return to their roots.” ¹¹ Even though the child was born in Africa, he is still Chinese. During these emotionally vulnerable moments, Deng questions why he is in Africa and whether he is sacrificing his family for his career pursuits.

Another emotional moment when Deng asks himself what the purpose and aim of his drifting in Africa is comes after attending the funeral of his friend “Old Zhao” in Nairobi. Deng retells Zhao's life story of living in a shed near the construction site and suffering from stomach pains without any medical assistance, even though Zhao could have enjoyed a comfortable life before coming to Kenya. Deng recalls Zhao's idolisation and citation of Mao's saying “There is infinite joy in struggling with heaven; there is infinite joy in struggling with earth; and there is infinite joy in struggling with man!” ¹² (214) This adds a note to the meaning of Chinese drifters in Africa as being akin to Sisyphus, contrasting with the discourse of Chinese migrants as gold diggers. Meaning in life is not achieved by pursuing happiness through obtaining material possessions but by labouring. By depicting Zhao as a hardworking guy against all odds, Deng portrays African drifters as a group of people who “[devote themselves] silently, [work] hard and [try their] best to change the poor situation and underdeveloped face of Africa in their own fields” ¹³ (217). Africa is associated with poverty and underdevelopment again, while Chinese economic activities in Africa are framed with the lofty goal of development. In Deng's narration, individual Chinese drifters are not to be understood as atomised fortune seekers; rather, they are bestowed with the sublime goal of developing Africa, which Deng conceptualises in a linear temporality and spatial hierarchy. This “eating bitterness” (and even death) is framed as a Chinese “contribution” to Africa housed in the economic-centred conceptualisation of development. It acknowledges the difficulties, risks, and sacrifices but sweeps their profit-seeking motivation under the rug. Eating bitterness is not only a reference to a hardworking Chinese spirit in everyday practices but also becomes an excuse to justify China's developmentalism. It could also be seen as an excuse to anesthetise drifters’ doubts about their decision to come to and stay in Africa. It is through narrating these moments of loss that Deng finds it hard to believe and understand why the media describe African drifters, including him and his friends, as neocolonisers in Africa when they are not enjoying life in Africa like colonialists in the past (216–217).

Even though Deng expresses his uprootedness in Africa, at the end of Drifting in Africa, he mentions the relatively recent declaration of Indian Kenyans as an ethnic group of Kenya and asks, “Will we, Africa drifters, be declared by a country or a president to be one of their ethnic groups in the future? Will this end our drifting life, finally being settled and merged with Africa?” ¹⁴ (401) South Asian Kenyans are mainly depicted as either monopolists or swindlers in Deng's book, but the Kenyan constitutional recognition of them is taken as a possible destination for Chinese drifters in Africa. Deng's speculation of this possible end of drifting takes Indian Kenyans as a reference point and goes beyond a racial, geographical, and epistemic triangulation of China and Africa. It brings the role of the Kenyan government into the picture and speculates whether the Chinese will stop drifting and finally settle in Kenya. Drifting is not a transitional stage towards leaving or staying in Africa but a dwelling in itself that captures the current living situation and state of mind.

Drifters as a Community

Despite Deng's emphasis on his own experience, Drifting in Africa is in a close dialogic relationship with its readers. It offers a tentative subjectivity and route for its reader to form a collective identity based on nationality. Individuals are bestowed with the agency to adapt and manage their life in Africa and are, indeed, tasked with doing so, while China is the anchoring point of cultural interpretation and collective community in Deng's account. That is also why Chinese drifters in Africa or those planning to drift in Africa are the main readers of Deng's book. Despite their differences, they all carry a similar desire for upward class mobility through a change of environment. In everyday life, drifters might be connected by their home province, blood relations, or social connections, but with the publication of Deng's book on various platforms, discussion forums about the book have become gathering places for drifters.

Deng's book itself also drifted between China and Africa. Before the publication of this book in mainland China by the Sino-Culture Press in 2019, it first appeared in 2017 as a self-financed booklet of 1000 copies in Nairobi and as a serial story in a local Chinese newspaper, the West Africa United Business Newspaper, in Lagos, Nigeria. The book's own travel within the African continent exhibits the pervasive feeling of drifting among Chinese migrants and their continent-wide network. When the book was first sold to test the waters in Nairobi, it was available in only four venues: the Toufu King Supermarket, Beijing Restaurant, and two Chinese supermarkets housed in the China Center Mall, most of which are located in Kilimani, a middle-class area of Nairobi where the Chinese community and some Chinese state agencies such as the Xinhua News Agency and the commercial office of the Chinese embassy are based. These selling locations reflect Deng's targeted readership and explain the book's relative inconspicuousness outside the Chinese drifting community in Africa.

Drifting in Africa has eighty-five chapters in the 2019 version, while its 2017 version has eighty-nine chapters. Four chapters were deleted. While the 2017 version is no longer available, parts can be found on different online platforms. Almost all the deleted chapters are about cross-community sexual relationships. Deng recalls the editing process and expresses thanks to his friends who worked in the state media houses for offering editing advice. It is unknown whether these chapters were deleted under their advice or by his publisher. It does show that cross-community intimacy, especially between Black Africans and Chinese migrants, is a controversial and sensitive issue in the context of anti-Black racial nationalism in China (Huang, 2020). Meanwhile, Deng cited several online posts and comments to promote his book on his social media accounts in 2017, even reprinting them on his book's back cover. The comments he selected show how his readers drew inspiration from it, their respect towards him after reading it, and their shared sentiments and emotions of losing loved ones and co-workers to diseases and violence in Africa. Some joined to tell their own story and took Drifting in Africa as an exemplary case of dealing with certain emergencies. Similarly, some drifters’ life stories are also included in the narrative as short biographies to offer a group portrait of African drifters. Intertextuality and interactions between Deng's book and its readers form a sense of community through media platforms. One of his readers even quoted Mao's comments on Norman Bethune (Bethune being a Canadian surgeon who came to China during the Sino-Japanese war to treat battlefield casualties), lauding Deng as “noble-minded and pure, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, a man who is of value to the people” ¹⁵ (Mao, 1939). This comment is published on the back cover of the book. Using Mao's praise of Bethune for Deng suggests Deng's selfless devotion and contribution to Africa.

The interactive relationship between the book and its readers reinforces a collective identity through this shared rhetoric. Despite new communication technology or cultural contexts, socialist expressions are widely reused and formulated to create parallels between the present and the past. Both Deng and his readers judge the activities of Chinese African drifters from 2000 onward as something more than profit-seeking and integrate their stories into the national narrative of striving for a better China and Africa. However, with fifty-four followers on his Weibo account and around 200 reads of the freely available chapters on WeChat, Drifting in Africa is quite limited in popularity. As evidenced by the selling channels in 2017, its readers are mainly African drifters or potential ones, and the comments that Deng selected to post online came from people on his WeChat account, most of whom he knows personally.

The mutual influences between Deng's book and his readers online and in real life reveal the blurry line between, and the intersections of, digital and print literature. The book becomes a representation of the African drifters’ community and a platform and channel that forms a collective subjectivity through circulated rhetoric with similar but also diverse experiences in Africa. Meanwhile, the mixture of different genres in the book renders it an unofficial account of Chinese life in Africa, making daily encounters more palpable and providing them with an emotional backdrop. The book travels across time and space and mixes different genres, revealing its changeable and uncertain nature.

Conclusion

Dwelling in drifting is a state of living and identification. It means accepting uncertainty and insecurity as well as having agency in dealing with emergencies. Deng's book shows how he negotiated his own position through the prism of Chinese national discourse as a profit-seeking and nationalist entrepreneur. For him, Africa is not a concept or imagination but a place full of memories, emotions, and aspirations. His drifting in Africa is also a story of dwelling in Africa.

This example of life writing, as a mixture of national historiography, self-help content, and confession, while displaying features of postcolonial literature vividly represents the mentality of Chinese drifters in Africa and ponders their fate in the future. The book is a stage for Deng to perform his loyalty and patriotism while simultaneously gaining pragmatic benefits and a place to exhibit individual achievements and construct an imagined community. Chinese migrants’ (auto)biographies record the eventfulness and situatedness of China–Africa experienced by individuals crossing national boundaries and ethnic distinctions, revealing how grand discourses about Africa–China are lived and reinterpreted through emotional conundrums and local and transnational networks. Life writing from an individual perspective as a process of knowledge production and sharing offers a unique insight into the understanding of the Chinese community and Chinese engagements in Africa.