The Adventures of Cosmic Yoruba
& Her Flying Machines too
Spoilers abound! Simply put, Pao is political history of Jamaica told through the eyes and life of ‘Uncle’ Pao Yang of Kingston’s Chinatown. Don’t expect anything more or less when reading Pao, I say this because from reading the blurb it is easy to believe that the book focuses on Pao’s relationship with Gloria and…
I like to picture this as a snowball. ‘This’ being my regularly increasing knowledge on the shared history between the African and the Asian continents. I admit that I thought the ‘wow’ moments ended with my posts on historical Sino-African relations. When we think about the African Diaspora, most of us turn our attention to…
In the year plus since I returned to Nigeria and promptly lost the ‘returnee’ label, the Asian presence in the home I share with my mother and cousins has become really obvious. I came back as one of the rare Nigerian fans of Korean pop and sageuk, it was very lonely. But as time passed,…
Zheng He’s 7th expedition was his last and after years of moving back and forth between the East African coast and China, all contact seized. Some people may look at this and say that the Chinese turned their backs on Africa but if you look at the situation within China in that time, it sheds…
In 1414 a Chinese fleet heralded by the Muslim Grand Eunuch of the Three Treasures, Zheng He (also known as Cheng Ho) sailed into the western Indian Ocean for the fourth time since his journey to the East began in 1405. In previously, that is between 1405 and 1414, Zheng He and his ships had…
In my previous post I mentioned that I had read somewhere that two slaves given as gifts to the a Chinese Emperor by an Arab delegation were the first Africans to enter ancient China. This may have been wrong really because dark-skinned people were talked in China as early as the 4th century. They were…
Last year while I was researching for my dissertation, I came across a footnote that mentioned that the first Africans who reached ancient China (the particular period was not specified) were two slaves given as gifts to the Emperor by an envoy of Arab traders. I found myself wondering what happened to them, were the…
Such an eye-catching title isn’t it? To be more specific, it seems some Tanzanian women are actively searching for Chinese husbands! I really do not know whether to laugh or cry, nevertheless, I find this wholly interesting. So, the full stroy; I was searching Google for something or the other when I came across some…