Congratulations to Dr. Gaoheng Zhang, Associate Professor of Italian, for receiving a SSHRC Insight Grant for his research project titled Scrambles for East Africa: Media and Cultural Debates between China, Western Europe, and East Africa.
Below is an autoethnographic account from Dr. Gaoheng Zhang’s most recent research trip to Kenya.
Figure 1. The House of Columns, Malindi, Kenya. July 22, 2025. Rainy and windy.
“What lessons can we draw from this cultural analysis that can help train readers in navigating the increasing China-West polarization in their engagement in Africa?”
The House of Columns (Figure 1), Malindi, Kenya. July 22, 2025. Rainy and windy.
“I’m from China. I’m staying in Malindi for a couple of days. Where are you from?” I asked the black woman who fixed her eyes on me from her desk the minute I walked into the old library’s balcony area.
A few moments earlier, I went into the library hoping to see the interior architecture. When I spotted a fact sheet referencing “Italian, Romanian, Rhaeto-Romanic” and “Italic Literatures Latin” collections (Figure 2), I became intrigued. The Italian “collections” consisted of one old English translation of The Decameron and an English translation of the Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello (Figure 3). I began warming to coastal Kenyans’ sense of humour—after all, who wouldn’t smirk when reading Boccaccio’s novellas and Pirandello’s plays?
Figure 2.
Figure 3.
Frustrated with my finding of the “rare” Italian collection, I made my way upstairs to breathe in some fresh air on the balcony. Sure enough, more Italian references greeted me, in Malindi, the paradise of contemporary Italian settlement in Kenya rebaptized as “Malindi Marittima” (Figure 4). The remake of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa—the Gioconda (the Joyful One)—didn’t look too happy to me (Figure 5). A forlorn copy of the Rough Guide to Italy was squeezed into a shelf. And I came under the scrutiny from that woman at her desk. I felt like one of the roaming elephants I saw from a safari car in dusty Amboseli days before.
Figure 4.
Figure 5.
I decided to confront her gaze and satiate her curiosity: “I’m from China. I’m staying in Malindi for a couple of days. Where are you from?”
“Oh, you’re from China? Nice! I’m local. I just came back from China a week ago. It’s the summer break. I’m reviewing notes for my Chinese language class.”
LOL, a great pick-up line!
Alas, I wasn’t born yesterday!
Switching to Mandarin, I pressed on: “Let me see your textbook. Are you in China to study the language?”
She replied in straightforward Mandarin: “No, I’m a Master’s student at a university in Shanghai. I study international business. Look, this is my Chinese dictionary [Who still uses a paperback dictionary nowadays?!] and I’m reviewing new vocabulary today.”
Fifteen minutes into our conversation, I became convinced that Sarah was not bluffing. It was not a made-up story, I persuaded myself, the one about her mother’s work in Italy for many years and her sister’s marriage to a Roman man.
It was instead catharsis! I was having the perfect real-life encounter for my next research project: the Chinese-Italian connections in Kenya, and more broadly, the China–Western Europe intersections in East Africa.
Why do Kenyans like Sarah choose to go to pursue higher education in China? What local and global circumstances facilitate her decision? How does she view her family’s Italian connections? Why do Italians settle in Malindi, marry local women, and embark on a transnational journey in life? How do Sarah’s Kenyan, Chinese, and Italian lives intersect?
I want to explore these human stories in relation to larger societal and geopolitical issues. How do Chinese, Western European, and East African media and cultural practitioners debate the pros and cons of China’s Belt and Road Initiative deals on local economic development and the environment? What lessons can we draw from this cultural analysis that can help train the reader of my monograph in navigating the increasing China-West polarization in their engagement in Africa and in other parts of the developing world?
Before I got a real headache thinking about these questions, first I needed to fulfill my research agenda of the day: eating in an Italian pizzeria. I confidently walked into Malaika Malindi Bar & Restaurant, ready to savour a blessed pizza prepared under the guardianship of the Kenyan-Italian angel’s wings (Figure 6). While waiting for my food, I engaged the black Kenyan waiter in Italian about what kind of clients he served these days.
My Roman-style pizza arrived (Figure 7), and as I devoured it bite by bite, the “Scrambles for East Africa” project was banished from my mind sentence by sentence.
Figure 6.
Figure 7.
