Paper short abstract:

This study investigates artistic cultural practices of African students in China within both physical and digital spaces. The findings demonstrate how African students rejected taken-for-granted categorizations, and in facing adversary and friction they find various ways to overcome them.

Paper long abstract:

African students are increasingly finding their way to China as a destination for higher education in the 21 century. This study employs in-depth interviews regarding African students’ study and living experiences in China, and utilizes ethnographic methodologies to investigate artistic cultural practices of African students in China within both physical and digital spaces. The findings demonstrate how African students rejected taken-for-granted categorizations, and in facing adversary and friction they find various ways to overcome them. In particular, they constructed a hybrid identities system with the dynamic balance and tension between cosmopolitan international student status and Pan-African identity including African diasporas. Their hybrid identities are developed, strengthened and performed through both physical and digital interaction of daily life, social activities and their expression of material cultures. Along with physical encounters online platforms are set up to discuss shared problems. Through embodied art and cultural practices including food choices, hair styling, paintings, fashion design, music, dancing and stand-up comedy, serve both as individual expression but they also “speak out” about the incompatibility and suffering of African students resisting inequality, racism and discrimination. In sum, these practices reflect transcultural engagement, the reinforcement of their Pan-African identity and cosmopolitan global student disposition, but more importantly demonstrate the potential of artistic empowerment as a creative way to resist falling into the margins