Paper short abstract:

From my perspective as a long-time observer, researcher, and a Chinese volunteer in a civil aiding operation, I recorded the tension in this panic from different stakeholders and perspectives and to reflect the African lives during the early days of 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in Guangzhou.

Paper long abstract:

This paper recreated the panic scene that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic in Guangzhou, China. From 4 April to 13 April, 2020, all 4,553 Africans in Guangzhou were PCR-tested. 111 of them were COVID-19 positive. Being excluded from the disease control system, the outbreak of COVID-19 in African communities led to a rebound of quarantine. Almost all Africans were affected by the panic, both physically and mentally. People were expelled by individual landlords, quarantined by the National Health Centre, and faced the racist threat from social media, because of their ethnicity. However, in the panic, we witness the paralysis of the informal social networks that the African community relied on and the emerging new social networks that support Africans. I displayed two stories at the early stage of the 2020 panic: the aiding programme from Nigerian wives and my one-day experience with Frank. The story marks the start of three-year lockdown of China, and the refugee-like lives of thousands of African traders in China.