The first time, it took me by surprise. I was on a tour of the townships outside Cape Town when a crowd of little boys surrounded me and started jabbering in unison. “How sweet,” I thought. “They’re talking to me in Xhosa.” Then, from the babble, I made out the distinctly English words: “Jackie Chan! Jackie Chan!”
You see, Xhosa kids know Jackie Chan. And Jet Li, Chow Yun-Fat, Bruce Lee, and on and on. So do children who speak Sotho, Pedi, Zulu or Tswana. Ignited in the 1980s by Chinese blockbusters like Enter the Dragon and Shaolin Temple, a kung fu craze has swept South Africa’s townships.
When you stop to think about it, the appeal of kung fu films in the townships isn’t hard to understand. Young blacks caught in the violence of apartheid’s last days felt angry and powerless. “The kung fu films were more than fun,” recalls 22-year-old Samora April, a resident of Guguletu township who wears a three-piece suit and a dazzling smile. “They were our only outlet.”
American box-office hits, simplistic and politically pallid, were not relevant to the South African struggle. “We were sick of watching movies where only the Western guys win,” says Ntobeko Peni, 27, an office manager in Guguletu. In contrast, bootleg versions of Hong Kong action films, played weekends on flickering reels at the community hall, offered another scenario. In most of these films, a single hero (like Chan in his seminal Drunken Master series, a local favorite) beats all the bad guys single-handedly, with wit and skill instead of the latest high-tech weapon.
Today, kung fu films are so well-known here that “they’ve become part of our culture,” April says. That translates into local martial arts clubs with hundreds of members. (In these tough streets, even young children need to know how to defend themselves.) Watching the action flicks in the original Cantonese, with no subtitles, is less of a problem for Africans than it would be for Americans. In township neighborhoods, where members of many different tribes live within yards of each other, kids get used to hearing languages other than their own.
One of these languages, the little boys seem to think, is kung fu. And so every time I, an Asian-American who’s lived in South Africa for nearly three years now, go into a predominantly black neighborhood, another gang of kids will surround me, chanting “Jackie Chan!” or “China!” and miming hand chops at me. Sometimes I strike a fierce tai-chi-esque pose, and they all drop back in alarm. For a minute.
Being Asian in Africa is an interesting paradox. It makes me immediately noticeable, of course, and on a basic level I no more fit in on this continent of chocolate-skinned people than a crocodile does on Mars. Many Africans treat me with the same sort of resigned bemusement Martians might direct at a crocodile: funny, I wonder how that got here. But if the crocodile should then smile, open its jaws and say, “Molweni, abafundi, kunjani?” (Hello, students, how are you?), the Martians might also stagger back, mouths agape.
Those moments of utter disbelief—when I, with my Chinese face and Western clothes, speak their African language in my American accent—are, in fact, the times when the Africans’ storied warmth comes through. Mouths drop open, eyes snap; but after the gasp, inevitably, comes a laugh. A joyous, wondering laugh, followed by a hug, a kiss or an invitation home.
I have been embraced by people from all sides of this rainbow nation. I’ve been in Soweto and Pretoria with thousands of potentially rowdy concertgoers rocking to the pulse of South Africa’s homegrown hip-hop—and without fail, black girls with names like Precious and Beauty come over, introduce themselves and link arms with me. They and their friends then keep me safe for the rest of the event, glaring at anyone who seems even vaguely menacing. The white father of a friend spent hours in his comfortable Johannesburg living room explaining cricket to me—and, more quietly, answering my often naïve questions about experiencing apartheid as a member of the favored sector. Afrikaans student friends confide the mixture of pride and shame they feel about being and speaking Afrikaans. Coloured friends (of mixed descent) explain the storied “Cape coloured” accent—a jolting inflection that sounds like black American English—and patiently translate punch lines for me after everyone else has cracked up.
Each group answers my questions with patience and, yes, a little astonishment. South Africans aren’t used to being this direct. But a huge advantage of being Chinese-American here is that my hybrid identity is so rare that I become unique. Fitting no one’s idea of arrogant American or quiet Chinese, I can be who and what I like. Myself: curious, interested, open. And welcomed.
Esther Pan, ’97, is a writer in Cape Town.
