A Minority in the Middle Kingdom: My Experience Being Black in China

In the 1996 China edition of the Lonely Planet’s Guidebook, a text box aside comment from a street interview provided some interesting conversation fodder, “…there is no racism in China because there are no black people,” a Chinese woman was reported to have said. This became a little running joke in my small study abroad circle, since I was the only black student in my program of fifty students.