The interracial couple championing China’s soft power in Africa
College run by Ugandan-Chinese couple is training students and educators to speak Chinese, so that they can spread the word about China in Africa
The students at Luyanzi College have little interest in going to Disneyland, riding the London Eye or climbing the Eiffel Tower. Their dream, they say, is to visit the Great Wall.
Teachers at the college, in Uganda’s congested, dusty capital, Kampala, have told them all about China: a beautiful and powerful nation, they have been advised, one of the largest countries in the world, with a mighty economy that will soon leapfrog that of the United States, and a rich history dating back thousands of years.
“It’s one form of recolonisation,” says Luyanzi director Ayub Sooma, laughing. A Ugandan, Sooma helped start the school in 2010. It is one of the largest private learning institutions in Africa with Mandarin on its curriculum, and students enthusiastically greet him with ni haos as we walk through the school grounds.
One student passes him a football, which he kicks into the air and tries to catch on his knee. Sooma, 57, played a bit when he was younger, and was known, he says, for taking long shots. Now, he and his Beijing-born Chinese wife, Luyanzi headmistress Wang Lihong, 50, are busy fostering “people-to-people friendship” between Uganda and China.
Sooma and Wang met at Beijing’s Tsinghua University in 1990, where he was studying electrical engineering on a scholarship, just a year after the deadly protests at Tiananmen Square. He thought Wang was beautiful, so asked her for her phone number. Wang says she obliged only because, as the well-behaved daughter of high-ranking military officials, she did not know how to say no.
Three years later, she said “Yes”, and they were married.
