I was arguing with this white guy who claims that in the past, Arabs had sold black slaves to Chinese at Guangzhou. If that was so, why are there no blacks in Guangzhou today? There are no Chinese in Guangzhou who look anything partially African. Where did that guy come up with these ludicrous claims?

Chinese history is being disected and butchered by uninformed coockoos.

Kaixin, there were indeed African slaves in China in the Tang dynasty, so don't be so hasty to slam other people's views before you do more research. As for there being no African-looking Chinese today - 1,000 years is a long enough time for Negroid features to become unnoticeable. Anyway, how do you know that any of these slaves had children?

This is what I wrote in another thread last year:

We know that there have been African slaves in China in the past, such as in the Tang dynasty, because there are some Tang sculptures depicting them. They were probably brought in by Arab traders along the Silk Road and by sea. The Tang Chinese called them Kunlun 昆仑, but they also referred to Southeast Asian Malays by that name. African slaves seem to have stopped arriving in China after the Yuan dynasty, because the Arabs stopped trading in China after the Ming ban on private maritime trade. They next time they were seen may have been when the first British ships came to China in the 18th century.

Tang figurine of a Kunlun slave: http://www.dpm.org.cn/china/E/E5/part4-01.htm

(thread can be viewed at http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...7&#entry3506837 )

Note: Li Lingrong, the mother of Emperor Xiaowu (Sima Yao) of the Eastern Jin dynasty, was originally a palace maid nicknamed "kunlun" because of her dark complexion. But the Kunlun in this case is probably referring to Malays, because Arabs had not started arriving in Chinese ports in the late 4th century.

Well, the number of African slaves kept by the Chinese is so small and almost insignificant compared to that of the European colonizers of the New World.

Chinese history is not being better treated by Chinese who think they know their own history without studying it

Was castration practiced on slaves?

Even if there was, I highly doubt they intermarried with native Chinese and left descendants. You hardly find African genes or diseases among modern day Chinese. And, back then, marriages were arranged. I don't think anyone want their children to marry with slaves.

Did Zheng He bring back any slaves from East Africa or Mecca? I recall mention that he brought back many exotic animals to show the emperor, but I can't remember if he brought people back too.

I am not sure. But there's a statue honoring a Zulu (I think, according to the pronunciation) Prince that stands next to his grave. He probably came to Chian from Zheng He's journey.

Famed Kublai hunting scroll by Liu Guandao.〈元世祖出猎图〉



This was drawn by a court painter.

Notice the dude wearing red cloth with very dark skin!
Could this be a mistake or did Mongols get black slaves(assuming he is a slave) from Arabs.

There's all sorts of cases where characters/figures with "dark skin" are portrayed in Chinese culture... but that doesn't necessarily mean they are Africans...

• Often Zhang Fei is portrayed to have black skin while Liu Bei with "white/normal" skin and Guan Yu with red.

• One of the two 門神 Gate Guardians has black skin.

• 包青天 Bao Qingtian aka 包公 Bao Gong, a famous judge, is portrayed to have black skin (and a white moon on his forehead).

Wasn't true slavery in the European sense abolished in the Han dynasty? The more common form was indentured service right up to the Qing I believe though I might be wrong. More like the European serf to his lord than the african plantation slaves of the USA.

http://www.sinorama.com.tw/Millennium/en/M...nium-en-03.html

I just read in Bai Shouyi that not until the Qing dynasty was a death penalty decreed for landlords who took their peasants' daughters for slaves. But I'm not sure if that means such slavery was legal before the Qing, or if it was already illegal but with a lighter penalty.

Sephodwyrm mentioned in the thread on Chinese eunuchs that there were three categories: voluntary eunuchs, boy eunuchs who had been sold to the palace, and eunuchs who had been castrated as a criminal punishment. Eunuchs in the second category must have been slaves; being bought and sold is certainly a sufficient, if not a necessary, condition for being a slave. He did not specify the time period he was talking about, though. If, in fact, slavery ended during the Han dynasty, then were all the Tang and Ming era eunuchs volunteer eunuchs and criminals?

Have you ever been to Guangzhou? There are plenty of blacks there.

Are they Candians/Americans?

I've been to Guangzhou, saw no blacks except for tourists, which are still rare as most foreign tourists are white or other Asians.

Does Guangzhou have foreign embassies?

Shanghai has a bit of black residents, most are Brazilian musicians working in restaurants and bars. And many can speak Chinese. Very cool.

I've only seen one with my own eyes, which was the Vietnamese embassy that was located near a restaurant where we had dim sum

But I'm sure there are plenty of others.

Maybe the blacks there are African ambassadors.

Maybe, but the point is, there are no "Black-Chinese" living in Guangzhou.

Go to 东海海鲜酒楼 and you'll see what I'm talking about. There were many blacks walking around in the streets around it, or just standing there, chillin'.

I also saw a black girl being interviewed by white guy on TV. Speaking Chinese I mind you.

There were also several black families shopping in some big underground shopping mall as well.

Haha I'm not going to fly all the way to Guangdong so you can prove your point, unless you pay the expenses of course

Why don't you prove your claims to us with some pictures instead?

Yes Kulong. I go to Canton and walk around, taking pictures of Black people like I do in a zoo.

There are certainly black people or families in China, most of them are recent immigrants and business people. No big suprise.

People take pictures of others all the time. I wonder why YOU think that just because the subjects are black, it must be like taking pictures in a zoo...

In any case, you're simply making claims with no evidence.


But we're not talking about recent immigrants and business people.

Great way to twist my words around. And think about it, why would I lie about this? Instead of attacking what everyone says, think about it for a sec.



Uh, thats what I'm talking about. What are YOU talking about?

Cry to your mama.

It is you, Kulong, who are making claims with no evidence. You are denying the first-hand evidence of an actual eye-witness to the people on the street in Guangzhou, without the slightest evidence either of your own or from another source to back it up.

You're wrong.

The person who makes the claim has to provide evidence. Without evidence, it's nothing more than a claim. In this case, Zuo Zongtang CLAIMED that he's seen blacks around Guangzhou but what evidence did he provide?

Now I remember why I stopped coming here in the first place, it's the likes of you, Daniel, Zuo Zongtang and nishishei. Arrogant and self-righteous.

I'm still not that familiar with the intricacies of it, but I've heard that serfdom and slavery apparently did not exist under normal conditions in Chinese dynasties from the Tang onwards. There were forms of bondage like indentured domestic service and bondservanthood, and war captives were frequently used as slaves. But the Chinese economy ran not on slaves, but on smallholding or tenant farmers.

I'd appreciate if someone could shed more light on the question of how long slavery lasted in Chinese history - and what should and should not be defined as slavery.

Do you know the meaning of the word "evidence," Kulong?

Evidence is of two kinds, that of witnesses and circumstantial evidence. Zuo Zongtang provided the evidence of a witness, himself. You have provided neither kind of evidence.

Kulong, I've never found you to be the picture of humility or tact yourself. Nor is 'cry to your mama' a very mature way to respond to someone's argument. You may choose not to come to CHF often because you don't like some of the members or moderators, but I see no reason why you should bring that into an argument about whether there are lots of blacks in Guangzhou.

To bring some constructivity to this discussion, here are some things to chew on:

http://english.people.com.cn/200408/31/eng...831_155403.html
(Zuo Zongtang, you wouldn't happen to have been in Guangzhou during this Festival would you?)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4332273.stm

http://spp.pinyin.info/abstracts/spp122_ch...e_africans.html

http://en1.chinabroadcast.cn/636/2004-1-7/99@76830.htm

The festival was Aug 23-30. I was in Guangzhou that year from Aug 4-25, so there is a bit of an overlap there.

If there is Chinese people in South Africa, I don't see why there can't be any African people in South China(Guangzhou).

Either way I think its pretty rude or strange if someone just takes a picture of you without permission. Yes that is like treating them like they don't have feelings, like animals in a zoo.

So end of the day, do they have descendents?

Who can tell, without a large DNA testing experiment? It's just like that girl in Kenya who was recently said to be descended from sailors in Zheng He's fleet. Did she look Chinese to you?

I always thought that China has no black slaves couse they were not allow to be in China. Chinese were pretty paranoid in general. They allow arabs couse arabs look kinda like asians ... they kinda let Italians/mediteranians in couse if you squint ... they kinda look asian.

I just assume that Black slaves were not allow but used only in off shore "settlements" like Malaya ...

If Cantonese had African genes, there would be a couple of us in the NBA already.

There might be a misconception amongst some of you.

When the Chinese immigrated to the Carribean and southern parts of the USA during the late 1890s, many of the men took black women as wives and started families. Sometimes, the father would make enough money and take the family back home to China, or they would send their sons back to China for schooling. I have seen villages in Guangdong where some people can claim a Mexican or Hawaiian grandmother. It is not totally impossible.

You are joking, right? Otherwise you are bound by too many racial stereotypes. So according to your logic Yao Ming must be partly African too?

Yo Yo Yao...
Maybe we should ask him to have his DNA test..

There are some dark curly haired slaves in Tang dynasty. Africans do not hold the monopoly on such features, as these could be from nearer Southeast Asian populations. There is an extant Tang dynasty short story which involves a dark slave. Something about helping his master message her lover, then the slave being granted freedom/escaping. Seen several years after selling herbs or some **** in one of the larger cities farther north

Due to the extent of prosperity, trading, and contact with the world in some eras of Chinese history, it would seem inevitable that at least some Africans have come to China as slaves, however, it would obviously be less than in magnitude than the slavery system in the New World European colonies, as there was no mass slavery exchange system such as the infamous Triangle Trade between the New World, Europe, and Africa.

IT SEEMS LIKE A WAY TO EXPLAIN HOW ETHIOPIAN TYPE PEOPLE APPEARED CHINESE. MUST HAVE BEEN SLAVES. IS HAVIN DARK SKIN WITH WOOLY HAIR BAD? BEING A AFRO-ASIATIC AMERICAN AS WELL AS OTHERS OF MY TYPE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A FAN OF ASIAN HISTORY. I'VE SEEN SOME ANCIENT CHINESE PICS THAT WERE DISTINCTIVELY AFRO-ASIATIC. WITH NO QUESTION IN AMERICA THEY WOULD HAVE TO CHECK THE BLACK BOX EVEN THOUGH THEY CHINESE.

At the height of its power the Srivijayan Empire based on Sumatra regularly provided African slaves as tribute to the Chinese emperor. This has been substantially documented by Dutch scholars from the early 20th century. As most know, the Srivijayans controlled most of modern-day Indonesia and Southeast Asia, but they also had sway over Sri Lanka and, more importantly, Madagascar. Srivijayans (Indonesians) began settling Madagascar around 500 AD and established a slave society there. They established numerous slave trade outposts on the eastern coast of Africa and even took over the traditional Arab slave trade mecca of Aden for a few years. Evidence of the slave society that existed on Madagascar can be seen in the fact that the language of Malagasy, which originated on Borneo and is spoken by almost the entire population of Madagascar, has retained 99.9% of its original vocabulary and incorporated less than ten African words. Srivijayan embassies are recorded to have brought slaves as tribute to the Chinese in 813, 860, 1135, 1140, and 1294. They probably only numbered a few hundred all together, however.

The African slave trade was certainly not a European advent. The Arabs had a thriving slave trade for a thousand years before the Europeans ever gave thought to the continent, and approximately 60% of the Africans that were removed from their homes and sold into slavery were in the service of Arabs, not wites.

Ya, it's called the Kunlun Nu (崑崙奴 - "Kunlun Slave") and was written by 裴铏 during the Tang Dynasty.

I wonder if Africans ever enslaved non Africans. I'm sure people of African heritage would hate to see that their history comprise of mainly being enslaved or colonized by peoples of other ethnicities.

Actually they did. I remember reading that they brought slaves over from India.