In Southern China, A Thriving African Neighborhood : NPR: China and Africa have become major trading partners in recent years. Chinese companies have made a big push into Africa seeking raw materials like oil. And enterprising Africans now travel to China to buy cheap goods at the source and ship them home. Today, the city of Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, is home to some 10,000 Africans, the largest such community in China. The city's Little Africa neighborhood is a world unto itself, with restaurants specializing in African food to money changers who deal in the Nigerian currency. But doing business in the city's informal economy is full of risks.
The Tangqi wholesale mall in Guangzhou, China, is a labyrinth of tiny clothing shops. They look more like storage units, each one crammed full of T-shirts and jeans.
From morning well into the night, traders pack hundreds of T-shirts and jeans into boxes. Then comes the packing tape — a rip that echoes through the halls. This is the rhythm of Tangqi: pack and tape, pack and tape.
