In studies on the early contact between China and Africa, three important questions are usually asked: when where and who? When did the bilateral contact begin? What places did the Chinese know in Africa? Were there any Africans in ancient China? Yet there are no definitive answers to these questions.
The two most interesting topics are the starting point of the contact and an examination of the places identified with African names (Wu Changchun 1991; Yongzhang 1993; Zhang Xiang 1993; Li Anshan 2019).
Archaeological and material evidence
In the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum, a Chinese-type ding (鼎) is exhibited, which was discovered near the sixth fall of the Nile in the ruins of Meroe, the ancient capital of the Kush Kingdom (1070 BCE–350 CE) (Zhang Junyan 1986). This is a three-legged cooking vessel made of bronze or ceramic as a symbol of dynastic and political power in ancient China. Whether it was made in China or is a copy of a Chinese model by a local smith, it indicates a kind of cultural contact. In 1993, Austrian archaeologists discovered silk fibre in the hair of a female corpse of the 21st Dynasty (1070–945 BCE) in Egypt. At the time, only China had the technology to produce silk (Lubec, et al., 1993). The product was probably made in China and taken to Egypt. This was long before the direct contact between the two countries and the start of trade in Ptolemaic Egypt in 30 BCE, when Egyptian merchants began trading with India (Herrmann 1913, quoted from Smidt 2001). The Greek classic Periplus Maris Erythraei (mid-1st century) mentions the Chinese metropolis Sinai or Thinai, a Sanskrit form from the Qin Dynasty (221–207 BCE). It is said that Cleopatra (69–30 BCE), the famous Egyptian queen, loved Chinese silk clothes (Charlesworth 1970). There was also contact between China and Ethiopia from ancient times through various channels (Selassie 1972:71, 84–85, 207).
Qilin (麒麟 also spelled kilin/kylin) is a lucky animal in Chinese tradition. The name appears first in Shijin (诗经) or The Book of Songs, an anthology of 305 poems covering more than 500 years from the beginning of the West Zhou Dynasty (1045–771 BCE) to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE). It is recorded that qilin was first found in the 14th year of Ai Gong (481 BCE). In 1979, several stone carvings of the Han Dynasty were discovered at Jiawang in Xuzhou, China. One carving depicts animals and three of them look very much like giraffes. As an explanation for the resemblance between giraffe and qilin, Ferrand suggests that kilin is a transliteration of geri, a Somali word for giraffe; the two words are similar, even though kilin has a nasal sound (n) at the end. The Somali word geri is equal to giri; the Chinese noted the similar pronunciation and connected giri with kilin.3 This explanation is difficult to accept, since the Chinese term qilin appeared about 3000 years ago and the hypothetical animal has a changing form (Wu Qingzhou 1997). What’s more, how could the Chinese have learned the Somali word?
Raymond Dart once found some interesting rock paintings by the San (so-called Bushmen) in southern Africa. There was a painting on a stone block at Eliweni, Kei River depicting a foreigner; Dart presumed the hat on the foreigner’s head was a peaked Chinese hat (Dart 1925). The San are an indigenous people who settled in the region thousands of years ago. Whether the hat is really Chinese is not certain, but this kind of hat is very popular in southern China. It is called dou li (斗笠) and is used to protect the wearer from both rain and sunshine. Raymond Dart also found something resembling a Chinese character in a decorative motif in southern Africa (Dart 1939; Li Anshan 2019a).
There are cultural contacts in the opposite direction as well. Evidence has been found of the possible cultural impact of Africa on China. King Wu Ding (武丁，1250–1192 BCE) of the Shang Dynasty (17th–11th centuries BCE) was an excellent leader who enjoys a great reputation (Peng Bangjiong 1987). A report on an excavation in Anyang, the capital of the Shang Dynasty, shows similarities between a skull discovered there and that of Oceanic peoples and Black Africans (Chang Kwang Chih 1977 [1968]; Yang Ximei 1966). In Sati burial sites in ancient Nubia, Egypt and Mesopotamia, thousands of cowrie shells used as money and more than 500 jade objects were discovered in the tomb of Lady Fu Hao (妇好). She was the principal consort and general to Shang King Wu Ding and is described as evidence of African participation in royalty by Brunson, who concludes: “It can be safely estimated that an African presence existed in China from a most remote period and an evolution of this physical type is an indigenous phenomenon” (Brunson 1985: 130–133). His estimate is logical, though rather bold, and needs more evidence to verify it.
There is other indirect evidence. In Guangzhou, a city in southern China, more than 1000 tombs of the Han Dynasty have been excavated since the 1950s. Some 152 pottery figures were found, some of which look like Black people (Qin Jie 2010). It was suggested that Black people could have come from islands near Indochina, Indonesia and West Asia/East Africa (Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 1981: 78).
In 1975, a very big boat-building site of the Qin Dynasty ...
