When I was an university student, I heard of many stories about Uygur students fighting with Chinese students, DongBei students fighting with Teochow (Chaozhou) students, Cantonese students fighting with HuBei students…
Birds of a feather flock together. Strongly hold people the bonds of having common memories and customs, eating similar food and speaking the same accent.
But sometimes there are exceptions.
I met a young Chinese student, Xiao Wang, few days ago. He studies in a Singapore private university, a university running UK and Australian degree programs. Striving to build a regional education hub, Singapore government encourages these universities reach out to recruit students from developing countries. Xiao Wang’s school has students from China, Vietnam, Russia, Africa and many others places.
Talking about life on campus, I asked him whether there was any fight in his school.
He got excited in this topic.
“We have many Mongolian students. “
“Oh…?” I am a bit surprised. A country with a vast land, small population, north to China.
“They are big, strong and haughty. Often bully our Chinese students. ”
I’d thought he were talking about American students.
“We were no match. We were defeated. ”
Mongolian wrestling were flashing on my mind.
“Luckily, we have helpers. ”
Here came the bigger surprise.
“Those black African guys helped us! They called those Mongolian students into the washroom. After a while, out came those Mongolian, crying. Hahaha…” He laughed, elatedly.
“African and Chinese together beat those Mongolian. They dare not touch us now. ”
There ended this tiny world war.
“Some Chinese students mingle really well with those African.” He finally added.
Why people from thousands miles away help Chinese fight with people who are from nearby country and of the same color?
African and Chinese are brothers — at least in this incident.