ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the representation of African–Chinese encounters in contemporary literary works and analyses the ways in which ‘otherness’, difference and emerging identities have been represented, constituted and debated in African and Chinese literature. It also suggests that more research necessary in terms of understanding concepts like the ‘Global South’, ‘Third-World’, and ‘China–Africa’, entangled territories which involve multi-directional circulations and interactions, deep historical entanglements as well as intricate ongoing relations. In relation to an exponential increase in interactions between Africa and China over the past few years, many more African literature texts have begun to portray Chinese–African cross-cultural encounters on the continent. The chapter also explores how Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan uses adaptation to reflect on and respond to the dynamics of power relations in Africa–China interactions. The appropriation and representation of Chinese characters in Osofisan’s play reveal how ambivalence towards China and the Chinese people has evolved in complex ways.
