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Eman Okonkwo's foot-tapping at the altar is not a sign of nerves. The groom's palms aren't sweaty, there are no pre-wedding jitters and certainly no second thoughts. Today he is realising a dream imagined by countless African merchants in Guangzhou: he is marrying a Chinese bride.
Seven days earlier, Jennifer Tsang's family was oblivious to their daughter's romance. Like many local women dating African men, the curvaceous trader from Foshan, who is in her late 20s - that dreaded "leftover woman" age - had feared her parents would be racially prejudiced.
Today, though - having tentatively given their blessing - they snuck into the underground Royal Victory Church, in Guangzhou, looking over their shoulders for police as they entered the downtown tower block. Non-state-sanctioned religious events like this are illegal on the mainland.
Okonkwo, 42, doesn't have a single relative at the rambunctious Pentecostal ceremony, but is nevertheless delighted.
"Today is so special," beams the Nigerian, "because I have married a Chinese girl. And that makes me half-African, half-Chinese."
In Guangzhou, weddings like this take place every day. There are no official figures on Afro-Chinese marriages but visit any trading warehouse in the city and you will see scores of mixed-race couples running wholesale shops, their coffee-coloured, hair-braided children racing through the corridors.
Eman Okonkwo's foot-tapping at the altar is not a sign of nerves. The groom's palms aren't sweaty, there are no pre-wedding jitters and certainly no second thoughts. Today he is realising a dream imagined by countless African merchants in Guangzhou: he is marrying a Chinese bride.
Seven days earlier, Jennifer Tsang's family was oblivious to their daughter's romance. Like many local women dating African men, the curvaceous trader from Foshan, who is in her late 20s - that dreaded "leftover woman" age - had feared her parents would be racially prejudiced.
Today, though - having tentatively given their blessing - they snuck into the underground Royal Victory Church, in Guangzhou, looking over their shoulders for police as they entered the downtown tower block. Non-state-sanctioned religious events like this are illegal on the mainland.
Okonkwo, 42, doesn't have a single relative at the rambunctious Pentecostal ceremony, but is nevertheless delighted.
"Today is so special," beams the Nigerian, "because I have married a Chinese girl. And that makes me half-African, half-Chinese."
In Guangzhou, weddings like this take place every day. There are no official figures on Afro-Chinese marriages but visit any trading warehouse in the city and you will see scores of mixed-race couples running wholesale shops, their coffee-coloured, hair-braided children racing through the corridors.
