Mawamarka Sharif is an African Kenyan girl whose parents are natives and who grew up on Kenyan soil.
But Sharif always felt a little out of place with the people around him, especially when he grew up, and his companions around him had authentic wire curly hair and the iconic thick lips, which were symbols of Kenyan Africa.
But Sharif's appearance was somewhat different, compared to her companions, her hair was very smooth, her lips were thin, and her skin was not so dark, which was very different from the face of Africans.
This did not make Sharif suffer from the ridicule of his peers, from childhood to adulthood, I don't know how many times he secretly cried his nose.
Sometimes, Sharif would ask his mother if he was a native, and she would answer in the affirmative. She and Sharif's father never left Kenya, and generations of ancestors lived in Kenya.
Hearing his mother's reply, Sharif was immediately surrounded by doubts, since I am an authentic Kenyan, why is my physical characteristics so different from my companions?
Looking at her daughter's puzzled expression, the mother took out a small blue and white porcelain bowl and told Sharif that this was left by the ancestors, and your appearance may be related to the experience of the ancestors.
However, because too much time has passed, many things cannot be verified. If the girl really wants to figure out where she came from, then study hard and strive for a higher platform to seek the truth of the matter.
Listening to his mother, Sharif took a keen interest in the history of his ancestors.
She learned from the book that blue and white porcelain came from the far east and was a national symbol called "China", and she instinctively had a premonition that perhaps she had the blood of Chinese flowing through her body.
After being ridiculed in Africa, Sharif felt she should go to China, go back to China, and maybe she should have belonged there.
With this idea, Sharif studied harder and more energetically, hoping to one day go out of Kenya to the far East and unravel the mystery of his appearance.
The news that Sharif was going to China did not go away, and when the friends who played with her heard about it, they began to call Sharif "Chinese girl".
Under the ridicule of her friends, "Sharif" became more and more interested in everything about China, and she tried everything to search for books about China, hoping to get more useful information from them.
"Sharif" lives in a remote mountain village in Kenya, where books are very precious and not easy to get, but fortunately, the local secondary school principal reached out to her and was willing to share the books in her family's collection with her.
After getting the books, Sharif was rewarded with the treasure, and from the books, Sharif gradually gained a deeper understanding of this mysterious country in the East, and the mystery shrouded in "China" was gradually unveiled by Sharif.
As he learned more, Sharif discovered that his family had an inseparable relationship with China.
With a yearning for China, wanting to contact Chinese, and going to the land of China to have a look, it became Sharif's greatest wish.
In this article, let's take a look at the story of Kenyan teenager Sharif and China.
A letter from an African girl
In September 2004, Guo Chongli, Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Chinese Embassy in Kenya, received a letter of help from a Kenyan girl whose contents surprised and surprised him.
The letter writer, whose name is Mawamaka Sharif, said she was a Kenyan girl who was about to graduate from secondary school, but her ancestors were Chinese, not ordinary Chinese, and had been sailors under Zheng He hundreds of years ago.
After learning about her family history, she wanted to take a look at China, and she asked ambassador Guo Chongli for some help.
After seeing the letter, Guo Chongli pondered for a long time, he knew that hundreds of years ago, Zheng He led the fleet to the West, and indeed reached the Kenya region.
But he didn't know much about this part of history, and it wasn't clear if anyone in the team really stayed here.
Although Guo Chongli could not be sure of the authenticity of the contents of the letter, in line with the principle of friendly exchanges, he did not want to disappoint Sharif, and if Sharif really had any evidence, it would be a good thing for the cultural exchanges between the two countries and the study of Chinese history.
Guo Chongli contacted experts from the National Museum of Kenya and came with them to Sharif's hometown, Pateay Island in Mombasa Province.
Seeing the arrival of Ambassador Guo Chongli, "Sharif" was very surprised, when she first wrote the letter, she just held the attitude of trying it out, and did not expect that the embassy could contact her, let alone that Ambassador Guo Chongli would personally come to visit her.
There, Guo Chongli had a profound exchange with Sharif's family.
Sharif's mother told Guo Chongli that within their family, there has been a story that has been passed down from generation to generation, and hundreds of years have passed.
About six hundred years ago, a fleet of ships from China was shipwrecked while passing through the waters of the Indian Ocean, and more than twenty of them drifted for many days to Pateo Island.
At first, the local residents were very resistant to them and had a bad attitude. They had never seen yellow-skinned people, and they suspected the purpose of their arrival, believing that they were foreign invaders, and that the local population was hostile to them.
In the face of the indifference and even hostility of the locals, the two dozen sailors, instead of complaining, solved a big problem for the local residents.
At that time, there was a huge python in the local area, often hovering around the village, but the villagers could not do anything about it.
At that time, the productivity level of African villages was very backward, there was no iron tool, and the reliance on stones and wooden sticks was not a rival to pythons.
Over the years, the locals suffered heavy losses, and in the fight against the python, many people died in the village.
After the arrival of the Chinese sailors, they used the only tools they had at hand to dig a trap and remove the harmful python in one fell swoop.
When the news of the python's removal reached the village, the whole village was suddenly stirred, and they changed their previous attitude, believing that these yellow-skinned people they had never seen before were their friends and had come to save them.
After the two sides were eliminated, the sailors told their origins and also lived on the island.
With the leading farming technology they brought, they brought advanced production technology to the locals, so that the local production level has been greatly improved in a short period of time, which has made the life of the entire village people have undergone earth-shaking changes.
Of course, these twenty sailors never gave up the idea of returning to their hometown, but helplessly, it was too far away from the land of China, and it was still separated by a huge ocean, and the difficulty of going back could be imagined.
In 1433, Zheng He, the most experienced in voyages, died of illness, and the Ming Dynasty could no longer find a second person who could lead the fleet to the West like Zheng He. After Emperor Ming Yingzong, Daming's national strength gradually weakened, and he was no longer able to organize long voyages.
Since then, the Ming Dynasty has given up contact with countries thousands of miles away, and the more than twenty sailors have never had a chance to return home.
So the twenty or so sailors settled down in the area, married and had children.
In order to ensure their own bloodline, and in order to express their longing for their homeland, they agreed that the children born would marry each other and keep the blood pure as much as possible.
After the death of these sailors, in order to be as close as possible to their hometown, the locals buried them by the sea and built Chinese-style tombs according to their last wishes.
Time passed year after year, generation after generation, and gradually the descendants of these sailors were scattered everywhere.
When Western colonists emerged, they massacred the natives and plundered their property in a frenzy, forcing the descendants of sailors to leave their homes that had lived for hundreds of years and move to the village of Siew, where Sharif now lived.
The long period of upheaval and displacement has made them unable to return to their original homes, and they no longer adhere to the wishes of their ancestors to ensure the purity of blood, and they have begun to intermarry with the locals, and they have become more and more like black races.
After a few hundred years, the people of "Xiyou Village" walked away and died, and finally only the descendants of the Chinese sailors of the Sharif family remained.
After telling the history of the whole family, Sharif's mother also gave Guo Chongli her ancestral blue and white porcelain and told him that it was salvaged from the sea by Chinese sailors and had been passed down from generation to generation in his family for hundreds of years.
Hearing this story and seeing the blue and white porcelain in the hands of Sharif's mother, Guo Chongli instinctively felt that things were not simple.
He immediately sent someone to check the relevant materials and found that When Zheng He went to the West for the fourth time, he set out from Taicang in "Shanghai County" at that time, and "Shanghai County" was similar to the pronunciation of "Shangjia Village", the original place of residence in Sharif's mother's story.
Perhaps, it was really the sailors who gave the name "Shangjia Village" to commemorate their former homeland.
With the deepening of the survey, the Shipwrecks of the Ming Dynasty were indeed found in the waters near Shangjia Village.
The desire to go to China
Sharif had long heard of this story, and had consulted a lot of information about the history of Zheng He's seven voyages to the West, and she felt that there was a great connection between the two, perhaps the twenty sailors were from Zheng He's fleet.
In order to prove this fact, and in order to be able to go to the ancestral homeland to see it in the future, Sharif began to try to learn Chinese very early on.
In small African villages with relatively backward educational conditions, learning Chinese is not an easy task.
Sharif's path to study was naturally fraught with difficulties, and later, when she heard that there were merchants from China in the provincial city of Mombasa, she tried to save money, hoping to go to the provincial city to find Chinese to learn Chinese.
During that time, whenever she had time, she would work for others to get paid, and she would also pick up garbage to sell money, saving intermittently for two years, and Sharif finally saved enough money to travel to the provincial city.
In the summer of 2001, Sharif embarked on his own journey to Mombasa.
When she came to Mombasa, she was pleasantly surprised, she had never been out of her place of residence, she had never seen such a bright world.
The impact of this reality strengthened her determination to find China, and she felt that there must be something more surprising to her in the far East.
After a few days of searching for a shop along the street, she finally found that the text on the door of a restaurant was very similar to the Chinese in her impression, and she plucked up the courage to enter the restaurant.
Sure enough, the owner of the restaurant is really from China, his name is Zhao Hanqing, he has been coming to Kenya for many years, in order to make a living, has been opening a restaurant.
Sharif told Zhao Hanqing about his experience. Looking at this somewhat timid girl, her clothes were very worn, and her shoes were worn, Zhao Hanqing looked a little distressed.
He brought "Sharif" a steaming bowl of noodles and told her a story about China.
This bowl of noodles was Sharif's first taste of China, and she asked her boss to let her stay and work, and she wanted to learn Chinese while working.
Zhao Hanqing was also touched by Sharif's ideals and agreed to Sharif's request.
At the same time, Zhao Hanqing also became Sharif's Chinese enlightenment teacher, in order to teach Sharif well, Zhao Hanqing found a lot of fellow villagers, bought her pinyin blocks, and gave Sharif 20,000 shillings as her learning funds, which made Sharif extremely moved.
Looking at the strange Chinese so friendly to himself, Sharif developed a greater yearning for China, and also developed an inexplicable sense of intimacy with the Chinese people, and he also worked harder and harder to learn Chinese.
With the help of Zhao Hanqing, Sharif's Chinese level improved by leaps and bounds, and he successfully completed high school and became a veritable local high-quality student.
In 2004, Sharif plucked up the courage to use his unskilled Chinese to write a letter of help to Ambassador Guo Chongli.
In the letter, she expressed her yearning for China and speculation about the identity of herself and her entire family. At the same time, she also asked the Chinese ambassador for help, and she wanted to return to China, hoping to give her some help.
Knowing the origin of Sharif's ancestors and looking at this girl who worked hard to go to China, Guo Chongli was also determined to help her realize her wishes.
Led by Sharif's mother and daughter, Guo Chongli went to the Shangjia Village where the sailors once lived.
Although it is deserted, you can faintly see several tombs of familiar style on the mountain wall not far from the sea.
Guo Chongli walked over with a heavy heart and saw some ceramic fragments next to the tomb, and the appearance of Chinese characters was faintly visible on the tombstone.
The thickness of history has sprung up in Guo Chongli's heart, he picked up a bottle of wine, solemnly paid tribute to these sailors buried in a foreign country, and then began to help Sharif realize his wishes.
Coincidentally, at that time, a film called "Zheng He's Going to the West" was being filmed, and director Wu Jianning came to Kenya to collect materials for the authenticity of the show.
Under the contact of Guo Chongli, the embassy people came to Sharif's house with a film crew and listened to Sharif's story, while also photographing the porcelain left behind in the village and the details of the lives of some residents.
They found that these porcelains were indeed produced in the Ming Dynasty, and the details of the lives of many residents in the village also have traces of Chinese civilization.
Not only that, Wu Jianning also found ancient coins and two large urns in the local area, which were engraved with obvious dragon patterns.
You must know that the dragon is the totem of the Chinese nation, and these traces make Wu Jianning extremely convinced that he has indeed lived here for Chinese, and he also believes in the truth of what Sharif said.
In July 2005, with the help of many enthusiastic Chinese enthusiasts, Sharif successfully set foot on the land of his dreams.
She came to Nanjing, visited the high-rise buildings in Nanjing, and the deputy mayor personally received this special international student and gave her a scarf.
In Nanjing, a bustling city with a lot of traffic, Sharif spent 7 years studying abroad, first learning Chinese for 2 years, and then learning Chinese medicine for 5 years, deeply feeling the charm of Chinese culture.
Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine gave her full scholarship support, allowing her to successfully start a new life in China.
After coming to China, Sharif gave herself a name called "Charif", which is a transliteration of her real name Sharif.
However, later, she felt that the name was not easy to remember, so she associated Zheng He's surname with Chinese civilization and changed her name to "Zheng Hua".
7 years of time is fleeting, 7 years, hard-working Sharif has been able to speak fluent Chinese, and has made great achievements in medicine.
In 2012, Sharif stepped on a plane back to China, where she looked out at the beautiful country under the clouds and shed sad tears in her eyes.
She would love to stay here, but she also knows that her hometown needs her, she wants to become a doctor who saves lives and the injured, brings the gospel to the remote and backward Kenyan mountain villages, and at the same time, she also hopes to use her best efforts to write a new chapter in the friendship between China and Kenya.
Today, Sharif has become a well-known doctor in the local area, bringing Advanced Chinese medical knowledge to her hometown and using this knowledge to save the lives of countless local people.
Sharif's story tells the glorious history of hundreds of years ago, and now, the Ming Dynasty has ceased to exist, and history has become a text written in books, but we can still peek into the style of that year from the details, and experience the unique inclusiveness of Chinese civilization in friends from all over the world.
What the author wants to say is that no matter how much Chinese blood Sharif has, and whether the story Sharif said is true or not, it can verify a fact from the side, the Ming Dynasty is a world-wide navigation power, far-reaching influence, Chinese civilization has a strong attraction to African civilization, as a "state of etiquette" continent, in line with the principle of "peace is precious" with the world's countries, never colonize, never bully the small, this is our mind.