One day in 2022, a couple with oriental faces walked hand in hand on the streets of Africa, their looks arguably out of place with those around them.
They are authentic Chinese who has travelled to Africa with her husband since she was 21 years old. After staying for 15 years, the husband is determined not to return to China, what kind of secrets does Africa have?
1987 is the year Xu Yuanyan was born in Fujian, China. In 2007, she went with her husband to Malawi, Africa.
Distant marriage has always been a topic of constant social development, and she herself went to Africa after marriage.
Will you really be happy if you marry far away?
What kind of love, let the husband go wherever she goes, she will follow? What kind of life are they living today?
They originally met in junior high school, and after graduation, under the man's desperate pursuit, the two finally came together.
After graduating from junior high school, Xu Yuanyan became a repeat student, and due to her grades, she went out to work early before she was admitted to high school.
At that time, it was difficult to find a regular job under the age of eighteen, so she chose her first ordinary and mechanical job, "sticky shoe box".
In the shoe factory, the sticky shoe box that races against the clock is Xu Yuanyan's work that is constantly repeated throughout the day. Since the monthly salary was only a few hundred yuan, she adjusted her direction.
In the work That Xu Yuanyan has tried, selling mobile phones is one of her favorite ways, because the commission is high and there is money to be made. You can get a few thousand dollars a month.
In addition, she has a wealth of experience, such as working as a busy waiter or working part-time in a café.
During this time at work, Xu Yuanyan contacted him, who used to be in junior high school.
With the heart of the past, he asked for Xu Yuanyan's contact information from someone else.
Since the two were relatively free workers at that time, after contact, they were quickly together.
Two years later, they met both parents, and as their relationship stabilized, they quickly became engaged in the third year after the relationship.
This is the two-way rush from campus to wedding dress that everyone envies. "It's just that they quickly face the problem of how to choose a job."
It was 2007, their monthly salary was only one or two thousand, and the two adjusted their work plans according to the market conditions, which was also the most important decision for them to affect their future lives.
In Africa, there is a place called Malawi, which is one of the poorest countries in the world. But backwardness means that there are opportunities to make money, because every poor place lacks too many things.
Eventually, Xu Yuanyan's husband went to Malawi.
But it was a lucrative and lonely job, after all, he was far away in a foreign country, and he was running a storefront far from the city.
Later, the days slowly turned around in hardships, and in the second year of his trip, he saved up some money, and from this, he had his first store of his own.
Xu Yuanyan also followed her husband to Malawi.
It's a storefront selling shoes and clothes, and it's where couples dream of setting sail, where they encounter a lot of novel, tricky, and sad things.
But there's no denying that they did make money.
In unfamiliar countries, communication is the number one problem, and their level of spoken English is very average.
When they first arrived in Africa, because they could only say the word radish, they ate radish for a month, but the couple survived for a long time, for their dreams.
The store they dreamed of setting sail was about forty or fifty square meters, and it was here that they earned their first pot of gold, but soon faced a bigger test.
What kind of place is Malawi? Let countless Chinese start a business?
It is a place that lacks daily necessities, lacks factories, lacks houses. Therefore, once the Chinese things are "moved" here, they can quickly make money.
When they first came to run the store of their own, they did not have a car, travel and purchase difficulties, and finally solved the problem under the condition that the boy's father gave 30,000 yuan of funds.
When the car arrived, they finally had extra energy, and opening a shop again was the same idea of the two of them.
That is, a shop of more than 100 square meters has become their expectation, which is the painstaking effort of investing more than 100,000 yuan.
However, even so, the store with anticipation suddenly destroyed without hesitation.
How poor is Malawi? Here, too, water is a luxury for locals.
On an ordinary day as usual, the shop caught fire – as the neighbor's shop caught fire, the fire spread just as the place where the seeds of dreams had just sprouted suddenly shattered.
Although the local fire trucks arrived, there was no other way but to watch the entire storefront burn because there was not enough water.
This is another time when the confidence of the two has been thwarted.
When they regained hope, a long, long time had passed.
It was also in such a place where communication was difficult and houses were scarce, and they dreamed of finding another store.
As the couple searched relentlessly, they saw many of Malawi's true poverty.
There are no asphalt roads here, and when it rains, the dirt roads become a thick pool of dirt.
They, on the other hand, have to cross the streets they can go to find places suitable for building new dreams.
However, due to communication difficulties, it can only rely on the hands of others to compare, which is a waste of time and very difficult.
With the dream sprouting again, it is their efforts that finally bear fruit.
After overcoming all the difficulties, the couple also began to improve.
For example, in terms of communication, they have already made a lot of progress.
Regarding their store dreams, they have never stopped chasing.
2009 was the third year the store opened and the year their dreams blossomed.
This year, because of the expansion of business, they have seen countless hopes, and the couple has frequently opened shops, hoping that all the days will be better.
They have counted how many poignant things they have experienced in the days they have come to Africa, but they have fulfilled their former ideals and got rid of the embarrassment of only one or two thousand monthly wages.
For them who graduated from junior high school, daring to fight is already beyond many people.
Even more so for Xu Yuanyan's husband.
Because he was a left-behind child since he was a child, he can now come to a different place, and he has infinite perseverance and determination to arrive.
In the face of the test of reality, the couple experienced a variety of bitter histories in the process of opening countless stores of their own.
In a backward country, thieves are innumerable, and no matter how much they are prepared, there is no way.
At night, there are always thieves sneaking in, but Xu Yuanyan knows that it is common for things in the store to be stolen.
Once, due to financial problems, she fired all the employees.
The reason is that the turnover of one of the stores is reconciled by the manager in charge and Xu Yuanyan herself, and the proceeds are deposited directly into her account.
Because employees said that the store was robbed, but when the police arrived, no trace was found.
The employee claimed to have lost 20,000 yuan, but she refused to call the police for a long time, and she knew that the thief was out of her house.
This is a profound lesson for Xu Yuanyan, because she has seen the crisis of trust between people. It is also because she was deceived by everyone's partnership that she will be more sorry for employees with high moral character in the future.
Later, in the transformation of a "entrepreneurial dream - opening a supermarket", Xu Yuanyan finally found a satisfactory employee, a black uncle.
Because of his uncle's diligence, pragmatism and simplicity, Xu Yuanyan regarded him as a friend and a relative.
Here, due to the difference in diet, she had to buy her own vegetables to cook, and after a long time, she thought of a good way.
After a long period of implementation, now, Xu Yuanyan finally has her own vegetable garden.
She would teach her uncle to grow vegetables, and the uncle always learned it quickly.
Uncle is not like other employees, he is proactive, responsible, self-motivated, so he is favored by her.
Since the uncle has several grandchildren in school, she also funded some tuition.
In this way, the days began to be beautiful as Xu Yuanyan thought.
In 2011, she contracted malaria in Africa, so she was vaccinated, medicated, and faced a crisis because she didn't know she was pregnant.
After returning to China for examination, Xu Yuanyan was sure that the child in her womb had been completely lost at this time.
In the same year, her husband was in a car accident, the car and goods were destroyed, and for this reason, her husband also lived in the hospital for a long time.
Fortunately, there was no crisis of loss of life, but it was only during the inspection of returning home that the safety was determined.
Over the years, the couple has lost too much of what belongs to themselves, and they have also ushered in important things.
In 2013, the year their eldest son was born, the level of medical care in this poor country is really poor.
At a critical juncture when the child is facing difficulties in birth, none of the local doctors can solve the problem.
It was eventually with the help of her husband that the 8-pound son was born by caesarean section.
This time, it was the Chinese medical team he had brought in to save his family.
After the birth of the eldest son, the couple welcomed another child.
This time it was no longer the boy, and with the birth of the daughter, the financial pressure on the whole family increased, but the business of the two did not improve.
In 2016, due to the decline of the clothing market, their clothing stores faced a complete closure.
Fortunately, before they sent all the money they earned back to their hometown in Putian, and the old home also built a house, which made the two of them finally gain something in the days of hard work.
At this moment of liquidation, their crisis has come again, because, in this foreign country, the couple has only a few thousand dollars left.
It's an amount they can't do anything about it, but luckily they're still barely making ends meet.
After years of growing up, the two have long had the smell of a successful businessman, and they have been waiting for the opportunity to make second-hand mobile phones.
A person's choice is inextricably linked to his past experience, and here, Xu Yuanyan returns to the self who once made money by selling mobile phones.
This time, she borrowed 8,000 yuan and collected 15,000 yuan, and they officially opened this second entrepreneurial dream.
With the lack of the mobile phone market, they undoubtedly gambled right once.
This is a brilliant moment when the couple has made a big bucket of gold, and due to the improvement of the network here, everyone is in short supply for mobile phones.
They're always buying in large quantities — selling — buying.
But they didn't stop there, just in 2019, when the mobile phone winter market came, the couple quickly changed their strategy.
Here, people often need to go far away to buy goods, and they can't be sure that they will go, and after several turns, they often waste time and get nothing.
So this time, they're targeting the country's opportunity — the supermarket gap.
It is in this way that the first supermarket officially opened, and immediately ushered in a second, this time the road, they walked more smoothly than before.
Although, in the face of a huge supermarket, a small number of employees - 8 people, the couple still accepts the existence of occasional thieves, and also waits for their business to become bigger and stronger.
When developing their careers, they also take into account the education of their children.
Due to Malawi's backwardness, in 2018, the eldest son was sent back to China after finishing kindergarten.
In 2019, the daughter also returned to China, and it became a time for the couple to work alone in a foreign country.
In the first few years of a child's life, it is the time when the mother's company is most needed.
Because Xu Yuanyan rarely returned to China, gradually, she was almost forgotten by the children.
In the days that followed, although she was reunited with the child, because she had not seen each other for a long time when they met again, the child could not recognize her and had the psychology of exclusion.
This is one of the things that Xu Yuanyan is more sad about.
Face to face whether to return to China, back to the child's side. She had a dilemma in her choice.
When Xu Yuanyan expressed to her husband the idea of returning to China, because considering that it is very difficult to return to China to start a business again, for the couple, the opportunity may not be able to grasp. So, her husband didn't plan to go back.
Moreover, having left China for more than a decade, it is more difficult to re-adapt and keep up with the pace of society.
After non-stop struggle, in 2021, Xu Yuanyan bought another house, and faced with the pressure of mortgage, she decided to continue to stay in Africa.
This time, the two agreed on their ideas again, because after returning to China, survival would become the biggest problem.
Under a single opportunity, the couple calculated the more than 30,000 monthly expenses they needed to maintain, 25 years of loan repayment pressure, and they were only dependent and afraid of Africa.
Of course, they miss China more.
Just Chinese, it may not be easier for them to find a foothold in China than to run a business in Africa.
Faced with the miss of the elderly at home, their every step has become difficult.
But because of the epidemic, they chose to support Africa for as long as possible, and now they can earn 300,000 a year.
Later, Xu Yuanyan also started a self-media, sharing exotic customs with everyone.
This time, she hired a Chinese — the two of them growing vegetables together and filming videos together.
In countless difficult days in a foreign country in Africa, the couple has come over.
After 15 years of leaving home, all they insisted on was to live a better life and bring more wealth to their children.
-Ends-
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