阴阳鬼术大结局林晓峰:在卢旺达的中国人

美国公共国际广播电台(Public Radio International)“世界”栏目网站http://www.theworld.org/2011/10/chinese-in-rwanda/10月17日文章，

                             原题：在卢旺达的中国人  

    一些中国人来到卢旺达，有意思的事情发生了。他们不自觉地放松下来。“在这里生活很惬意”，4年前来到首都基加利开厂的爱德华·尹说，“人们很友好且诚实。国内人很世故。从一点到另外一点，他们会绕许多弯子。在这里就是一条直线。”

　　对某些中国公司而言，这或许有些过于直接。卢旺达执行严厉的反腐政策。我问尹这是否利于业务。他恶作剧般地笑了。“有时小腐败或许不是坏事”，他说，“它有助于搞定事情。”他的朋友李建波（音）不这么看。“我喜欢大力反腐的地方”，他说，“我可以估算成本。这是好事。”

　　尹喜欢卢旺达。他喜欢这里清新的空气和友好放松的氛围。去年他将家人带到这里生活。他说这是深思熟虑的选择，为的是孩子的未来。“在如今的中国学校，孩子必须刻苦学习”，他说，“他们没时间玩，学不会创造性思维。”李也喜欢卢旺达的轻松氛围，但他对儿子做法与尹相反。他儿子和妻子已回到中国。“如果他来这儿，他将无法在中国竞争，将失去优势。”

　　李和尹都表示他们非常享受每两周一次的快乐时光。十多名中国经理围坐在饭店内的圆桌旁。觥筹交错，气氛异常热烈。如果这种快乐时光是在基加利的中国人海外生活的短假，那么他们的海外生活则是摆脱中国生活压力的长假。（作者玛丽·凯·麦基斯塔德，丁雨晴译）

Chinese in Rwanda

Kigali Convention Center built by the Chinese (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“It’s nice living here,” says Edward Yin, 39, who moved to Kigali four years ago to set up a mobile phone factory. “People are friendly, and generally honest. In China, people can be pretty tricky. To get from one point to another, they may go in circles. Here, it’s just a straight line.”

Perhaps a bit too straight, for the tastes of some Chinese companies. Rwanda has a strict anti-corruption policy. I ask Yin if he thinks this is good for business. He grins mischievously.

“Sometimes, a little corruption might not be bad for business,” he says. “It helps get things done.”

His friend, Li Jianbo. disagrees.

“I like being in a place that’s tough on corruption,” he says. “My costs are predictable. That’s what’s good for business.”

Li is general manager in Kigali of China Road and Bridge Corporation – the biggest Chinese state-owned enterprise doing infrastructure construction in Africa. In China, if I as a journalist were to ask for an interview for someone of this stature, I’d be asked to send a fax with detailed questions, and proof of my journalist credentials, would be made to wait weeks, and would – far more often than not – ultimately be told 'no.’

Here, Li came to my guesthouse – his office was a ten-minute walk away – and sat on the veranda for almost two hours, chain-smoking and talking about life in Rwanda.

Li, who’s 49, first came to Rwanda in 1989 to help build road. He left three years later, and then followed news of the 1994 genocide from afar, fearing – and later learning – that he’d lost many friends.

“I came back a few years later,” he said. “I cared about this country. I wanted to see what had happened to it.” He’s now helping expand Rwanda’s road and infrastructure network.

Not all Chinese companies embrace anti-corruption measures quite so enthusiastically as Li, which may be one reason why the Chinese community is small here – a thousand or two — compared to in other African countries.

One Rwandan official told me, rather gleefully, that when a Chinese company won a bid to build a new convention center in Kigali, the government put a German manager on the project – to ensure quality control, and to curb any urges on the Chinese company’s side to pocket some of the budget. “They weren’t happy,” he said, with a sly smile. “But then, we weren’t doing the project for them.”

Anti-corruption efforts or no, Yin likes Rwanda. He likes the weather, the clean air, the friendly and relaxed vibe. He likes it enough to have brought his wife, his two kids and his mother here last year, to live. He says it was a deliberate choice, for his kids’ future.

“In Chinese schools now, kids have to work so hard,” he says. “They have no time to play. They don’t learn to think creatively. My kids, going to school here, will learn that life can be different.”

Li appreciates Rwanda’s laid-back atmosphere , too, but has taken the opposite decision related to his own son. He’s back in China with his mother. “If he comes here, he’ll never be able to compete in China. He’ll lose that edge.”

Chinese happy hour in Kigali. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

The evening grew boisterous as the beer and baijiu – a grain alcohol beloved at Chinese banquets – were tossed back. Jokes and jibes mixed with business talk, in accents from across China. It was a taste of home, a welcome reconnection. But unlike some gatherings of expats – Chinese and otherwise – there was a noticeable lack of griping about their adopted home. To a person, those I talked to said how much they like Rwanda. If these Friday evening happy hours are a kind of brief holiday for Chinese in Kigali from their expat life here, it seems their expat life here is its own extended holiday from the stresses of life in relentlessly ambitious China.