Cross-cultural relationships boost mutual understanding

A loving family and rising living standards are standouts for Ugandan national in China. Yan Dongjie reports from Beijing, with Shi Baoyin in Luoyang, Henan.

August is the peppercorn harvest season in China.

In a vast field covered by the plant at a village in the central province of Henan, where foreigners are a rarity, a woman from Uganda was picking the crop, leaving passersby wondering why she was working there.

Speaking in fluent Henan dialect, Nabuliya shared anecdotes of her eight years in Luoyang city's Mengjin district with her two sons and her husband.

"Our eldest son is named Xie Buwei, a combination of my husband's name and mine. Our second son is named Xie Yafei, which combines the Mandarin words for Asia and Africa," the 30-year-old said.

"Although my mother was very sad, worried that no one would take care of her and that she would miss me, the day I arrived in Henan was the happiest day of my life," Nabuliya said, adding that it gave her hope for the future.

Nabuliya and Xie Xiaowei's love story and marriage have gained fame in the local community. They often share their daily life on Douyin, a popular social media platform, and have received blessings and attention from tens of thousands of netizens.

The couple's activities have enabled a growing number of Ugandans to understand China, while more Chinese netizens have learned about, and grown fond of, this woman from a completely different culture.

Unlike heavily edited, professionally produced short videos, Nabuliya's posts are usually shot by her husband on his smartphone. The quality is not high, the shots are not stable and there is no carefully applied makeup or an elaborate set.

Nabuliya can be seen either cooking Henan cuisine, such as noodles, for her children, working happily in the fields or taking a leisurely stroll and chatting with friends in the village of Yangzhuang in Mengjin's Chengguan township.

The couple's most recent videos were related to the peppercorn harvest, which was their main concern at the time. Since 2017, they have been contracted to cultivate peppercorns on nearly 8 hectares of farmland. Before that, they were registered as an impoverished household in the isolated village.

The village is located in a hilly area, and the local farmers used to mainly plant crops such as corn and wheat. However, it was difficult to achieve large-scale cultivation and yields were low as a result of the lack of rainfall and also because of poor irrigation.

The geographic and climatic conditions are highly suitable for the cultivation of peppercorns, so Yangzhuang's residents started learning related growing techniques together. "In the years of poverty alleviation efforts in 2016 and later, we introduced better varieties of peppercorns and distributed the seeds to impoverished households free of charge. Now, we have built a relatively large peppercorn garden. In the past few years, when peppercorn prices were high, even in a small garden, some farmers could sell their crop for more than 10,000 yuan ($1,370)," said Yang Xiaofeng, deputy secretary of the Yangzhuang community's Party committee.