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How China is
Transforming Brazil
Edited by
Mariana Hase Ueta · Mathias Alencastro ·
Rosana Pinheiro-Machado
How China is Transforming Brazil
Mariana Hase Ueta · Mathias Alencastro ·
Rosana Pinheiro-Machado
Editors

How China is
Transforming Brazil
Editors
Mariana Hase Ueta Mathias Alencastro
Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil São Paulo, Brazil

Rosana Pinheiro-Machado
University of Bath
Bath, UK

ISBN 978-981-99-3101-9 ISBN 978-981-99-3102-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3102-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
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189721, Singapore
 Introduction

The introduction of this book was finalized a few days after the defeat of
Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian elections, and, back then, it was far too
early to draw conclusions on his political legacy. It was visible, though,
from both institutional and societal perspectives that the Sino-Brazilian
Strategic Partnership had fundamentally changed during his government.
Bolsonaro had an ambiguous relationship with Beijing since the early
days of the campaign. To the surprise of many, one of the first foreign
trips from candidate Bolsonaro was precisely to Taiwan, in a sign that his
ideological and political alignment to Donald Trump could have a direct
impact on relations between Brazil and China.1 Things escalated slowly in
the beginning of his mandate, with provocations from Bolsonaro himself,
who mocked Chinese habits on social networks, the incorporation of the
anti-China discourse by the Brazilian far-right, and the pro-US diplomatic
line adopted by Bolsonaro’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo.2 An already
strained relationship was taken to the limit when the pandemic hit, as
Bolsonaro embraced the conspiracy ideas launched by far-right groups of
an alleged involvement of Chinese authorities in the development and
dissemination of the coronavirus. Bolsonaro then publicly attacked the

1 https://www.poder360.com.br/brasil/republica-popular-da-china-critica-bolsonaro-
por-sua-visita-a-taiwan/.
2 https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/materias/2021/05/06/fala-de-bolsonaro-
sobre-china-causa-polemica-em-reuniao-da-cre-com-chanceler.

v
vi INTRODUCTION

Chinese vaccine Coronavac that was being produced by his political oppo-
nent, São Paulo Governor João Doria.3 The tensions and animosities
previously confined to online exchanges dramatically escalated and boiled
over to the bomb attack against the Chinese consulate in Rio de Janeiro in
September 2021. Relations seemed to have reached a point of no return
when Chinese authorities started to create obstacles for Brazilian agribusi-
ness. Bilateral relations between China and Brazil were characterized by
discretion under Lula and Dilma. They became part of the national debate
under Bolsonaro.
The growing relevance of Brazil-China relations is not only a result of
Bolsonaro’s chaotic approach to foreign policy. It is also related to deeper,
more important reasons, linked to the rise of China as a central economic
actor in Latin America and Brazil. While China has been increasing the
pace of its economic diplomacy in the region for more than a decade,
with a focus on countries that previously supported Taiwan or those that
faced political pressure by the United States, things accelerated during the
pandemic, when China not only offered solutions to the “polycrisis” but
also expanded its interests.4
Investments in agricultural, energy, and mineral commodities were part
of an expansive foreign policy agenda. Driven by greenfield investment
and sovereign lending, China’s creditors became active in the whole of
the region, financing Chinese companies in a range of strategic sectors.
China’s commercial banks—including the ICBC and Bank of China—
and its private equity funds are also playing increasingly prominent roles.
It is worth noting, however, that the wave of investments appears to be
cyclical. In 2010, China’s policy banks issued $34.5 billion to the region.
Last year, its policy banks approved no new loans to Latin America, and
total commercial bank lending was less than $1 billion.5 Since 2019,
China seems to be shifting from commodities and energy and finance
to infrastructure, with an interest in what is called “new infrastructure”—
5G, electricity transmission, high-speed rail, electric vehicles, data centers,
and artificial intelligence—a theme of the 7th China-LAC Infrastructure
Cooperation Forum in 2021. Beyond the economy, China tried to forge

3 https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/materias/2020/11/10/senadores-criticam-
comemoracao-de-bolsonaro-da-suspensao-dos-testes-da-coronavac.
4 https://www.ft.com/content/498398e7-11b1-494b-9cd3-6d669dc3de33.
5 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/18681026211057134.
 INTRODUCTION vii

strategic partnerships. It added Argentina to the Belt and Road Initiative

(BRI), opened negotiations for a foreign trade agreement with Uruguay,
and developed an expansive military partnership with Venezuela.6 In
Brazil, in particular, despite the problems with the Bolsonaro administra-
tion, China continued to develop projects in infrastructure, technology,
and other critical areas with a transformational impact. While Brazil
consolidated its role as an important supplier to China, increasing exports
and turning China into the main destination for Brazilian exports since
2009, China, by virtue of its status as the “factory of the world,” has
established itself as the main supplier of manufactured products to Brazil.
Politically, China worked with other branches of the government to
counterbalance the tensions with Bolsonaro and acquired assets in a
variety of strategic sectors. The China-Brazil congress partnership was
strengthened and empowered, and Chinese companies hired top lawyers
with political influence, including firms tied to former elected officials.7
Behind the scenes, senior advisors in the Bolsonaro government, espe-
cially in the department of agriculture, created a China bureau and
assisted Chinese investors. Despite diplomatic tensions, trade agreements
were signed, and exports to China rose across all states of the federa-
tion, especially across the so-called Center-West. China was not just doing
damage control; it was investing in the conditions for deepening and
strengthening the partnership with Brazil.
Due to Brazilian regions’ different socio-economic profiles, the effects
of Chinese investment were experienced differently across the country.
The states of the Center-West thrived under Bolsonaro, while the trend
of deindustrialization appears to have accelerated in São Paulo and Rio
de Janeiro. Thanks to their commercial link to China, states like Mato
Grosso do Sul debunked São Paulo as trade powerhouses. The material
life of Brazilians was also impacted. Products from low to high technolog-
ical complexity and across different price ranges are now being imported
from China.8 The very success of the Havan stores, an iconic brand of the

6 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/18681026221094852?icid=int.sj-full-
text.similar-articles.3.
7 https://tecnoblog.net/noticias/2021/01/22/huawei-recruta-michel-temer-para-def
ender-presenca-no-5g-do-brasil/.
8 https://www.cebc.org.br/arquivos_cebc/carta-brasil-china/Ed_6.pdf.
viii INTRODUCTION

Bolsonaro years, reveals the contradictions of Brazil in the age of super-

power competition. The store boasts a replica of the NY Statue of Liberty
at its entrance, but it almost-exclusively sells Chinese-imported products.
In the age of Bolsonaro, many revered the United States, its aesthetics,
and its ideology, but embraced the materiality of the “Chinese century”.
That apparent contradiction tells a story about a country in transition.
The Brazil that was once culturally and economically anchored in the
West, and most specifically in the Atlantic economy where liberalism and
slavery formed together the Republic, is slowly giving place to a country
closer than ever to China. This book traces the roots of a process that is
often treated as recent and incipient.
China stepped up its investment in Latin America while adopting a
more balanced approach toward some of its key economic partners in
Africa, so it seems to continue wielding massive political influence. Loans,
commitments, and foreign direct investment have been surging and the
promise of economic development based on an industrialization-led struc-
tural transformation agenda is rallying politicians in both continents. The
fact that both the Argentinian and the Ethiopian cases have only partially
delivered on their promises is not deterring others from trying to develop
a relationship with China on similar terms. However, deeper engagement
may also be at the origin of future tensions. China’s expanding role as
a holder of African and Latin American debt will increasingly shape rela-
tions as countries from the Global South still recover from the COVID-19
pandemic. Debt renegotiation and forgiveness will mark the end of the
era of easy Chinese money. However, the fact that the US has failed
to compete with China’s economic pledges in Latin America shows the
breadth of the expansive vision of Xi Jinping.
Due to the complexification and the emergence of new issues, the Sino-
Brazilian partnership has been a challenge to those involved in research
and strategic planning. From the Chinese side, it is possible to see the
growing importance attributed to these regions through the creation of
institutes and departments in the main universities of this country dedi-
cated to the research and teaching Portuguese, as well as the increasing
number of Confucius Institutes in Brazil. From the Brazilian side, there is
still the recurring discourse that there is lack of research being developed
in Brazil on China. Research in Latin America on China has made impor-
tant advances in the past decade. Those working in China from Brazil,
Argentina, and Chile have produced an important body of literature. Yet
there are limits that go beyond academia. It is important to recognize that
 INTRODUCTION ix

much work is still needed and there is plenty of room for the field to grow.
During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the number of Brazilian correspon-
dents in China reached its peak, and the media coverage was not only
limited to the sports event, but on political and cultural aspects of the
country. This contributed to the construction of a more complex image
of China in Brazil, in contrast to the representations it had before: either
as an economic threat or as an exotic beauty.

∗ ∗ ∗

This book seeks to establish a new perspective on the studies of Brazil

and China in Fernand Braudel’s understanding of long duration. Our
premise is that the current developments in Brazil and China relations
are not incipient nor new. Rather, they are rooted in political and cultural
interactions that have been taking place since the nineteenth century. This
effort draws on a new generation of scholars that are working on Chinese
contemporary influence across the country and are pushing the bound-
aries of the field forward, but also on established academics that have
been working on the topic for decades and have set the ground for the
current research. Only by recognizing the work already developed in the
field and bringing new research, these synergies will allow the field to not
only expand, but also diversify in its scope.
It gathers texts from different natures and disciplines which made the
editorial work especially challenging. The main structure constitutes in
two parts that differ by scale. China-Brazil ties take place both at the
high level of comparison between states, and in the private lives of Brazil-
ians who interact in a secular way with Chinese influences. These two
mechanisms feed back into each other and go on to define China’s image
in Brazil. The book thus challenges conventional perspectives of IR, very
prevalent in Brazil, where the perspective of states, treaties, and political
actors prevails over the social and cultural perspective.
Finally, the book aims to present at the same time a more “visible
side” of the partnership that consists in the economic and international
political relations, while also offering perspectives on “less visible sides”
that consist in historical and sociological constructions that give a broader
picture of the challenges and opportunities of the relationship between
China and Brazil.
The first part will welcome the readers to understand the historical and
sociological perspective on China. Tom Dwyer brings the perspectives of
x INTRODUCTION

Brazilians who migrated to China, through their dreams, their difficulties,

and strategies to navigate the Chinese reality. Through the experience of
Brazilian musicians in China, the author invites us to think the importance
of the intercultural perspective in the encounter between Brazilian and
Chinese. André Bueno and Douglas Piza bring historical perspective of
the Chinese migration in Brazil. Bueno celebrates important authors such
as Freyre and Teixeira Leite who were pioneers in identifying Chinese
elements in the Brazilian culture and provoke us to question the influ-
ence of the exchanges with the Chinese in the formation of our own
culture. Douglas brings the history of Chinese migration, the differences
between the migratory waves, the challenges and contributions of each
one of them, and makes a contemporary reflection about the image of
the Chinese currently built from these historical processes. Finally, Victor
Ido presents an overview of how the technological development of the last
decades in China has inaugurated new IP norms. The author calls atten-
tion to the need for actors in Brazil to understand the process in order to
be better informed in their decisions and development of cooperation.
The second part will be on Economy and International Relations
focused on environmental issues, which has been a field of fruitful
cooperation between the countries.
Niklas Weins, Talita Pinotti, and Jefferson Estevo bring an interesting
overview that takes the reader from Chinese reforms and policies to their
effects on the global sphere and their impacts on the development of
strategic relationships. They focus on the environmental issue and analyze
how this issue is understood through investment and trade. Adriana
Abdenur, Maiara Folly, and Maurício Santoro deepen this discussion by
analyzing the insertion of China in strategic sectors, such as transporta-
tion, and how this experience has taught lessons on both sides. Since the
commodities boom, China has been learning how to deal with Brazil’s
business, regulation, and investment landscape. Brazil, in turn, has been
understanding and organizing itself to deal and respond to the Chinese
presence in these sectors. Livia Machado maps out the Brazilian invest-
ments and Sino commitments from the strategic Amazon region. She
draws attention to the potential of this region and the need not only
for regulatory and law enforcement, but also for dialogue and political
commitment.
João Cumaru gives an overview of the investments in the energy sector.
The author presents data on the important Chinese actors in the field and
how their investments have been influencing and transforming the electric
 INTRODUCTION xi

landscape in the country. Through these four chapters, it is possible to

see that Chinese investments are led by different actors and focusing on
different sectors in different parts of the country.
Finally, we are honored to have a final chapter from Professor Zhou
Zhiwei, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies at
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Executive Director of the
Center for Brazilian Studies, offering a perspective from China on the
Sino-Brazilian partnership.
By bringing into light this set of scholars, this book seeks to consol-
idate the scholarship developed in the last decade and promote a new
approach to Brazil-China relations, written from the perspective of the
Global South. But this book is nothing short of a reflection on the future.
It has been conceived and developed as a set of ideas that can help shape
future policies for Brazil toward China.
 Contents

Brazilian Migrants Experience China: Musicians’

Observations of the Promises and Limits to Sino-Brazilian
Relations 1
Tom Dwyer
1 Introduction to Brazilians Relationships with China 1
2 Early Brush Strokes—Brazilian Travellers in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries 4
3 Reform and Opening Up: Brazilians Move to China 7
4 Methodological Notes 9
5 Academic Studies of Brazilians in China 9
6 The Live Music Market in China for Foreigners 13
7 Globalisation and Brazilian Musicians 14
8 Policy Recommendations 23
References 24
Traces of Chinese Culture in the Roots of Brazil 27
André Bueno
1 Introduction 27
2 Colonial Brazil (Before 1822) 28
3 Brazil Empire (1822–1889) and the ‘Question of Chin’ 29
4 Rediscovering the Chinese Traces in Brazil 30
5 The ‘China in Brazil’ by José Leite 33
6 News Studies on Chinese Presence in Brazil 36
7 Conclusions 37
References 38
xiii
xiv CONTENTS

Chinese Migration and Changes in Brazilian Society 41

Douglas de Toledo Piza
1 Introduction 41
2 The Overseas Chinese in Brazil 43
2.1 Servants of the Portuguese Empire 44
2.2 The Chinese Question 45
2.3 Migration in the Making of a Nation by Design 47
2.4 Overseas Chinese in Multicultural Brazil 48
2.5 Climbing Up the Social Ladder 49
2.6 Popular Markets 50
3 Transforming Commodity Circuits in Brazil 51
4 Economic Crisis, the Pandemic, and Discrimination 52
5 In Lieu of Conclusion: From the Margins to the Center 54
References 55
From ‘Threat’ to ‘Partners’? The Changing Landscape
of Innovation and Intellectual Property Between China
and Brazil 59
Vitor Henrique Pinto Ido
1 Introduction 59
2 From the Made in China to the Made in China 2025
(and Beyond) 61
3 Global Socio-Legal Consequences of China’s New Role 68
3.1 China Can Be a Potential New ‘Norm-Maker’
in International Economic Law, Particularly Given
Its Prominent Participation at the World Trade
Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO), and Its Bilateral and Regional
Trade and Investment Agreements 68
3.2 Chinese Domestic Regulators and Courts May Often
Act as de facto Extraterritorial and Transnational
Regulators, Especially in High-Technology Areas Such
as 5G 70
3.3 Chinese Firms Are Turned into Global Private
Regulators (Enforcing Their Contracts Across Global
Value Chains and Their Privacy Standards, Seen
in E-commerce Retailers and Big Tech Platforms More
Prominently) 71
 CONTENTS xv

4 Implications for Brazilian Stakeholders 72

5 Conclusion 74
References 77
Chinese Railway Investments in Brazil:
Socio-Environmental Implications for the Amazon
and Cerrado 79
Adriana Erthal Abdenur, Maurício Santoro, and Maiara Folly
1 Introduction 79
2 Institutional Learning in Transport Infrastructure Projects 81
3 The Ferrogrão Railway Project 85
4 Institutional Learning and Mutual Adaptation 93
5 Conclusion 99
Understanding Chinese Investments in the Brazilian
Amazon Region 101
Lívia Machado Costa
1 Introduction 101
2 What Brings China to the Brazilian Amazon? 103
2.1 Chinese Investments in the Brazilian Amazon Region
(2010–2020) 105
3 China’s Climate Goals, the Amazon, and Development 108
4 Conclusion 111
References 113
The Sino-Brazilian Relations in Debate: A Perspective
from the Energy Sector 119
João Cumarú
1 Brazil-China Cooperation 119
2 The Energy Sector in Evidence 121
2.1 Latin America 121
2.2 An Overview of the Sino-Brazilian Cooperation
in the Energy Sector 122
2.3 Regional Division of Investments 126
3 Comments on the Challenges and Potentialities of the Sector
for Sino-Brazilian Cooperation 129
4 Final Comments 133
References 135
xvi CONTENTS

China’s Environmental Turn and the Impacts

on Investment and Trade in Brazil-China Relations 139
Niklas Werner Weins, Jefferson dos Santos Estevo,
and Talita de Mello Pinotti
1 Introduction 139
2 China’s Environmental Turn 140
3 A Greener China and Its Impacts on Sino-Brazilian Relations 144
3.1 Chinese Investment in Brazil: Environmental Risks
and Opportunities 144
3.2 Consequences of the Commercial Relations Between
China and Brazil 148
4 Conclusions 152
References 154
Common Interests and Brazil-China Multidimensional
Cooperation 161
Zhiwei Zhou
1 Bilateral Dimensions 162
2 Multilateral Dimensions 165
3 Cross-Regional Collaborative Dimensions 167
4 Conclusion 168

Index 171
 List of Contributors

Adriana Erthal Abdenur Plataforma CIPÓ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

André Bueno University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
Lívia Machado Costa Department of Geography, University of Cali-
fornia, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
João Cumarú Fudan University, Shanghai, China;
Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil
Douglas de Toledo Piza Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA
Tom Dwyer CASS-Unicamp Center for China Studies, IFCH, Univer-
sity of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil
Maiara Folly Plataforma CIPÓ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Vitor Henrique Pinto Ido University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil;
Health, Intellectual Property and Biodiversity Programme, South Centre,
Geneva, Switzerland
Talita de Mello Pinotti University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil;
United Nations System Staff College, Bonn, Germany
Maurício Santoro State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil

xvii
xviii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Jefferson dos Santos Estevo University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil

Niklas Werner Weins University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil;
Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands
Zhiwei Zhou Institute of Latin American Studies, Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences, Beijing, China
 Brazilian Migrants Experience China:
Musicians’ Observations of the Promises
and Limits to Sino-Brazilian Relations

Tom Dwyer

1 Introduction to Brazilians
Relationships with China
Today, thousands of Brazilians live in China, and the experiences and
perceptions of a group of them constitute the subject matter of this
chapter. By the end of the nineteenth century, the only register Teix-
eira Leite found on the mainland was of a single Brazilian who lived in
Tientsin (today’s Tianjin) for a year (Lisboa, 1888). Early Brazilian trav-
ellers wrote about China, its people and their lives, but besides Lisboa, no
Brazilian authors so far rediscovered seemed to have shown any in-depth
life experiences and knowledge about that country.
This short chapter will begin by briefly mentioning José Roberto Teix-
eira Leite’s key readings of selected books written by Brazilian visitors
to China in the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth century.
While some examine early State-to-State relationships between our Conti-
nental countries. Direct comparisons and approximations are produced.

T. Dwyer (B)
CASS-Unicamp Center for China Studies, IFCH, University of Campinas,
Campinas, Brazil
e-mail: tom@unicamp.br

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
M. H. Ueta et al. (eds.), How China is Transforming Brazil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3102-6_1
2 T. DWYER

The sheer size, density, poverty and massive differences are highlighted,
as is a sense of innate superiority. However, the viewpoint changes when
to the Chinese republican revolution of 1911, and later the communist-
led revolution of 1949, a ‘new and modernising China’ emerges. Sporadic
visitors came to write about that country, sometimes from utopian view-
points. Brazil established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic
of China in 1974; from 1978 onwards, the giant started its transforma-
tion—the most significant and positive seen in human history—into what
it is today, the second economic power on Earth, Brazil’s major trading
partner and the new key State actor on the world scene.
In 1999, José Roberto Teixeira Leite, in introducing his trail-blazing
book “China in Brazil: Chinese influences, marks, echoes and survivals
in Brazilian society and art,” stated, “At this end of a decade, which is
also the end of a Century and of a Millennium, the mention of China
inevitably raises confused ideas, and in any way signifies as little to 99.99%
of us Brazilians, accustomed to associating it with a nebulous country, so
little known about, and almost as remote as Mars or the Moon” (1999,
p. 11). However, China-Brazil relations were already being prepared for a
previously unimaginable mutation. Less than a half a decade later, Brazil
and China had become ‘strategic partners,’ and in less than a full decade,
China had become Brazil’s biggest trading partner. By 2014, according
to the Brazilian Foreign office, some 16.700 Brazilian citizens lived in
China. In 2021, over 30% of all Brazil’s exports went to a country that
even today we in Brazil know so little about!
Much of what many Brazilians at home think of China today is
anchored in powerful images of the other, many of which can be
found in contemporary books written by Brazilian journalists who have
lived there. Some representations appear to be similar to those portrayed
by nineteenth-century Brazilian travellers and authors; others are of a
country and a people that appears to be completely transformed as a
result accelerated modernisation—tradition and modernity are portrayed
as living side by side. Domination and subordination are a part of life,
and the society is on the move.
Increasing the interest of Brazilians in China not only attends a national
interest to permit our citizens to know our major trading partner better,
but it also is a fruit of an academic interest—reflected in the title and the
authors who are writing in this volume. It aims at understanding how
China is impacting Brazil. For me, the key question is, how can we live
together? and how does our answer to this question positively impact on
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 3

the lives of Brazilians and Chinese peoples and on our neighbours, and
contribute to world peace.
China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) signified
much more than abstract principles of ‘economic globalisation’; for many
Brazilians, it has directly impacted their lives and not always positively.
However, early scripts on economic globalisation were late in forecasting
that China would become Brazil’s major trading partner. The building of
these relationships has involved much more than WTO membership and
diplomatic contacts; it has required the establishment of complex rela-
tions between various institutions, private and public, and interactions
between our peoples. For Fernando Henrique Cardoso, “I confess it is
easier for me to see the reciprocity between our interests and China’s
than with India. Culturally I am fascinated by India…. [with India]
[O]ur conversations, always friendly, never turned into anything concrete,
neither economically nor politically…. [With China] We, from our side,
need to define what our game is. It’s possible to play with the Chinese,
but if they are the only ones with strategic objectives and know what they
are looking for, in this game we won’t do very well…. In the mid-term it
depends on our capacity to formulate our own proposals and implement
them” (Cardoso, 2006, pp. 634–635).
For Polish sociologist Piotr Stompka, it is appropriate to treat the
“macro theme of globalisation at the micro level of the mundane everyday
experiences of ordinary people. This implies that real sociality resides in
those experiences and the relationships they contain.”1 The bulk of this
chapter reports on the results of original research carried out by the
author with Brazilian residents who had been based at least three years
in China; interviews and observations were carried out during the 2010
decade in both Beijing and Shanghai.
The results of this research indicate that, with patience, knowledge and
wisdom, Brazilian musicians—as carriers of a Brazilian contribution to
cultural globalisation—have been able to construct enduring, profitable
and, in spite of instabilities, long-lasting relations with the China and with
the Chinese people. To read our interviewees’ reflections on their expe-
riences in China can serve as an antidote to the anti-Chinese propaganda
of Brazil’s government at the time of writing, which, acting contrary to

1 https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/about-isa/history-of-isa/isa-past-presidents/list-of-
presidents/piotr-sztompka (consulted on 31 March 2022).
4 T. DWYER

Brazil’s core interests, sought to cosy up to the US. By sharing their

experiences and collective wisdom, they help readers see how they have
constructed relations and laid the grounds for the future.

2 Early Brush Strokes---Brazilian Travellers

in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Francisco Antonio de Almeida (1879) provides us with the earliest
description based on a short period he spent in China on his way to
observe the planet Venus’s transit over Japan in December 1874. He was
a member of a scientific mission commissioned by Dom Pedro II. For
Teixeira Leite (1999, p. 261), his short stay didn’t permit him to write in
any depth about the country, and his opinions were formed lightly.
Salvador de Mendonça (1879), author and diplomat, travelled to
China, with the mission to stimulate the migration of Chinese agri-
cultural labourers to Brazil. His book “Asian Workers” was harshly
received by Brazilian positivists. After well-researched and written chap-
ters, Mendonça came out against the immigration of indentured Chinese
labourers (coolies) as had occurred in Peru and Cuba, and in favour of the
migration of free labour as in the USA, where in his view such migrants
had proven to be very hard workers. However, he also warned about
the Chinese: “liars, disloyal, suspicious, partial to robbery and gambling,
lustful, hypocrites, unclean and incapable of coming to love their new
land. All of this without speaking of the dangers of ‘mongolisation,’ a
phenomenon which many hygienists had also been calling to the attention
of the authorities” (Teixeira Leite, 1999, p. 262).
Later, Henrique Carlos Ribeiro Lisboa travelled to China as part of
an official mission led by Admiral Artur Silveira Mota, which lead to the
Treaty of Tientsin’s—a treaty of friendship, trade and navigation (permit-
ting the emigration of ‘free’ labour)—signing and re-signing. A ceremony
took place on 5 September I880 in Tientsin, where Viceroy Li-Hung
Chang acted in Emperor Guangxu’s name. However, the document’s
final wording proved unacceptable to the Brazilians. In the year, it took
to prepare a new version, signed off on 3 October 1881, Lisboa, in his
role as secretary to the diplomat Minister Eduardo Callado, stayed in
China. He set up home in Tientsin, took Mandarin lessons, mounted a
photography laboratory, read the best sources available about China and
travelled. Subsequently, he published two books. Teixeira Leite (1999,
pp. 264–265) lists several highlights of the first volume (1888), “written
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 5

with manifest sympathy and knowledge” and indicates the interest of

chapters on Macau and matters surrounding the 1880 Treaty signing.
The last book on Imperial China noted in Teixeira Leite’s literature
review was Luis Guimarães Filho’s (1911) “Samurais and Mandarins,”
written “without any apparent sympathy nor any genuine cultural
interest,” which he evaluated as a “shallow book, by someone who, under-
stood absolutely nothing about what he saw, and didn’t make any attempt
to understand” (Teixeira Leite, 1999, p. 264).
A trickle of generalist books continued to be published during the
turbulent period of the Republic of China (1911–1949) above all by
diplomats. Of this list, I would highlight Tabajara de Oliveira’s (1934)
descriptions of the ‘Paris of the East,’ Shanghai, “its nightlife and
bohemian environment, with its cabarets, dens, smokehouses and houses
of prostitution, confessing that he had tried opium, which he considered
an aphrodisiac” (Teixeira Leite, 1999, p. 265).
After the communist revolution of 1949, a number of Brazilian authors
wrote generalist books, which often showed them to be enamoured with
Mao’s leadership and the communist regime. Such was the case of the
surrealist sculptor Maria Martins (1958), who visited China at the end of
1956, having been invited by none less than Chou En Lai, and received
by Mao Tse-Tung.
Subsequent efforts followed in the journalistic tradition. Worthy of
mention is the Cearense author Heloneida Studart’s (1979) ‘China: the
Northeast that became a Success.’
Teixeira Leite’s attention to this period is grasped by cartoonist Henfil
(1980) who published a book based on his stay of only 16 days in Beijing,
Shanghai and Guangzhou in 1977. He treated “communes, barefoot
doctors, bicycles, workers, educational systems… massification, marxi-
fication, standardisation of art, television, living costs, toys, birth-rate,
neighbourhood committees, atomic bomb shelters, dazibaos, political
propaganda, acupuncture, sexuality, musical and theatrical performances,
the fall of the ‘Gang of Four,’ little red soldiers, schistosomiasis, Mao
posters, pagodas, Chinese cartoonists….” (1999, p. 267).
The life of the Brazilian journalist, Jayme Martins, and his family, who
lived for 20 years in China is portrayed in Marcelo Machado’s remark-
able, empathetic, prize-winning documentary “Bamboo Bridge” (Ponte
de Bambu, 2020). The Martins couple’s two daughters became ‘cultural
intermediaries’ as they had developed the necessary skills to provide a
bridge between people from both lands. This occurred, for example, when
6 T. DWYER

in the mid-1980s Chinese generals and Brazilian civilian researchers from

the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) came together in the
China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) project (Raupp, 2017).
Later, as adults, they would work as Chinese-Portuguese translators for
Heads of State and work with developing commercial and other links
between China and Brazil.
Originally recruited to work in Beijing’s ‘Institute of Foreign
Languages,’ Jayme Martins lived in China for a total of 20 years (1962–
1979 and 1987–1989). For a part of this time, he worked for major
Brazilian and Chinese news outlets. He, his wife and their two daugh-
ters (who had spent their formative years in Chinese schools) were eye
witnesses of the traumatic sixties and seventies and the initial stages of
“reform and opening up” as idealised and led by Deng Xiaoping. Jayme
Martins met with or interviewed Mao, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, all
key shapers of the twentieth century. The Martins family became a refer-
ence for many early Brazilian visitors, some of whom referred to them as
the only Brazilian family living in China, and the documentary indicates
some possibilities and limits of Brazil-China dialogue.
China is a country which, throughout its history, has translated and
sought to learn from others. ‘Migration’ should therefore be seen not
only in demographic, economic or political terms (e.g. Jayme Martins
was forced to leave Brazil after a short visit in 1994 and was welcomed to
China as a political exile). Less tangibly, it has a cultural dimension and
ideas migrate.
Ideas and experiences drawn from Brazil, and built up during our
development process, played a role in the feeding reflections that
contributed to the building of Contemporary China. Works of impor-
tant intellectuals such as Celso Furtado, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and
Theotônio dos Santos were firstly studied in English and subsequently
translated into Chinese. Even today, at social science seminars, we find
Chinese colleagues who remember studying their works.
With the implementation from 1978 of “reform and opening up,”
Deng Xiaoping restored sociology to the curriculum in certain major
universities and the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences was founded. Deng had said: “Most of our ideological
and theoretical workers should dig into one or more specialised subjects.
All those who can do so should learn foreign languages, so as to be able
to read important foreign works on the social sciences without difficulty.
We have admitted that we lag behind many countries in our study of the
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 7

natural sciences. Now we should admit that we also lag behind in our
study of the social sciences, insofar as they are comparable in China and
abroad. Our level is very low and for years we haven’t even had adequate
statistical data in the social sciences, a lack that is naturally a great obstacle
to any serious study” (Freitas, 2019, p. 14).

3 Reform and Opening Up:

Brazilians Move to China
If, as many think, there was only one Brazilian family living in the People’s
Republic of China before the reestablishment of diplomatic relations in
1974, 40 years later, in 2014, roughly 16.700 Brazilians were estimated
to reside there (Jatoba, 2020). A precise timing of the early migratory
‘droplets,’ and subsequent migratory ‘ripples’ that do not appear to have
foreshadow any migratory ‘wave,’ remains to be published.
For the time being, a proxy to this may come from the evaluation
of Ricardo Schaefer—Adjoint Executive Secretary of the Ministry of
Development, Industry and Commerce on the entry of Brazilian enter-
prises into China. “There was a big first moment of Brazilian companies
entering into China, which occurred in the second half of the 1990s, and
which carries on until 2005–2006. When companies like Embraco, Vale,
WEG and Embraer invested in the Chinese market…. benefiting from the
high economic growth of China, at rates superior to 10%…. What we are
seeing now, can be considered a second moment of entry… for example,
when Brazilian companies open franchises in China or form distribution
strategies for the Chinese market. Another example would be through
the financial sector… trying to get closer to China. Finally, sectors of
higher technology, such as Embrapa studying the possibility of opening
laboratories in the Chinese market” (CEBC, 2012, p. 24).
The sector of high technology was one of the first in which Brazil
established cooperation with China. From the mid-1980s onwards, but
this was carried out as scientific and technical cooperation, it did not
involve economic transaction. Most Brazilians involved in the CBERS
agreement moved back and forth between countries; however, some
ended up marrying or living in China where they developed new profes-
sional activities. In its earliest days, there were so few Brazilians in China
that Jayme and Angélica Martins’ daughters became ‘cultural intermedi-
aries’ helping make social exchanges possible especially in the absence of
a lingua franca. In this way, they made a contribution to the development
8 T. DWYER

of the project, normally seen in its time as the biggest technological coop-
eration project between two developing countries; however, technological
projects are also social, and they can build trust and approximate those
who are different. As Professor Raupp explained, “We always wanted to
cooperate with Russia and it never worked…. The Indians? We tried
several times…. Indians are very complicated…. I don’t know, it never
worked with the Indians. I learned that it was not enough to want to do
something, countries have to be similar. What I notice with the Chinese is
that they are like the Brazilians, happy, joyful people, always open-hearted,
joking…. Eating and drinking is what they like the most. The banquets,
the toasts with everyone, all this makes people come closer to each other.
Today, the openness of the Chinese impresses me, I don’t know how long
it will last. They are very easy to access. There are a lot of young people!”
(2017, p. 144).
The situation observed in the mid-1980s appears to be a far cry from
that which Brazilian migrants who led their companies in China, before
the pandemic faced, they and their families could have access to assistants
who serve as translators, most commonly from Chinese to English, but
increasingly from Chinese to Portuguese, their children go to interna-
tional schools and—should they live in Shanghai and Beijing—they have
ready access to international products and services. The origin of this
rapid change is that until 1999 only the “University (formerly Institute)
of Foreign Studies in Beijing and the University of International Studies
in Shanghai offered degrees in Portuguese”; by 2021, over 30 university-
level undergraduate Portuguese language courses had been approved in
mainland China.2
The movement of larger Brazilian companies to China, highlighted and
analysed in the CEBC report (2012), was followed by smaller companies.
In the decade of 2010, I occasionally met with new arrivals, business
graduates, lawyers and others who worked for both Brazilian and non-
Brazilian internationalised companies, between China and overseas, in
some cases carrying out a wide range of activities, including helping to
implant manufacturing, customisation, sales and quality divisions in the
Chinese market, and in other cases attending specific demands of the
markets at home, or elsewhere.

2 https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2021-03-13/the-chinese-ministry-of-edu
cation-has-authorized-the-opening-of-two-new-degrees-in-portuguese/5.
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 9

The increasing number of Brazilians teaching Portuguese in China was

mainly left out of the target audience for this research because I required
interviewees to have lived in China for a minimum of three years. In
Beijing, I mainly found citizens of Portugal teaching their native language
and was informed that Brazilian teachers worked outside of the country’s
two major urban centres.

4 Methodological Notes
I researched databases of theses and dissertations registered with the
Ministry of Education’s (MEC) specialised higher education agency
CAPES, the Brazilian Scielo database and international paid databases
such as Proquest, all with very limited results. From early 2020, the
pandemic meant that normal working relations with reference librarians
were interrupted.
Television and printed media are today important sources of infor-
mation, for example carrying news into Brazilian homes about the large
community of their compatriots who have settled in Southern China since
the late 1990s. Jatoba’s (2020) article ends with a very useful list of links
(some broken) to television, web and news items about the Brazilians
of Dongguan. This and other journalistic material can serve for other
researchers. Also, members of the Brazilian community kept blogs and
made other digital publications on their lives and impressions that can
serve also serve as research resources.

5 Academic Studies of Brazilians in China

In the 1990s, the Brazilian footwear industry started to suffer from
Chinese competition, and many of its workers had skills that China did
not have, and some manufactures wagered that their company’s chances
of survival might be improved by relocating to Southern China. At the
time, China lacked a positive image, so higher salaries were raised to
serve as an incentive; many pioneers earned five times what they earned
at home. However, after the first generation had broken through, the
following generation lost fear and migration became easier, subsequent
increases the offer of skilled Brazilian migrants ended up contributing to
the reduction of wages and benefits. CEBC (2012) reserved a footnote
for the footwear manufacture sector installed in Dongguan in the Pearl
River basin of Southern China, which did not fall into its sample. This
10 T. DWYER

same study pointed to Nantong, in Jiangsu Province, as providing good

conditions for the installation of Brazilian manufacturing enterprises.
It was estimated that the number of Brazilians resident in Dong-
guan was between 2000 and 3000 in 2018–2019 (Jatoba, 2020). This is
reputed to be the biggest single Brazilian resident community in China.
The earliest academic study on Brazilians in Dongguan was carried out
by Luciana Orsolin (2008) and earned the author a masters’ degree in
psychology. She explored the ‘vision’ of five young Brazilian couples,
creatively using photographs to develop discussions on their understand-
ings of China and difficulties therein. Much later, Jatoba (2020) published
a revealing article about language learning practices, including relating to
the choice of Chinese or English as a second language for the children of
this community.
Carol Porto (2014) defended a doctoral thesis in sociology where she
portrayed the difficulties or Brazilian women who had accompanied their
husbands’ career moves to Beijing and in doing so had forfeited both
their jobs and the autonomy they had acquired back home. Some cases
were similar to those identified by Orsolin. Porto examined the complex-
ities of these women’s situations and how they sought to resignify them,
and give a new sense to their lives, by joining an association whose
work included promoting Brazilian culture, and participating in voluntary
support networks.
Lucia Anderson da Silva, a rare Brazilian who is fluent in Chinese,
and who has work experience in both the Chinese public and private
sectors, carried out her doctoral research in social sciences in Beijing and
Shanghai. Her research question was backgrounded in years of obser-
vations of Brazilian residents, and her thesis built around a series of
interviews with male executives (who could have easily have been the
husbands of the women who Porto had studied if their studies been
carried out simultaneously). It is interesting that the findings of CEBC’s
(2012) report had not been absorbed by the companies in question.
One of her major findings is that the overwhelming majority of Brazilian
executives interviewed had been sent to China without a minimum prepa-
ration for their new working and living environment; they and their
families arrived unprepared for the culture, the difficulties and the chal-
lenges. She permits the reader to understand that such a ‘policy’ creates
a lose-lose situation, one that is dysfunctional for the companies, the
executives and the families involved (Silva, 2020).
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 11

Over recent years, a considerable number of books have been published

by journalists who have worked in China. Some treat numerous curiosi-
ties, be they critically, seen as exotic or as great achievements, and the
format used often seems to constitute a contemporary version of the jour-
nalistic perspectives adopted by those that preceded them: Henfil (1980),
Tabajara de Oliveira (1934) and indeed Salvador de Mendonça (1879).
Even with all of this work, there are large gaps in our knowledge about
interactions between Brazilians and Chinese in China.
The material presented in this book, as reflected in its title, concen-
trates on how China is changing Brazil. In this chapter, I shall do
something different, and I shall examine the lives, motivations and
perceptions of a small group of Brazilians who work in China and who I
interviewed as a part of a particular wider research project.
The project is one of three that I have been conducting from my base
at Unicamp; I call it the “Sociology of Brazil – China relations.”3 In it, I
examine the processes through which social bonds are formed and social
life and relations between people are managed as interrelations are built
up, especially bi-laterally. I recall Piotr Stompka who was mentioned at
the beginning of this chapter, “it is appropriate to treat the macro theme
of globalisation at the micro level of the mundane everyday experiences
of ordinary people. This implies that real sociality resides in those experi-
ences and the relationships they contain.”4 The bulk of the material that
I shall present in the rest of this chapter, published here for the first time,
examines the experiences and relationships of Brazilians as they live their
lives in China.
Between 2011 and 2018, I conducted over 60 interviews with Brazil-
ians who had been living for at least three years in China, and validated

3 This project also has three other foci: (1) comparative sociology, which has led our
team to publish of a total of 6 books, two edited handbooks in English (Dwyer et al.,
2018; Li et al., 2013), a book in Portuguese (Dwyer et al., 2016) all three books were
at least partly published in Chinese (Jiu et al., 2016; Li et al., 2011; Li & Dwyer, 2022).
(2) An examination of issues of communication and dialogue, this project led to the co-
organisation of a special issue of Hermès la revue no. 79 (CNRS, Paris) on the BRICS
countries, edited by: Arifon, O. Dwyer, T. and Liu Chang. (3) Additionally, teaching
activities at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels at Unicamp are carried out,
and we have conducted joint activities with IS-CASS (and, within the BRICS Network
University, with India).
4 https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/about-isa/history-of-isa/isa-past-presidents/list-of-
presidents/piotr-sztompka.
12 T. DWYER

some 50 of them. Initial candidates had responded positively to Facebook

and other social media requests for an in-depth interview, announced as
being made by a sociologist and professor at Unicamp who was studying
China-Brazil relations. Interviewees were chosen to permit the forma-
tion of as broad a view as possible of the multiple activities of Brazilians
engaged in these cities. With two exceptions, interviews were conducted
in Beijing and Shanghai. The universe studied ended up excluding Brazil-
ians who lived in Dongguan and Nantong. Also, soccer, a high-profile
export, was underrepresented as only one person whose career had been
associated with the sport was interviewed. Similarly, fashion modelling was
not contemplated. Brazilian diplomats were excluded from my universe;
their unique careers and social position preclude most of them from
having day-to-day contacts with ordinary Chinese people.
On certain occasions, interviewees would be invited to contact friends
or colleagues for subsequent interviews—a technique known as snow-
ball sampling. Most interviewees were professionally active, their work
covered a variety of areas and sectors, and many were eager to share
their deep reflections and queries based on their experiences in China.
However, long-term students and housewives were also included. My
analysis of the interviews has permitted the composition of a more general
picture of how different groups of Brazilians live and conduct their
day-to-day lives. Many interviewees were quite frank in revealing their
incomprehension of Chinese society, language and culture, but each and
every one of those whose interviews were validated proved to be close
observers of the country and its peoples, and gave valuable clues about
how to live together. All of the validated interviews lasted for over an
hour, and some lasted for much longer. In a number of cases, I would end
up meeting interviewees on later occasions, either through casual social
contacts within the Brazilian community or in pre-arranged contexts.
The material I shall present in this chapter is based on just over 10%
of the validated interviews, with one female and five male musicians. All
say that they work doing what they love, and claim they earn a good
living compared with what they would have earned had they remained
musicians in Brazil. Indeed, with their gains they educate their children
in good schools, travel around China, remit money home, can finance the
construction of a home in Brazil and occasionally bring family members
to China. Each interviewee transmits eyewitness accounts of their new
homeland to Brazilians elsewhere, whether they meet them in China, in
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 13

online contacts or upon occasional visits to home. As a group, these musi-

cians provide a possible work horizon, outside of the traditional musical
markets of North America and Western Europe, thereby contributing to
project Brazil in China (and eventually beyond).

6 The Live Music Market

in China for Foreigners5
An industry source analysed the development of the Chinese industry
thus, “Music and related entertainment in China lives an expansion that
is only its own in the world. From boom to boom and has done so for
quite some time” (Pastukhov, 2022). This market has been generous to
Brazilians who operate at the highest levels in this marketplace.6
“[T]he post-90s [generation] grew up listening to music from all over
the world, and now, they have the purchasing power to drive the demand
for live performances of all shapes and sizes. However, is the industry
ready to supply the new type of concert-goer? We have to keep in mind
that the Chinese music industry as we know it was born about a decade
ago — while most of the traditional markets have more than a hundred
years behind their belt. So, while most concert halls across Europe were
there 30 years ago, in China, the live infrastructure is still just fleshing
out” (Pastukhov, 2022).
In this article, I shall examine the actions of Brazilian musicians at a
lower level, who earn their living essentially by playing music on a day-to-
day basis. Pastukhov (2022) states, “On the other side of this context are
the artists of the smaller scope, that won’t make the headlines of Chinese
newspapers — and thus won’t become a subject of big politics. In that
case, the process of getting a performance permit is a bit more predictable.
Every artist, applying for performance visa will have to submit their set-
list, lyrics, audio-visual show material — virtually every piece of content

5 The important Sino-Brazilian Cooperation “Projeto Tropical China” began

just before the pandemic on January 6th 2020, and brought about a dialogue
between musicians from Brazil and China, lies outside the timeframe of the research
for this chapter. https://portuguese.cri.cn/news/china/407/20200106/403012.html
(consulted 27 June 2022).
6 https://oglobo.globo.com/economia/parceria-brasil-china/musica-brasileira-ganha-
espaco-na-china-24074880 (consulted on 31 March 2022).
14 T. DWYER

that will be performed publicly — to the local Ministry of Culture depart-

ment, and based on that information the officials will either allow or deny
the entry into the country.”
He continues, “In most cases, getting a permit won’t be a problem
for smaller artists — unless the act is particularly political, or the lyrics
frequently reference drug use or other illegal activities. Be aware though,
that the process of getting validation from the Ministry of Culture alone
can take up to 6 weeks, and there still will be some degree of uncertainty,
since no one can guarantee the final ruling” (Pastukhov, 2022). As our
interviewees all work in this segment, and most have been recruited on
the basis of personal indications, they typically arrive in China with a visa
and guaranteed employment; subsequently, they rely on cultural interme-
diaries, who predominantly speak with them in English, to help get them
through bureaucratic hoops, and out of eventual difficulties.

7 Globalisation and Brazilian Musicians

An important early opening at the very top level of the Chinese musical
industry had been provided to Brazilian musicians because of Nelson
Pereira dos Santos’ 1977 film “The Highway of Life” (“Estrada da
Vida”), shown in China in 1983. This led to an invitation being made
by the Chinese government that caught both Brazilian diplomats and
cultural elites unprepared. Milionário and José Rico, known as the
“Brazilian Golden Throats” (in Portuguese “Gargantas de Ouro do
Brasil”), were invited by the Chinese government to do a month-long
tour, “singing to 800 million Chinese.”7
Brazilian musicians can be found all over the world and combine
tradition and enterprise in forging their professional paths, at the same
time as they dialogue with international and local cultures and open
up a crack in music to display our musical culture. The Brazilian musi-
cians interviewed inhabit a part of the world where the musical tradition
completely different to that in which they have been trained and profes-
sionalised. When in China, they are no longer considered exclusively

7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLaAFTdZep8, see also: https://veja.abril.com.

br/cultura/dupla-faz-sucesso-com-shows-de-bossa-nova-em-mandarim/; https://portal.
apexbrasil.com.br/becreative-musica-brasileira-encanta-importadores-chineses/ (consulted
on 31 March 2022).
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 15

“Brazilian musicians” as they may be at home, they’re “Western musi-

cians”—labelled in this way they find themselves called upon to exercise
an ever-widening variety of musical skills. Social psychologist Nisbett
authored the “Geography of Thought,” where he theorises about two
‘ideal types’ of music: monophonic in East Asia and polyphonic in (at least
white) North America and Europe. “Their monophonic music reflected
the Chinese concern with unity. Singers would all sing the same melody
and musical instruments played the same notes at the same time. Not
surprisingly, it was the Greeks who invented polyphonic music, where
different instruments, and different voices, take different parts” (Nisbett,
2003, 7).
Nisbett corroborates what many interviewees repeated, “Western
music” is fundamentally different to “Chinese music.” The rise of interest
in these musicians has reflected a growing demand for “Western’ music,”
and especially for live music. Depending on circumstances, playing
arrangements may follow traditional and/or contemporary Chinese
notions of space, orientation (Feng Shui), networks, visual harmony, etc.,
which may leave Brazilian performers not comprehending the subjacent
logic behind all that is going on, but performing as requested is simply
seen as a part of the job.
The ‘Sudamérica’ restaurant group has branches in a number of major
cities throughout Asia, hires musicians and dancers, and has proven to be
of great importance for guaranteeing visas and work upon arrival for some
interviewees; other groups in this same industry play similar roles. I also
accompanied some musicians in their daily lives, met members of their
families and, on subsequent visits to the cities of Shanghai and Beijing,
caught up with some by accident as they played in spots that I arrived at
with friends or students, and by socialising with them ended up enriching
my own observations.
After sitting down with the interviewees, normally in a public place
such as a café, less frequently in their home or office, I would explain the
research, guarantee anonymity and discuss the scope and the objectives
of the interview. I typically began by requesting demographic details of
the interviewees. Each interview started with an open-ended question:
“How did you end up in China?” This group of musicians seemed to
have all followed a similar track to China, each was personally indicated by
an already-employed musician. Upon arrival, they would typically build,
together with professional peers, a series of social networks, the first of
16 T. DWYER

which functioned like a ‘big family’ (support groups), and the second
would give them access to a variety of possible work engagements.
Musicians interviewed considered themselves to be victorious in China.
This was similar with other professions interviewed in the study: export
agents involved with the sale of Chinese commodities to Brazil, those
involved with the importation of Brazilian commodities into China, exec-
utives and administrators who work in either Brazilian or international
companies, all appeared to share similar self-evaluations. For many, the
simple fact of being transferred to the country resulted in a promotion.
However, the self-evaluations of some students and of women who had
abandoned their careers to accompany their husbands to China were less
focused on the positive professional consequences of their migration.
The musicians appear to work outside of what Wladimir Pomar (2021)
has called the “socialist market economy.” Professional musicians in their
category, be they in China or in Brazil, sell their labour in the marketplace;
however, in China, all of them say the same thing, and they are subject
to the State’s watchful eye and the uncertainties of bureaucratic controls.
Each has to renew their residence visa twice a year, which introduced
a tension into their lives. At another level—to use a soccer metaphor—
all ‘dribble’ the system, this is normally done with the help of Chinese
agents, sponsors and their business partners. When contracted to play in
places not designated in their legal documents, specialist networks are
resorted to, and a path discovered. However, in China, they also work
within a much more complex system of overlapping networks, subject to
reciprocities (‘one hand washes the other’), intermediations, unexpected
demands and financial rewards as they move around their city and the
country. Some parts of this complex system with which they have to
negotiate may rooted in centuries old traditions (after all, was it not the
Chinese who invented bureaucracy?), which even today follow rituals and
codes influenced by Confucianism and other relevant traditions.
One musician, in his forties, who over the last few years had spent a
greater part of his time teaching than performing, and who complements
his income playing gigs in local European restaurants and parties said,
“China chose me, it was out of my reach. I insist that I am much better
off in China, without any doubt, with respect to the quality of my life, the
sequence of work I obtain, and social status, I would never have achieved
this in Brazil.”
But what exactly do these interviewees do? One could imagine they
play popular Brazilian music (MPB) all over the country, but this is not
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 17

their principal activity, and they are multi-taskers. They record and launch
CDs as do many professional musicians worldwide (in the year of this
interview, 2017, this market had lost profitability in China, even though
releasing CD seems to remain as a part of these musicians ‘career objec-
tives’ (perhaps in a similar manner to which publishing a book remains a
sociologist’s one), one may double up as a producer, another compose, as
performers they might travel all over China to play in concerts, weddings
and in more recent times inaugurations of new real estate projects. Some
teach music (both theory and performance, in English or in Chinese
languages), and many play locally in restaurants and bars. Contrary to
popular belief, they do not only play Latin American music as they do
in Latin-themed bars and restaurants, they also play with other foreign
musicians, and in their time in China, they have become versatile, playing
jazz, European and North American popular music and—every now and
again—bossa nova, samba….
Most of my interviewees said they had learnt to sing some of their
music, including sambas, in Chinese! As one summed up “I sing in
Chinese, Italian, Russian, Spanish and English.” In other words, their
key product is musical, but it relies on multiple musical talents, linguistic
versatility, and geographical and spatial mobility.
How has this phase of their career worked out? The majority replied,
as was said earlier, that they have been able to acquire and maintain a
living standard that it would have been impossible for them to have had
they decided to live off their music in Brazil.
Many understand that “local talents are now developing quickly,” for
those who have been in the country the longest this is something that was
impossible to have imagined upon arrival. A few interviewees believe that
the government’s plan is to eventually not need foreign artists to reply
to the demands of the local tourism industry. Others are more sceptical,
revealing they have been hearing such murmurings for many years.
There is more or less a consensus, around a vision expressed clearly by
one, “China has transformed my life, I am grateful for this.” Such a vison
does not, however, mean that they are passive observers of contemporary
China and its development, all seek to ‘take home lessons’ from what they
see.
When I asked how they explained China to Brazilians, the replies
ran along the line advanced by Nisbett that the Chinese have a totally
different understanding of things to Brazilians. For Felipe, in his mid-
thirties and who over the last 15 years had spent a decade in China “It’s
18 T. DWYER

another universe.” To exemplify another interviewee stated “they use the

two sides of the brain when they speak.”8
They have also learnt that friendships are made on different bases than
in Brazil. “To be a friend here,” for someone to be considered ‘guanxi,’
“in Brazil one doesn’t need to be important, in China, Yes.” But this
particular interviewee’s ideas of ‘guanxi’ are based upon what he has
witnessed in his position in the labour market as he plays in different
bars, “in this sector – which is a new sector in China and one that is
not in sync with the country’s traditions – it’s necessary to have guanxi
to stay open.” I conducted one of my interviews with a musician in a
quiet corner of a bar installed in an old mansion in Shanghai’s French
Concession. The bar, he told me, was the property of the Peoples’ Liber-
ation Army, which rented it out; the tenant used this fact to illustrate his
powerful connections whenever cases occurred that resulted in difficulties
with the local police.
Relations between the people and the State are constantly commented
upon. For another musician, “the Chinese government and the people
remain at a distance from one another… in other countries [I see] the
people pressuring the government, the government here stays in its place
[distant from such matters].” The Chinese people “are very docile, they
are not malicious as is to be found in Latin America” opined a musician
in his early forties and who had spent six years in China.
Many Brazilians talk of China as a ‘surveillance society’ and try to
explain this to friends back home. Interestingly, this concept does not
meet with wide opposition among the interviewed members of the
Brazilian community, principally because it isn’t seen as affecting their
day-to-day lives. “The internet is supervised freedom, but this doesn’t
affect me, what I need to access I can. They [the government] can take
control of everything: what I do, where I work, they try to see if I am a
threat to the system. I’ve never had a problem, I can’t complain.”
Maria Lígia has lived for a decade and a half in China; she declared
things have gotten “serious, they examine your DNA, test to see if you’re
taking drugs, they are always checking up on musicians.” This idea was
corroborated by others. She told of having once been caught working in
a different city without the appropriate papers and was taken to the Police
station. However disagreeable this incident may seem, she pondered “they

8 See https://www.languagemagazine.com/tonal-languages-use-both-sides-of-the-
brain/ (consulted on 31 March 2022).
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 19

treated me really well in the Police station,” but she contrasts this “here
in Shanghai they don’t treat you well…. They even had a Portuguese
translator, they knew they were going to catch me.” As a result “I had
to change my visa to work in a different bar. The law changes all the
time.” But, she added, a game of cat and mouse is constant, involving
the authorities, premises’ owners, agents and musicians. Also, the smaller
the city, the less likely it is that ‘real problems’ will appear, unless the local
leader is a member of a moralist or an anti-Western group in the admin-
istration (which is run by politicians and the police). If in ancient times
local autonomy in China was defined by the distance from the Emperor,
as in the expression, “The mountains are high and the Emperor is far
away.” In these musicians’ view of contemporary China, it seems to be
defined by the distance from Beijing and Shanghai.
Chinese people are seen as very different to Brazilians, “they don’t
know how to hug, nor to touch each other.” His next sentence suggests
a preference “the children of Chinese-Brazilians want to go to Brazil,
they like it there.” But interviewees always pay attention to the problems
that exist in Brazil. They frequently comment on China and especially
on its lack of criminality and interpersonal violence, a fact which attracts
attention and comparisons. “I didn’t live in peace in Brazil” says the Maria
Lígia. The Chinese people, she adds, believe that “impunity generates
delinquency.”
Such an idea dates back at least to the Qin Dynasty (221–207 BC)
which established the country’s first centralised Chinese empire. Qin offi-
cials had written a legal code, to protect the weak from the strong. Called
‘Legalists’ they defended harsh punishments for legal violations in order
to combat social breakdown, as manifested in crime and disorder.
The musicians debate public safety and its relation to freedom. Given
the levels of interpersonal violence in Brazil and social peace experienced
in China, a question that is asked by all is thus resumed: “[T]o what point
is freedom viable [as a concept] for a country like Brazil?”
Interviewees also analyse the speed of Chinese economic and urban
development, and how this is leading to a widening gap between our two
countries. “Why not take the system of government used here and put it
in place in Brazil?” Such a simplistic vision is common among Brazilian
interviewees in many professions.
In countries within China’s orbit, including Brazil, ‘Chinese ideas’ and
techniques spread in a myriad of ways, sometimes they have complexly
cosmopolitan origins, such as: investment in transport infrastructure (Qin,
20 T. DWYER

2016), poverty elimination (Dwyer, 2021),9 instant payments [‘pix’ in

Brazil],10 public telephone booths in the shape of big ears (‘orelhões’),11
5G technologies and university studies. We can already see certain Chinese
inventions and the cheapening of manufacturing and commercialisation
costs provide multiple opportunities for people to transform their actions;
this is perhaps the most visible and strongly supported Chinese contri-
bution to changing Brazilian consumption patterns and living standards,
especially for poorer Brazilians.
An interviewee, whose job led her to conduct consumer-oriented
public opinion polling market research in China, told of a chance meeting
in the elevator of her Shanghai home, with a Chinese man who knew
Brazil; he summed our country up with three characteristics: “Blue
sky, happy and creative people.” One musician opined vaingloriously,
“Brazilians are creative and could conquer the world.”
There are many different diagnoses made of Chinese society and its
functioning, and on numerous issues, a degree of consensus is to be
found among interviewees. A musician in his late 40 s, who had lived
5 years in China, said, “They have a strange way of making things work.
Laws don’t exist and there’s a hierarchy here that… [persists] indepen-
dently of our intention to change it…. you don’t question hierarchy.”
He points out that inequality will perpetuate itself for a long time.
Another interviewee notes that there is a hierarchy for foreigners: “blacks,
Latins and Asians each do different jobs.” In China, different races, he
added, are seen as though they are different species. Another musician,
of mixed-race descendency as many of his peers, whose child was born
and brought up in China, when discussing such questions, said, “In two
decades I’ve never had a problem, I can’t complain.” Then, he launches
a common philosophical/explicative argument developed by numerous
Brazilian interviewees, “The difficulty of China is to administer so many
people. Compare this with Brazil where we can’t even agree on a common
idea” [for the country]. Another opined, “we’re a baby compared with

9 “Instant payments are credit transfers that make funds available in a payee’s account
within ten seconds of a payment order being made.” https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/
integration/retail/instant_payments/html/index.en.htmlThe system developed by Brazil’s
Central Bank—pix—was inspired by China’s system.
10 How 5 countries adopted instant payments. https://dock.tech/en/blog/pagame
ntos-instantaneos/ (consulted on May 2022).
11 https://www.orelhao.arq.br/ (consulted on 31 March 2022).
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 21

China” such a notion was shared by both Brazilians and Brazilians of

Chinese or Japanese origin interviewed in my wider study.
There is a genuine feeling that the Chinese government works for its
people. This is especially underlined by those interviewees who sponta-
neously contrast the two countries. “The government puts the country
out in front.” This is seen as a two-sided coin by a musician who has been
nearly two decades in China, “The Chinese people are controlled by the
government. The government does many things for the people…. Does
things that are needed: trains, highways, infrastructure.” Indeed, among
interviewees parts of “the Chinese model [are] presented as an alterna-
tive to the Western model which defines itself as universally applicable”
(Zhang, 2018, 289).
These musicians are generally cultural relativists, while they may infer
Western motives to Chinese practices (e.g. ‘racism’ was just mentioned).
In their working lives, they exhibit patience as they wait for answers to
unfold, and they have learnt to never get angry (they have learnt to avoid,
at all costs, the importance of never losing ‘face’). They observe closely
before talking. Highly talented, they are studious and have a strong work
ethic. A saying attributed to Confucius helps us understand: “Choose
a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
As people who live off their art and as foreigners, they feel respected
and have considerable status. As said before, when confronted with non-
market difficulties in the exercise of their profession, they step back and
trust Chinese intermediaries and relevant actors to come up with solu-
tions. They live constantly with lack of privacy. Most importantly, they
perceive they will never fully understand what is going on. Humility,
being relaxed about differences, work and success appear to go hand
in hand.
Most of my interviewees, spend or in the past had regularly spent, short
periods moving around the country, have visited key cities in China’s
immense interiors and along the coast. They are also semi-public people,
after a gig they may sit down and talk, mostly to members of the Brazilian
and Latin communities, for Nivaldo “lots of people complain and keep on
smiling.”
A big problem is seen clearly by members of this small community,
“The problem is these Brazilians are not learning to negotiate with
China.” “Brazilians are not good expatriates, they are full of prejudice.”
Or, “the Brazilian needs to be more pragmatic, and less euphoric with
regards China.” For the musicians who constantly negotiate their lives and
22 T. DWYER

careers, and in some weeks do this on a daily basis, most other Brazilians
appear to be in a state of acommunication (Wolton, 2019); they do not
attempt to negotiate; and they live aloof from the society to which they
have migrated. In both their private lifestyle and their work environment,
they have chosen to live an expatriate’s life.
The musicians work in multiple situations and socialise mainly with
fellow expatriates be they musicians or otherwise. However, some inter-
viewees socialise more than others with Chinese people, and they share
with Professor Raupp the impression that, “the people are lively and fun…
[often] it’s difficult to understand, but they adore a laugh.”
Interviewees were also asked what they would do differently it they
were to have their time in China again? The musicians differ from other
Brazilians who mainly lament not having learnt the language or devel-
oped friendships with Chinese people. Some musicians told of those who
had married and had Chinese children. One met his wife while playing
on a long-term contract in Northern China, and he saved up and bought
a house, which led to family approval for his marriage. He explained that
his in-laws are Muslims, but religion does not stop his father-in-law eating
pork and drinking beer! His extended Chinese family now lives in his city
apartment along with his wife and daughter. On several occasions, I saw a
Chinese musician playing with Brazilians, the same person on most occa-
sions. He seemed like a piece of the scenery rather than someone with a
vocation for music. Some Brazilian musicians appear to be close to their
agents. But, let me warn the reader that these are just passing impres-
sions, they are not the product of in-depth sociological research necessary,
complete immersion in Shanghai’s and Beijing’s Brazilian communities
for months on end.
A more robust observation was that in Shanghai and Beijing social-
ising typically occurs with Latins or more specifically Brazilians. Some
may hang out occasionally with Europeans and have a preference for
members of the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking communities. Inter-
viewees typically did not talk of socialising with Africans (not even
Portuguese-speaking Africans), and their main contacts with North Amer-
icans appear to have been with non-musicians. Those who had lived in
smaller and less cosmopolitan cities reported having greater social inter-
action with Chinese people, other foreigners, and in such cases lived
physically isolated from other Brazilians.
Less so than any other professional group interviewed, the musi-
cians do not universally regret their lack of language skills. There is an
 BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE CHINA: MUSICIANS’ … 23

old English saying about this—that “necessity is the mother of inven-

tion”—most have had to develop either a working-level knowledge of
the language (as few as 300–500 Chinese characters), and/or work with
cultural intermediaries who construct a ‘bamboo bridge’ for expatriates;
they provide technical and linguistic support, represent the musician in
negotiations and make sure they keep out of trouble, and the smartphone
is their work instrument and office. Chinese cultural intermediaries typi-
cally speak English and serve as fire-fighters in a fast-moving and liquid
society (Bauman) as well as the largest single nation in the world based on
what appears to outsiders to be a highly uniform Han society, anchored
in millenarian traditions and which combine to shape day-to-day life.
As for the agents, they negotiate both gigs and the bureaucracy on the
musicians’ behalf. In other words, they serve as interfaces.

8 Policy Recommendations
Given the lack of knowledge in Brazil about China (and the economic
and political importance for Brazil of the world’s most populous conti-
nent—Asia), it is necessary for all levels of the education system and in all
disciplines—from mathematics to world history to modern languages, to
incorporate reference to Chinese and Asian thought, history and accom-
plishments. Such learning will permit Brazil to develop a general view
of the continent based on widespread public knowledge and familiarity,
rather than ignorance and exoticism as at present.
We live under the threat of the ‘clash of civilisations’ (Huntington,
2011). It is necessary to avoid war. To do this, Brazilians must keep
options open, get to know the other, trade with the other and develop
a public understanding of how we can avoid being drawn into a cultural
conflict that pits the East against the West, a conflict that is not of our
own making.
One of the major aims of the BRICS. Network University (BRICS-
NU), expressed in the MOU that led to its foundation, is the formation
of what I have called a generation of ‘cultural intermediaries’ of “highly
qualified and motivated professionals” who are capable of interacting
across cultures “of combining traditional knowledge with science and
contemporary technologies.”12 To do this, it is necessary to develop the

12 https://we.hse.ru/data/2017/09/10/1172330598/MoU_SU_BRICS.pdf
(consulted on 22 May 2022).
24 T. DWYER

idea and the profession of cultural intermediaries, who are capable of

explaining to and influencing the Brazilian press, and explaining to the
public that, just because people are different, this does not mean that
Brazil should side with the West as it (re)affirms its right to punish or
to destroy the other. But Brazil is a neo-Western country and cannot
abandon its cultural roots, nor its heritage and position in the world.
Teitelbaum (2020) in “War for Eternity” details of a meeting in the
US State Department, at which Olavo de Carvalho—a lackey of Steve
Bannon and close to Brazil’s (at the time) future president Bolsonaro—
was encouraged to undermine the BRICS in order to damage Brazil’s
main trading partner, China. As of 2017, the Brazilian Ministry of Educa-
tion (MEC/CAPES) prematurely contributed to the achievement of this
objective in the field of higher education by withdrawing support from
the BRICS Network University (a move it never announced publicly).
In any future minimally patriotic government, such a move will be
reverted, and the original spirit of BRICS-NU preserved, but its admin-
istrative project will require reformulation, and a model of financing will
need to be built. By then BRICS will probably be very different from
today. I believe that one of the reasons for the relative success of the
BRICS is that there are only five countries, this limits the complexi-
ties of debates, and speeds up processes—and just the BRICS represent
over 40% of the world’s population. But incorporating more nations into
constructive dialogue with BRICS to resolve mankind’s greatest problems
is essential.
Last but not least, a question raised a decade and a half ago repeats
itself, what has been learnt since it was raised, and what still needs to be
done? Can social science research be relevant to relevant policy develop-
ment? “We, from our side, need to define what our game is. It’s possible
to play with the Chinese, but if they are the only ones with strategic
objectives and know what they are looking for, with this game we won’t
do very well…. In the mid-term it depends on our capacity to formulate
our own proposals and implement them” (Cardoso, 2006, pp. 653–634).

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 Traces of Chinese Culture in the Roots
of Brazil

André Bueno

1 Introduction
The beauty of Brazilian baroque art is everywhere in the streets of
the cities of Ouro Preto, Sabará or Diamantina, in the state of Minas
Gerais. It is an art inherited from the time when Brazil was a colony
of Portugal, as evidenced by the architecture of houses and churches,
their decoration and ornaments. Great anonymous artists were part of the
Brazilian Baroque: slaves, foreigners and humble artisans, but not only
them, worked to create masterpieces of art. They can be compared to
the most beautiful works in Europe, but they carry the traits of a nascent
Brazilian identity (Bazin, 1983). For most visitors, some important details
go ignored in these cities, and it is in the details that the secrets hide.
As a phrase commonly attributed to Confucius and common in
Chinese popular imagination goes, ‘Sage is the one who makes the
obvious evident to all’. The same is true for those who travel through
these cities and recognize the traces of Chinese art in monuments and
churches. There are thousands of high-tiled roofs, just like the tradi-
tional Chinese house Hutong; murals with Chinese landscapes painted

A. Bueno (B)
University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
e-mail: andre.bueno@uerj.br

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
M. H. Ueta et al. (eds.), How China is Transforming Brazil,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3102-6_2
28 A. BUENO

inside the churches; doors with traditional motifs and walls decorated
with dragons and phoenixes. A ‘dragon-alligator’ shaped lamp in the
church of Pilar in Ouro Preto shows the inventiveness of the crossing
of cultures; all these elements are marks of a Chinese presence—or of
Chinese inspiration—that permeate the existence of these cities.
When one is trained to detect these particularities, the phenomenon
reveals itself also in some of the oldest cities in Brazil: in Paraty (in
the state of Rio de Janeiro) or Salvador (Bahia), where these marks
are obvious. In the Museu da Ordem Terceira do Carmo, in the city
of Cachoeira (also in Bahia), there is an unprecedented group of seven
statues of Jesus Christ, represented in all of them as Chinese.
Who were these anonymous artists? Were they Chinese, or was it
merely a ‘Chinesice’, a copy of Chinese motifs, like the Chinoiserie fashion
that existed in the eighteenth century? And if they were just copies, who
taught Brazilian artists to make them? This work goes on until today, and
the rediscovery of these ancient Chinese signals is recent (Longobardi,
2011; Torelly, 2019). But we are still scratching the surface of a much
deeper question: how much has Chinese culture influenced Brazil? And
why can’t we recognize Chinese traits in our cultural roots? In this essay, I
will discuss how Chinese culture has contributed to Brazilian culture and
society since colonial times. I will also show how this topic was studied
by Brazilian intellectuals, the problems and views on how the Chinese
presence was historically perceived.

2 Colonial Brazil (Before 1822)

Brazil has a long history of relationship with Chinese culture. At the
time of the Portuguese empire, the country was already part of a
world in motion, where persons, things and ideas traveled from one
side to the other. Portuguese, Brazilians, Indians, Chinese and Africans
moved through the colonies, exchanging culture and customs. As for the
Chinese, specifically,

More numerous than is generally believed are the references to Chinese

articles in Brazil, in documentation and chronicles, mainly from the 18th
and early 19th centuries. Tea, medicines (Chinese root, rhubarb, etc.),
fabrics of various qualities (silks in general, Nanjing silk, handkerchiefs,
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 SNAKE TRIES TO MARRY SQUIRREL’S
DAUGHTERS

CHARACTERS

Djáudjau Flying Squirrel Tcoóks Crane

Gäk Crow Tusasás Joker (Skunk)
Gapni Louse Wálwilégas Butterfly
Juljulcus Cricket Wámanik Bull Snake
Kāhkaas Stork Weketas Frog (small, green)
Kai Rabbit Wekwek Magpie
Káwhas Blackbird Wískäk Cedar-bird
Kékina Lizard Wisnik Garter Snake
Kískina Beetle Wûlkûtska Marten (black)
Leméis Thunder Wus Fox
Lóluk Fire

Wámanik lived at Wiwĕnsi, in a hollow between two mountains.

There was a creek near the place, with lots of fish in it. Wámanik
caught fish and ate them. That was the way he lived.

East of Wiwĕnsi lived a great hunter who had four children, three
daughters and a son. This man and his son each had a song that
they sang while they were hunting.

Wámanik was a good hunter, too. One day, he went, with two other
men, to hunt deer. When he was on the south side of a mountain
looking for tracks, he heard a man singing. He thought: “It must be a
beautiful man who has that nice song. This is the first time I have
heard any one sing on this mountain. I would like to see that man,
but maybe I’d scare him.” He went up a little higher; he looked
around everywhere, then waited. At last he saw a young man
coming along the trail with a deer on his back. He passed near
where Wámanik was hidden in the grass, but Wámanik didn’t see his
face. He ran ahead to get where he could turn and look back at the
man, but even then he couldn’t see his face. [229]

The young man thought: “I feel scared, as if somebody were looking

at me. I never felt this way before.”

When Wámanik got back to his party, each man had killed a deer;
and they were roasting meat. They asked: “Didn’t you find a deer?”

“No,” said Wámanik, “I didn’t see a track.”

Just then the men saw Tusasás coming along with a fawn. They
said: “There is the young man who always talks smart.”

Tusasás came up and threw the fawn on the ground. “Here is meat,”
said he. “Cook it for yourselves.” He felt proud.

Wámanik said: “Go home and get something cooked for us.”
(Wámanik was chief).

When they started for home, Wámanik asked Wisnik, one of his kin,
to go with him by another trail; then he asked: “Have you ever seen,
on the mountain, a young man who sings all the time he is hunting?”

“I have seen him a good many times,” said Wisnik. “It is strange you
have never seen him; you often travel around near where he lives.
His father is old man Djáudjau. He belongs to this mountain; he has
lots of power. The young man has three sisters, nice-looking girls.”

“I have never seen him,” said Wámanik, “but his song is nice; I like it.
You must go and get those girls for me.”
“They wouldn’t like such a big man as you are,” said Wisnik.

“I can turn to a small man, if I want to.”

“Maybe they have men,” said Wisnik.

“We will go and find out,” said Wámanik. “I must have those girls.”

“You stay at home,” said Wisnik, “and I will go. Maybe you would
frighten them.”

Wisnik always sang as he traveled. On the road to the old man’s

house he sang all the time, sang loud.

When the second sister went to the spring for water, she heard some
one singing, far off; when she got back to the house, she said:
“Some one on the mountain is singing. I like the song: it sounds
nice.” The eldest sister said: “Maybe the [230]chief of the mountain is
out hunting. Wámanik always sings when he is tracking deer.”

They looked toward the mountain and listened. Soon they saw
Wisnik coming. He had a bow and arrows. He was playing on the
bowstring and singing.

The youngest sister always worked, dug roots and helped her
mother. The two older sisters were lazy; they sat around, they
wouldn’t work. Their hair touched the ground; they wore bead-
covered dresses, and white caps made of deer fat.

When old Djáudjau saw Wisnik, he asked: “Where did you come
from?”

“From home,” said Wisnik.

Djáudjau could always talk with people’s thoughts without their
knowing it, and right away he knew why Wisnik had come. Old
woman Djáudjau got the young man something to eat.

The eldest sister said: “I am hungry. I am going to get something to

eat.”

The second sister said: “I am hungry, too,” and they started off.

Their food was the inside bark of pine trees. Their mother had told
them to always begin at the bottom of the tree and work up, for if
they began at the top the bark would fall, and kill them.

While the girls were gone, old woman Djáudjau said to Wisnik: “You
have never been here before, and I have never seen you traveling
around.”

“I am on the mountains all the time,” said Wisnik. “I often see you. I
came here because my chief sent me. He wants to know what you
think about your daughters; he wants to marry them.”

Old man Djáudjau said: “My son has gone somewhere; he takes
care of those girls.” In his heart he was afraid of Wisnik. “My son
wants to get good men for his sisters. He doesn’t want them to be
abused. You must stay till he comes; then he will tell you what he
thinks.”

At midday the young man came with a large deer on his [231]back.
He was frightened when he saw Wisnik. Wisnik looked at him hard;
he thought he was nice.

Old Djáudjau said to his son’s mind: “What do you think about it?
That chief over in Wiwĕnsi wants your sisters.” The young man was
so frightened that he didn’t know what to do. The old woman went
outside and cried. Everybody knew that Wámanik was a bad man
when he got mad, and that he got mad easily. The young man
thought: “I sha’n’t live long if Wámanik marries my sisters.”

Old man Djáudjau said: “I don’t know how Wámanik found out about
us. I am sorry he wants my daughters. It is easy for him to get mad.
He kills a great many people. I don’t care for myself, but I am afraid
something will happen to my son.”

When Djáudjau’s daughters came home and saw their mother

crying, they asked: “What are you crying about?”

She told them, and said: “My daughters, you must say something.
Your brother never harms anybody. All he knows is how to be happy.
If you don’t marry Wámanik, trouble will come to us.”

“Why doesn’t Wámanik marry a woman of his own people, one that
lives in the ground?” asked the eldest sister. “We are not of his
people; we wouldn’t be happy in his house.” Then she began to
make fun of Wisnik.

When Wisnik got home, he said: “Those girls won’t marry you. They
say they can’t live with our people. They told me to ask you why you
didn’t marry a woman of your own kind. They are afraid of you; you
get mad so easily.”

“Those girls needn’t be so proud,” said Wámanik. “I was only trying

them; I don’t want to marry them.”

The next day Wámanik and Wisnik went to hunt for deer. They killed
one and stopped at the foot of the mountain to roast some of the
meat. Wisnik wanted to go home, but Wámanik said: “We will camp
and stay here all night.”

The next morning young man Djáudjau went to hunt. He didn’t kill
anything; he couldn’t even find a track. Wámanik and Wisnik stayed
in their camp for five days. Wisnik was singing all the time, but
Djáudjau didn’t hear him. After [232]five days Wámanik sent Wisnik
home; he said: “You needn’t come again; I am going to stay here for
ten days and hunt deer.”

“Why do you do that?” asked Wisnik. “Old Djáudjau said you had no
home; that you made it anywhere. You had better come back with
me.” Wámanik wouldn’t go and he wouldn’t listen to anything Wisnik
said.

The young man hunted deer for five days, but couldn’t find even a
track. Then he said to his father: “I can’t call deer; they don’t come
when I sing. What can I do to get them?”

The old man heated rocks and had his son steam himself; then he
gave him some of the sweet-smelling stuff that comes out of the
corners of a deer’s eyes, and said: “Swallow this; if you are going to
kill a deer the smell of this stuff will come out of your mouth.” No
smell came from the young man’s mouth, but he went to hunt. He
tried to sing, but Wámanik drew his song from him; he couldn’t sing
any longer. He went home and lay down.

His mother asked: “What is the matter?”

“I feel as if I couldn’t walk any longer. I feel as if I had to fly.”

They steamed him again, and gave him sweet roots to eat. His
mother said: “If deer are to come to you, the roots will smell out of
your nose.” She held her nose to his, but there was no odor. Then
she said: “My son, I don’t know how you are to be cured.”

“I will try once more,” said the young man. He went out to hunt, but
didn’t see any game. That night he dreamed that he was lying
against something hard, that something heavy lay across his body
and crushed him down on stones. When he told his dream, his
mother cried. To hide his dream she got an old panther-skin, burned
it in the fire, and rubbed his face with the ashes.

Old Djáudjau’s nephew, a little bit of a man, came from the East to
visit his uncle. The girls were glad to see him; their brother was off
trying to find a deer. The little man asked: “How far is it to
Wûlkûtska’s house?” [233]

“It is very far,” said his uncle; “you must stay here to-night.”

When the young man came, he was glad to see his cousin; they
talked a long time. When he went to sleep, he dreamed that the little
man choked him to death, and then went far off on the mountain. He
thought he saw his mother and sisters crying.

The next morning, after the little man had gone, the young man
asked his father to go and show him where he used to hunt when he
was young. They went, but when they got to the place, they didn’t
find any deer.

The young man said: “I feel as if I were dead.” The next morning he
said to his father: “I am going away. I want you to stay at home and
not to feel lonesome in the world. I shall die to-day. I feel as if
somebody had tied me up and was going to kill me.”

He went to Wámanik’s mountain. Wámanik was singing to draw him

there; he couldn’t help going. When the young man got to the
mountain, Wámanik began to stretch. He stretched out far from the
foot of the mountain. Then he stretched around the mountain and
began to crush it. The young man heard a terrible roar. Trees were
breaking, and stones and rocks were cracking. A great storm of wind
and stones came. The young man lay down and tried to hold to the
earth. But Wámanik pressed the mountain still harder. His body
looked like the sun. He kept stretching till his head was right there by
the young man; then he asked: “Are you afraid?”

“No,” said the young man, “I am not afraid of you. I have never done
you any harm. I feel like a little child.”

“I feel badly for you,” said Wámanik, “but I want to punish your
sisters. I want to show them what I can do when I am mad. I caught
you in this way, so I could talk to you.”

That night Wisnik dreamed that he saw the young man’s head and
Wámanik’s head. He was scared. The next morning he started early
and walked till he got to where Wámanik was pressing the mountain,
then he said: “Now I know why you wanted to stay here. You wanted
to kill this man. He [234]is not to blame for what his sisters did.” He
felt sorry for the young man.

“Go home,” said Wámanik. “I don’t want you around here.”

“One of those girls said that if you married them you would kill all of
their family. You are making those words true!” said Wisnik. He was
mad at Wámanik. He pretended to go home, but he went to old man
Djáudjau’s house. The youngest sister was crying. “When did your
brother go away?” asked Wisnik.

“More than two days ago.”

“Wámanik has caught him,” said Wisnik. “He has him on the
mountain and is crushing him. You must make up with that man, or
he will kill you all. He has lots of power.”

“We won’t talk to him or see him,” said the eldest sister.

“Then your brother will die soon. Wámanik has pressed him to the
mountain for two days. He feeds him. He wishes food and drink to be
in his mouth, and right away it is there. He keeps him alive to
torment him as long as he can.”

When the little sister heard this, she ran off to the mountain to find
her brother; she was crying. When she came where he was, she
said: “I want you to tell Wámanik that I will be his wife as soon as I
am old enough.”

“No,” said her brother, “I don’t want you to pay for me; I shall die
soon.”

Wámanik heard what they said and he didn’t like it. “I won’t have
her,” said he; “she is too young. I want your other sisters.”

Wisnik listened to what Wámanik said; then he told old Djáudjau:

“Your son is alive yet, but his heart is almost dead; it feels flat.
Wámanik wants your daughters.”

“We won’t go,” said the girls. “He has our brother; let him keep him.
We won’t change our minds.” They laughed at their mother because
she cried all the time.

Wisnik went back to Wámanik, and said: “No matter what you do,
those girls won’t have you; they hate you worse than ever.” [235]

“Go home and stay there,” said Wámanik. “I know what I will do.”

“You will kill that man for nothing,” thought Wisnik, but he didn’t say
anything, he went home.

Wámanik said to the young man, “I won’t take your little sister. I don’t
want her; I want your two older sisters, but I will let you get up and
go home.”
Wámanik drew himself in, loosened the young man, and let him go
home; then he went home himself. The girls laughed and were glad.
They thought that Wámanik hadn’t much power. They didn’t feel
afraid of him; they talked about him and made fun of him.

Wámanik stayed at home and laughed and sang. He didn’t talk

about the girls, but he had made up his mind that when seed time
came he would get them.

When seeds were ripe, the sisters went, each day, off toward the
lake, to gather them. Then Wámanik sent Wisnik to tell Wus he
wanted to see him. When the old man came, Wámanik said: “I want
you to go to Djáudjau’s house and get his two oldest girls for me. I
don’t want the little one. Tell the old man I shan’t ask for those girls
again.”

In the evening Wus got to Djáudjau’s house. The old man asked:
“What do you want? Why do you come here?”

“The chief sent me to say that he must have your two daughters. If
you don’t send them to him, he will get mad and kill all of your
children.”

“I like Wámanik,” said the old man. “He let my son live. I am glad, for
he is all the boy I have.” Then he shook the girls, and woke them up.

“Come and talk to this man,” said he. “Wámanik is mad. He let your
brother live, but if you don’t go to him he will kill us all. You must say
right away what you will do. This man won’t wait long; he wants to go
back. You were not made to live single, you didn’t come up from the
earth.”

The eldest sister pushed her father away, and said: “Go off and
leave us alone; we want to sleep.”
The brother said: “Don’t talk to them. Don’t try to make them go to
Wámanik, if they hate him. He is just as good as [236]any man. He
has a clean skin, and it is bright and beautiful; I like him.” Then he
said to Wus: “Tell Wámanik that I have done what I could for him. If
he wants to kill me, he can. I am not afraid to die, but I can’t make
these girls go to him. If he wants them, he must come and talk to
them himself.”

Wus said to the girls: “You must do as I tell you; I love everybody in
this world. I love you, but no one can save you from that man if you
make him mad.” Wus talked all night, talked nice, but the girls didn’t
listen to him. At daylight he went back to Wámanik.

While Wus was gone, Wámanik made two flutes with many holes in
them. When he saw Wus coming, he went to meet him. He asked:
“What did they say? Are they coming?”

“I wouldn’t walk so slowly,” said Wus, “if they had said they would
come. The father and brother are willing, but those girls hate you.”

“I wonder why they hate me. I can be a man. See.”

He pulled off two blankets and became a nice-looking man.

“I am a man. I shall never stay old; each year I shall be young again.
They will grow old and die, but I shall always be young.” He stuck his
flutes up in the ground and hung on them the blankets he had taken
off.

Wus said in his heart: “He is awful mad. It is too bad to kill such nice-
looking girls. I am sorry for them.”

The girls grew sleepy; they wanted to sleep all the time. Old
Djáudjau said to them: “You haven’t done as your brother asked you
to. Now trouble is coming to us. Go off and sleep in the bushes. Stay
by yourselves.”

When the girls were asleep, Wus made lots of Wámanik’s kin and
hung them on the bushes where the girls were sleeping. He had
power and he did this by wishing hard. The eldest sister dreamed of
snakes; when she woke up and saw them, she screamed.

Her brother called out: “Why don’t you keep still? What do you make
such a noise for? You don’t let us sleep. If dreams frighten you, go
off into the woods and jump around [237]and scream. You have had
your own way; now when trouble comes you must show us what you
can do.”

Every time the sisters fell asleep, they dreamed of snakes, and when
they woke up there were snakes all around them. They were terribly
scared.

The next morning the young man said to his father: “I want to go and
see my cousin, Wûlkûtska. I don’t want to stay where my sisters are.
I don’t like them any longer.”

“I will go, too,” said the old man. And they started.

The younger of the two sisters asked: “Where have my father and
brother gone?”

“They have gone far off,” said the mother. “They don’t like to be here.
You scream and keep them awake nights, and you won’t do as they
say. They know that trouble is coming.”

Now from the different villages, people were moving toward the lava
bed country. There was to be a great council. Word had gone out
that a new people was coming, that the present people were to be
turned to other things. The council was called to give the present
people a chance to decide what they would be, where they would
live, and which would be the nicest-looking.

Old Djáudjau and his son went to the council. Wámanik was there,
and Wisnik, and Wus, and Wálwilégas and Wekwek, and Weketas,
and Wískäk and Gapni, and Gäk, and Kískina and Káwhas, and
Tcoóks, and Kāhkaas and Kai, and Kékina, and Lóluk, and Leméis,
and Juljulcus. All the people in the world were at that council.

The two Djáudjau girls were there. Their brother wouldn’t let the little
sister be with them, so they wandered around alone.

The people talked about how every one would be, about who should
be chosen to be the nicest-looking, and if there was any one among
them powerful enough to turn to something that would never get old,
that would live after they were all dead. As they looked around, they
said: “Those Djáudjau sisters are nice-looking, but they are pale;
they look sick.”

Wûlkûtska’s daughter said: “It is that man over there, the man with
such a bright blanket, that makes them look [238]that way. He is mad
because they won’t marry him.” The different people told what they
wanted to do. Lok said: “I will live in the mountains. I will raise
children and have many kin.”

Wískäk said: “I and my kin will be birds; we will stay a little while in
one place and then go to another. We will never harm anybody.”

Some said: “When we change, we will go east to where the sun

comes up.” Others said: “This is our country; we will stay around
here.” When the council was over all the people went home.

Djáudjau’s daughters were scared. They felt sick, felt that Wámanik
was killing them. They told their father to send word to the chief that
they would go to him. The old man sent Kékina to tell Wámanik.

Wámanik laughed, and said: “Didn’t I tell you that I wouldn’t let them
go a second time? I don’t want those girls. I am going to kill them;
they won’t be persons much longer.”

Midikdak’s daughter was sorry for the sisters. She cried and said to
them: “I am afraid Wámanik will kill you. He has killed people in this
way before. It’s his way.”

When Kékina came back, he said: “Wámanik doesn’t want your

daughters. He says that he is going to change them; that they will be
people no longer.”

The girls said: “We haven’t much longer to live, anyway. We don’t
care to stay in this world. Even Wámanik won’t live always. He won’t
care so much for his bright skin when he comes to die. He may
change his skin and look young, but he will have to die.” Then they
said to their father: “We are going away. We will live in the woods
and have good things to eat. Wámanik will no longer be a person; he
will not have good things to eat. People will abuse him, and he will
live under rocks and in little stony hills.”

The girls changed to flying squirrels and went toward the east. As
they flew, snakes dropped from their mouths and hearts,—the
snakes that Wámanik had put there. As the snakes fell out, they ran
off in every direction, and that is why there are so many snakes now.
[239]

When the little girl saw her sisters turn into common djáudjaus and
heard their call, she felt sorry for them. She cried, and said: “Let us
go with my sisters.”
The whole family turned to djáudjaus and flew away to the woods.
[240]
[Contents]
 WŎN AND DÛNWA

CHARACTERS

Dûnwa Stone Woman

Tcoóks Crane
Wŏn Elk

An old woman and her granddaughter lived together. When the girl
was grown, the grandmother urged her to get a husband, but she
didn’t want one. The old woman teased till the girl got mad, struck
her with a club, killed her, and said: “Now the crows can eat you!”

The girl took a basket on her back and started off. The body of the
old woman called out: “You won’t get there!”

The girl saw a crow carrying off a piece of her grandmother. She felt
sorry; she thought: “She used to be my grandmother; now black
crows are eating her.”

When the girl got near the place she wanted to go to, the ground
grew soft and she sank in it; the old woman made it so.

Wŏn, the husband of Dûnwa, was on the top of a high mountain. He

saw the girl, and said: “She was coming fast; now she is standing
still. I will go and see what the trouble is.” He found that the ground
had dried up and fastened the girl’s legs down. He thought, “What
shall I do to help her?” That minute there was a noise like a heavy
clap of thunder. Wŏn said to the girl: “That is my wife. She is mad,
but I am going to get you out of the ground.”
He ran to a pile of bones that he had on the mountain, took a leg
bone out of the pile, went back and rubbed the girl’s legs with the
bone; right away the dirt loosened, and she pulled her legs out.

Wŏn said: “Now you are my wife. I will have two wives. Dûnwa won’t
care. You must be careful what you think. If [241]you talk right out
Dûnwa won’t know what you say, but what you think she will know.
She is a great eater; she eats three deer at a time. I am afraid of her.
In the daytime she is like a rock with big eyes, but at night she is a
nice-looking woman.”

Dûnwa knew that her husband and the girl were coming; she kept
striking rocks and making a terrible noise. When they went into the
house, the man thought: “This girl is my wife.”

The rock woman knew what he thought. She was like a pounding
stone, but she could move around and work. She cooked a whole
deer for Wŏn and the girl.

Wŏn said aloud to the girl: “You must eat this meat or she will get
mad.”

The girl thought: “I can’t eat so much.”

Dûnwa jumped up and down and raised a terrible dust.

The man said: “I told you not to think anything about this woman.”
They were both frightened.

When night came, Dûnwa was a woman. The three slept in the
house. Just at daylight Dûnwa was a rock again. She said to Wŏn:
“To-night your new wife must sleep in the bushes; I will sleep in the
house.”
That night Wŏn said aloud to the girl: “Will you stay around here, or
shall we go off to a new place?”

The girl said: “Get ready; we will go away from here. I am afraid of
Dûnwa.”

The next day Dûnwa was busy eating; she didn’t miss Wŏn till
almost night. Then she began to track him. Wŏn and the girl had got
to a big river when they heard her coming a long way off. She was
mad; she made a noise like heavy thunder.

Wŏn was scared. He asked: “What can we do? If she overtakes us

she will kill us. If we could cross the river, maybe we could get away.”

There was a house on the other bank of the river, and near it old
man Tcoóks was fishing.

Wŏn called out: “Uncle, help us across?”

Tcoóks said: “Don’t you see that I have no canoe?” [242]

The man begged so hard that at last Tcoóks lay down and stretched
one of his legs across the river. When Wŏn and the girl were over, he
told them to go into the house; he went back to fish.

Dûnwa came like a great stone ball; she hit rocks and trees.
Sometimes she rolled along on the ground, sometimes she flew
through the air. When she got to the river, she called out: “Old man,
take me across!”

“I have no canoe. How can I take you across?”

“Did you see my husband?”

“I haven’t seen any one.”

“His tracks are here; you put him across. How did you do it?”

Dûnwa scolded and threatened till Tcoóks stretched his leg across
the river. When she came down hard on it, Tcoóks said: “Be careful, I
am not a canoe.” He was mad; he turned his leg and shook her off.
She sprang on again. He turned his leg a second time, and a second
time she sprang on. The third time he shook her off she fell where
the water was deep. Tcoóks drew away his leg and she was
drowned.

Wŏn didn’t go back to his old home; he and the girl stayed with
Tcoóks. [243]