by Yang Dingdu, Wang Hao, Liu Youmin
NAIROBI, June 3 (Xinhua) -- At a copper mine in Zambia, workers are singing. On the streets of Dakar, young people are moving through tai chi. In a kitchen in Dar es Salaam, apprentices are working cleaver and wok.
Singing, dancing, cooking-across the continent, the everyday lives of Africans and Chinese are falling into the same rhythm.
This year marks the China-Africa Year of People-to-People Exchanges. Different countries, different tempos-and yet, across mountains and seas, the same beat.
SONG THAT ROSE FROM MINE
The video, titled "The Song of Chambishi," went viral on the Chinese internet only recently. The voices and footwork of the Zambian miners won over countless users online, and turned the spotlight onto the copper mine itself.
Chambishi was discovered in the late 19th century, and its development was anything but smooth. Production only began to recover and grow after the late 1990s, when the Sino-Zambian joint venture NFC Africa Mining Plc took over its operation and investment.
Xu Laixiang, the company's deputy general manager who wrote both the words and the music, said the idea came to him while preparing for the launch ceremony of a tunnel-boring machine. "I wanted a song that captured a century of Chambishi's history, and that could lift the workers' spirits. I never expected it to take off online," he said. The company, he added, has not only created a large number of local jobs but also helped improve infrastructure and schooling in the surrounding communities.
The chorus echoing through the mine is one small picture of how cultural exchange and practical cooperation between Africa and China move in step. Across the wider continent, melodies that carry a shared feeling are giving more and more young people a stage on which to shine and chase their dreams.
In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, after winning a China-Africa co-produced singing contest called "Sing Africa," a vocalist known as Muluwa used the prize money to open a studio dedicated to nurturing the next generation of musical talent. In the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, a "Dream Show" founded by Chinese residents has, over the years, helped more than 300 young people travel to China for cultural exchange,putting homegrown artists in the spotlight and giving the local creative industry a push.
MARTIAL ART ON WAY TO YOUTH OLYMPICS
Ousmane Sako, head coach of Senegal's national wushu team, can hardly wait for the Dakar Youth Olympic Games to open. Wushu will make its debut as an official Olympic event at the 2026 Games.
A Dakar native, Sako grew up in difficult surroundings, carrying the restlessness and aimlessness of a boy of the streets. He came first to karate, then to tai chi. "Tai chi changed my life," he said.
Day after day of training steadied his body and mind. He worked through one obstacle after another to reach his post as a national-team coach. For now, every ounce of his attention is on preparing his squad for the Youth Olympics. "It won't be an easy contest," he said, "but we're ready for the challenge."
In Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, a young man named Rodrigue Taling has turned the "Bruce Lee dream" he once nursed in a run-down video hall into a martial-arts gym of his own. Wushu, he said, is "an art of cultivating body and mind" that taught him self-control, and he hopes to spread a discipline so steeped in Eastern philosophy that more young Cameroonians can find an inner calm.
In Kigali, the Rwandan capital, the young coach Emile Ndagijimana leads his students through tai chi, one movement at a time. Ndagijimana began training at the age of nine, drawn in at first by kung fu films, but what truly transformed him was the philosophy behind the moves. "My Chinese teacher told me that to master tai chi, you have to find the balance between body and mind in the space between breath and motion," he said. He wants to share his understanding and love of tai chi with more Rwandans, convinced that this Eastern wisdom can heal both body and spirit.
FLAVOR OF CHINA-AFRICA BLEND
In the Chinese kitchen of the Kilimanjaro Institute of Technology and Management in Tanzania, a cleaver strikes the board in a quick, insistent rhythm. Ruth Wahima Seni, a Tanzanian student of hotel management, is practicing slicing potato into threads as fine as hair.
Seni is taking part in a China-Tanzania cooking program launched in January 2026. Each day, Chinese chef Master Wang guides 20 local apprentices, Seni among them. As he sees it, "food is a bridge between people. Once the students understand the culture, they cook with feeling, and the quality of the dishes rises with it."
After grounding in knife work, dough, heat control and seasoning, the young apprentices transform local ingredients--Tanzanian beef, mutton and seafood--into classic Chinese dishes. As trade between Africa and China grows busier, demand for authentic Chinese food keeps climbing, said institute instructor Philbert Haule, and a command of Chinese cooking can open more doors for young job-seekers.
As young Tanzanians cook up the tastes of China, Chinese tables are taking on more and more of the flavors of Africa. From May 1 this year, China extended zero-tariff treatment to all 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic ties. From Rwandan dried chilies to Kenyan avocados, from South African wine to Cameroonian cocoa, ever more African farm produce is making its way, faster than before, into the Chinese market.
A song, a set of moves, a table of food, these resonances across thousands of miles, these vivid moments in the lives of ordinary people, are gathering into an enduring echo between China and Africa.
