News — Chinese

A Chinese man who a video showed was being pulled on a trolley by a Zambian in the East African country may be deported if investigations find him “wanting”, authorities say.

A permanent secretary in Zambia’s Ministry of Labor, Chanda Kaziya, told the BBC that government will investigate what was captured on video as well as the issues surrounding the Zambian man pulling his Chinese boss. The video went viral via social media platforms and was condemned by many as “racist”.

The video shows a Chinese man closing what seems to be a storehouse. He then stepped onto the trolley that was pulled by the Zambian now identified as John Zulu. But no farther than a few yards of being pulled by the Zambian, the Chinese man was accosted by two other Zambian men who asked why he was being chauffered.

“You cannot walk? You don’t do this!,” the men can be heard asking the Chinese man several times. They then asked their compatriot to stop giving the ride and walked briskly with Zulu and his boss away from where they had met them.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city, Miles Sampa, announced via a Facebook post that Zulu had been contracted to a new job by the landlord of the Chinese expatriate.

Sampa’s post read: “The good news on carousel saga is that the landlord of the Mall Lamasat Ltd have [sic] offered John Zulu a job with their main premises management [sic] office. He further indicated to possibly terminate the tenancy agreement with the tenant that exhibited racial abuse towards his black employee by getting pulled on a trolley for over six hour [sic].”

China’s interests in Africa over the last decade have translated into many more Chinese people in African countries now more than ever before. Many of them are business owners who do everything from manufacturing to retailing. However, citizens of dozens of African countries have reported abuse from Chinese bosses as well as culture clashes.

A Chinese man who was studying chemistry at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University on a student visa has pleaded guilty to attempted murder after poisoning his former Black roommate’s food and drinks with heavy metal in 2018.

According to WFMZ, the accused, Yukai Yang, entered the guilty plea – one count of attempted murder – on Monday in exchange for the Northampton County District Attorney’s Office to drop other charges in relation to two other cases after he is sentenced.

He was initially charged with attempted murder, reckless endangerment and assault. The 24-year-old faces 6 to 20 years in prison, and also faces deportation to his native China after serving his time as he’s a non-US citizen. His student visa has also been revoked.

Testifying before the court, First Assistant District Attorney Richard Pepper said Yang purchased the poisonous heavy metal, thallium, in March 2018, and then started lacing it in the food and drinks of his roommate, Juwan Royal. The two had reportedly been roommates for four years.

Royal, who testified in 2018, told the court about the “unfathomable pain” he felt and the string of medical conditions he suffered, including nausea, weight loss, headaches and heart palpitations, due to the thallium poisoning, WFMZ reported.

Royal said he initially started feeling a tingling sensation in his arms, hands, feet and legs. He said the tingling sensation aggravated into a “pain that I didn’t think was possible.”

“It was as if someone took a hundred tiny knives, set them on fire and was stabbing my feet,” he told the court.

Between March and May of that year, Royal testified he lost around 20 pounds and could hardly ingest any food, adding that the poisoning even made him afraid to eat. Royal also said the pain in his feet was so “excruciating” he could neither sleep nor climb the stairs and had to even wear a heart monitor for some time as a result of the palpitations.

“It felt as though my body was failing me,” he testified. He was reportedly diagnosed with heavy metal poisoning in April 2018. Though the pain in his feet eventually disappeared, Royal told the court he still feels numbness in his toes, and he is less energetic as compared to his condition prior to the poisoning, WFMZ reported.

Royal said he couldn’t identify what may have caused Yang to poison him. Though he admitted they weren’t the best of friends, he described their relationship as amicable and friendly. Prior to the attempted murder charges being filed against Yang, he was being investigated for ethnic intimation after he allegedly destroyed Royal’s television and also wrote racial slurs on his stuff.

Yang’s sentencing is scheduled for January 21, although subject to change.