A Black British content creator living in China has gone viral after posting a video on his social media account of him using chopsticks while eating at a local restaurant. In addition to being impressed by his skills with the eating utensils, viewers were impressed by how fluently he spoke Mandarin, the local language.
In six days, Yinka Ajala’s video has received over 5 million views on Instagram. The video exploded, with mostly positive comments about the expat bonding with others over food.
The clip, which is entirely in Mandarin with English subtitles supplied by Ajala, starts with an older Chinese man walking by as Ajala eats with the sticks from his bowl of rice, and marveling at his skills. The Brit thanked the waiter for his compliment but was shocked when he returned with a woman — bearing a full-faced grin — to see his skills.
Showing off a little, Ajala scoops up a sizable portion of noodles and says, “what’s up?” as he gobbles his food.
“You use chopsticks,” one person says. Another adds, “You’re awesome. You can speak Mandarin!?”
Modestly, the Black man says, “I can,” while smiling but focusing on his meal.
The gentleman says to him, “You use chopsticks incredibly well.”
After, the young man replies, “Thank you” again, the woman asks, “Have you lived here for a long time?”
He then shares that he moved from Great Britain and had been in China for almost five years after moving to what is now the second-most populous country in the world in 2019.
“Then have you settled down here?” the woman asked, replying “Awesome,” when Ajala said that he did.
Once through quizzing him about his life, the woman asked him if he liked the food. The smile on his face confirmed his “yes,” before he could say it.
Ajala’s comment section overflowed with comments that celebrated the cultural exchange.
“I love the fact that he represents our culture in a positive light it goes to show how amazing we are,” one person wrote. Another person replied, “They love you!”
After someone joked that he was about to find a wife, another person took it a step further and added, “This is how we will end hate. To be engaged in other cultures and treat it with love, kindness, and respect. Food looks.” A fourth person said, “This is amazing!!! 5 yrs in a new country and “settled ” and fluent in a foreign language. Lovvvve this entire video.”
In two follow-up videos, Ajala gave a tutorial on how to use chopsticks and addressed some negative comments he received on the post. In one video talked about the overwhelming support he has gotten from people who watch his content, saying he “didn’t expect” his videos to blow so quickly.
“I’m very grateful the majority of the comments that I receive are positive,” Ajala said in part, adding that he likes to reply to people as best as he can.
“But there have been a lot of comments … they don’t make up the majority but they have still been a lot of comments that managed to bring out negative things in my videos,” Ajala continued. “Like, there’s no negativity at all, but somehow people managed to bring out the assumptions that there were tons of racism in there.”
Ajala blasted those comments, saying, “I don’t know where you get these thoughts from,” before adding, “I just prefer … people wouldn’t say these things because you don’t know these people nor have you actually gone out to explore.”
Another Black man living in a foreign land where he is the drastic minority went viral around the same time. However, people took note for a completely different reason.
This man is a medical student in Poland, who made headlines by posting two “Of Course” videos with his friends that highlighted all the ways he is discriminated against in the European country for being of African descent.
He also took to social media to address comments, claiming that people were attacking his video and saying that he should leave the country if he felt he was being treated differently because of his race. The American student told his haters flat out that he would not, specifically because he was there to get an education, noting the cost of an education is too expensive in other places — like America — for him to switch.
Another viral story speaks to the outlandish expense of living in the United States, versus other countries. The young man and his girlfriend in these videos opted to live in a storage unit rather than live on the street or pay the costs of rent in an apartment.
The headline-grabbing story came to a head, when the couple was evicted and had to find lodging elsewhere.
