It's been a long time since I last took such a long-haul flight like this after COVID. This time, I’m heading to Cape Verde to interview a few relatives who moved there many years ago. The entire journey will take 32 hours.
After all, it’s a lesser-known small country in the Atlantic, and probably not many people have heard of it. I’ll post a picture here—it’s located about 570 kilometers off the coast of Africa and was once a Portuguese colony.
Some might ask, why would Chinese people go to a place like this to live and work? If you ask me, I don’t really know either—that’s actually one of the reasons I’m going there. Writing this, I can’t help but feel how incredibly resourceful my relatives are. They’ve made their way everywhere, and you can find fellow townsfolk or relatives in almost every corner of the world. As someone who only studied in Hong Kong, I can’t help but feel a bit outshined (imagine me laughing). Maybe this tendency to wander around, never staying in the place where I grew up, is just one of those talents engraved in my genes.
Among the 560,000 long-term residents in Cape Verde, there are at least about 3,000 Chinese. According to my relatives (that is, my dad’s cousins and some of their other family members), about one-third of them are from Wenzhou. Most come to Cape Verde to do “small businesses.” At first, I thought it was just running restaurants, general stores, foreign trade, or selling Yiwu small commodities—that kind of thing. But later, during an interview with my dad’s cousin, I found out that the local Chinese are involved in much more than that. In fact, those are considered small-scale operations. Some are even engaged in hardware and aluminum alloy processing, as well as more “up-to-date” businesses like new energy vehicles and solar panels.
A few days before our departure, that cousin of my dad’s called us again, hoping we could bring some things for the local Wenzhou community when we go. What exactly did she want us to bring?
Bayberries
Although these Wenzhou folks are incredibly resourceful—able to ship all kinds of dried specialty goods from Wenzhou to Cape Verde, hidden in container layers, and even transport homemade liquor in jars—yangmei is completely out of the question. Any fruit left unrefrigerated for a month at sea would never stay fresh. Besides, there isn’t enough demand to justify the high cost of shipping yangmei all the way from China. So, the vast majority of yangmei is brought back by fellow Wenzhou natives taking turns carrying it by hand.And so, I’ll be flying for 32 hours with yangmei in tow. I have no idea whether they’ll be confiscated by EU customs quarantine in Lisbon—though it’s highly likely. I can only wish these yangmei good luck. :(
June 18, 2025, on the bullet train to Hangzhou Xiaoshan Airport
