The plane landed in Cape Verde around midnight. I have to admit, even though it's much closer to the equator, the climate here is actually more comfortable than in Hong Kong. Around midnight, it was only about 22 degrees Celsius, without any of the intense heat you'd expect in July.
I promised last time to write about the businesses run by the local Chinese community, but the variety is so vast and complex that I'll just share some of my observations. Generally speaking, their business model can be summarized as: sourcing goods from China, then repackaging or processing them locally before selling them in the local market.
Let me give a small example—one of my relatives runs an aluminum alloy processing plant here:
The factory is relatively large, estimated to be at least 300 square meters, combining storage and processing for both glass and aluminum alloy. It mainly involves simple processing of glass and aluminum alloy materials shipped from China. But noticeably, there weren't many mechanical equipment—just some basic cutting tools. When I returned the next morning and saw the local workers processing the glass, it confirmed my initial impression: no CNC cutting tools, just pure manual scoring and breaking. My dad, being an experienced architect, immediately noticed that most of the glass wasn’t tempered. Upon further inquiry, we learned that the scale of the factory isn’t large enough to support tempering equipment, and there isn’t much local demand for tempered glass anyway.
Besides factories, another popular business is general merchandise retail. What’s interesting is that there’s a clear division of labor among the Chinese community: people from Zhejiang mainly sell clothing, while those from Hebei specialize in food products. Almost all these small shops occupy the most central locations in the capital, Praia (somewhat like a mix between Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue and Dongjiaomin Xiang). It’s not hard to guess that these shops primarily serve local customers. I visited a general store run by someone from Wenzhou—the variety of goods was almost unimaginable. A Business Management student would probably say its "market positioning" is unclear, but business isn’t bad. Maybe that’s just how the local preferences are.
Another noteworthy point: among all the businesses I observed in Cape Verde, regardless of size, almost all of them hire local workers. I mean, it seems like an obvious thing to do, but it demonstrates their basic language skills and their trust and recognition of the local people (in a work context). Also, they don’t manage their employees using Chinese management models (e.g., 996). So, in a way, this counts as a degree of integration into the local society.
I’ll stop here for now—if I write any more, I might not have anything left to share later.
Oh, and you asked me what finally happened to the berries...
They fermented on the way and were thrown away at Lisbon Airport.
