African and Asian Studies Our World Through Our Words: The People and Their Stories Through Our Ancestors’ Voices --Manuscript Draft-- Manuscript Number: Full Title: Our World Through Our Words: The People and Their Stories Through Our Ancestors’ Voices Short Title: Article Type: Special Issue Article: China’s Relations with the Global South Corresponding Author: T. Tu Huynh Jinan University Guangzhou, Guangdong CHINA First Author: Natalia Molebatsi Order of Authors: Natalia Molebatsi T. Tu Huynh Abstract: The article aims to give local texture to people’s, specifically Chinese, mobilities in a South African context. Through a retelling of a grandmother’s stories to her granddaughter, we argue that they offer a vision of the world that Black and Chinese South Africans inhabited during apartheid – they disrupted the world built by the all- white government. During the apartheid period, people were forced to see the world in black and white terms, not to mention powerful and powerless. It is this reality of the past that an ancestor’s oral accounts about how her people met and interacted with people from other shores, who had different stories than hers, are important. In this article, one of the authors recalls and further reimagines these stories about people who came from afar to make their own living in South Africa, cross paths with the locals, and leave their own marks. Keywords: Oral stories, Ancestor, Fafi, Mo-China, Chinese in Africa, South Africa, Apartheid Funding Information: “Chinese Overseas and the Implementation of China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’” project of the 2016 Humanities and Social Sciences Key Research Base under the Ministry of Education (16JJD810006) Not applicable Powered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems Corporation