Jayde Stedford

I have pictures of myself on the Great Wall, in the Summer Palace and at the Temple of Heaven yet this picture is by far my favourite. We had just seen a Traditional Chinese dance performance at the Confucius Temple when a group of Chinese schoolchildren pointed and ran up to me smiling and laughing. They were so excited to see someone like me and that excitement escalated when I began to speak to them in Mandarin. The children, aged 10-12 years old, had come to Beijing on a school trip from Guangdong province. I have always wanted to go to China and have thought about working there in the future; by talking to these children, and many other people in China, I quickly realised how few black people they seem to encounter. Yet, these children were not scared of me because I was black nor had any negative perception of me; they were just excited to talk to someone who looked very different to them and I thought that was beautiful.