By Bill Smith Nov 11, 2009, 2:32 GMT
Beijing - Ding Hui was a shy schoolboy who spent as much time as possible at his home in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou to avoid unwanted attention to his dark skin and prominent features.
Ding's confidence soared as a teenager when he discovered his prowess at volleyball and progressed through local and provincial youth teams.
'When he was a little boy, he seldom went out because he looked different from the other children,' state media quoted his mother, Yu Jianxiu, as saying.
'But after he started playing volleyball, he livened up,' Yu said.
Yet as Ding, now 20, celebrated his selection for the national volleyball team in April, postings on sports websites questioned whether someone with his skin colour was suitable to represent China.
Ding said he was 'disgusted' with the reaction.
In nearby Shanghai, another 20-year-old knows just how he felt. Like Ding, Lou Jing was born to a Chinese mother and a black father.
'When I was growing up, the people around me treated me very nicely,' Lou told the German Press Agency dpa.
But this summer, some Chinese viewers were not so kind after they watched Lou sing her way toward the finals of Shanghai-based Dragon TV's talent show Go! Oriental Angels.
Postings on several websites hailed Lou, who is studying to become a television presenter, as a 'black pearl' and a 'mixed-blood beauty' who was 'more beautiful than a model.'
But other comments called her a 'gorilla' or 'negro' and urged her to 'get out of China.'
'These kind of judgements were stupid,' Lou said. 'There were just too many for me,' she said of the racist comments.
Her mother, who is a single parent, also suffered abuse as state media speculated about Lou's absent father.
'Wrong parents, wrong skin colour, wrong to be on a television show,' one popular internet posting read.
'There are two factors at work here,' said Raymond Zhou, a commentator for the official China Daily newspaper. 'Lou Jing is not a pure-blooded Chinese, and anyone who marries a foreigner is deemed a traitor to his or her race.'
'More relevant, Lou's father is black,' he said to explain the 'cruel lashing' of Lou and her mother.
More controversy was caused when Lou's management company apparently posted a comment in Lou's name saying that her father was African American rather than African.
'My idea about people around me hasn't changed, but I am disappointed with the media, who make up fake stories about me,' Lou said.
She and her mother have started legal action against several publications over reports published after her appearance in the televised singing contest.
'I don't regret participating, but if I had another chance, I would not take part again,' Lou said.
The backlash against Lou and Ding reflects the fact that China is one of the least racially mixed of the world's major nations.
'In the same year that Americans welcome [President Barack] Obama to the White House, we can't even accept this girl with a different skin colour,' writer Hung Huang said on her blog.
Even in relatively cosmopolitan Beijing, locals sometimes openly - but usually without malice - describe black people and sometimes white people as 'monkeys.'
One mixed-race British teacher was given the name Mr Chocolate by children in Beijing until his Chinese colleague asked them to call him Mr Black Teacher instead.
The political climate - in which the ruling Communist Party insists that it has ended all forms of racial discrimination and brought equal prosperity to China's 56 officially designated ethnic groups - allows no serious study of racism.
Many Chinese social scientists, their thought clouded by Communist ideology, see race and nationality as identical.
Han Chinese make up about 92 per cent of China's population of 1.3 billion people, but state propaganda does little to help them understand the country's other 55 ethnic minorities.
Tibetans, Mongolians, Koreans, Kazakhs and the dozens of ethnic minorities from mountainous areas of south-western China all suffer, largely in silence.
Posters displayed on billboards across China show groups of grinning young singers and dancers in their ethnic groups' traditional costumes. The images are meant to represent racial equality and harmony.
But those ideals are still lacking for ethnic minorities and other nationalities. Stereotypes are common. For example, many Chinese claim that all Indians can sing and dance just like Bollywood actors.
In Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, Ding is now known as the 'joker in the squad,' the China Daily quoted Wang Hebing, the head coach of the provincial volleyball team, as saying.
'He was a little shy at first, but he soon became a favourite with the other players,' Wang said.
'He's also a great singer and dancer, and he brings more passion to the game than the other players,' he said.
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