“The anti-racist struggle is like the rain in Galicia, it soaks you without you realizing it”

The first time writer Antonio Liu Yang (Beijing, China, 1980) heard the hackneyed phrase “you work like a Chinese” he thought of his father. “I think he invented it,” he jokes. The head of the family arrived on the Valencian coast in 1984 and opened one of the first Chinese restaurants in the city in Xàbia (Alicante), which he ran for decades. “He worked a lot. Sometimes he would work 12-hour shifts and say: ‘I only worked half a day today,’” Liu recalls. He came to Spain six years later, in 1990. Although he was not “the only foreigner” in a Xàbia that Liu remembers as “super multicultural,” he was a victim of racial prejudices, which can be not only negative, but also positive. For example, being good at maths because of his origin. “Because of my education in China until I was ten I had a higher level. It’s not that you are born good, it’s that there is an effort behind it.” Guided by his desire to put an end to these practices and to establish links between Chinese and Spanish culture, Liu became an intercultural facilitator, “a kind of consultant and trainer for large companies,” as he himself describes it. He helped to mitigate the cultural shock experienced by Western workers arriving in China.

His work is the focus of the conversation in the tenth episode of LALIGA VS, in which Liu speaks with Senegalese actor and comedian Lamine Thior (Senegal, 1992), co-presenter of the Pódium Podcast podcast There Are No Blacks in Tibet. Thior, who came to Spain at the age of two and grew up in the Cadiz towns of Algeciras and Ubrique, is also familiar with racial prejudices. “People think that I like hip hop, when what I really like is Andy and Lucas, who are the Beatles of the south.”

Liu has involved clubs such as Villarreal CF and Valencia CF to recruit promising Chinese players to their youth teams and has created a mixed team of Chinese and Spanish footballers. In the video podcast, both agree that through football, values ​​can be transmitted to end hatred and promote inclusion. “They are real, what this sport achieves is magic,” says Thior.

Liu is now involved with the SCORE project, a joint initiative by LALIGA and the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration to establish a coalition of European cities with the aim of ending racism through sport. For Liu, this is the ultimate tactic to end this type of hatred. “A friend explained it to me very well: the anti-racist fight is like the rain in Galicia. You go out and you don’t realise it’s raining, but you come home and you’re soaked. So this is what you have to do: an action like SCORE here, another one by LALIGA there…”