Mark Ndesandjo, a website owner and civic worker, is living quietly in Shenzhen, China, writes Clifford Coonan
CHINA WAS thrilled by the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the US, but one Chinese resident watching his rise with particular keenness was his half-brother Mark Ndesandjo, a website owner and active civic worker in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen for the last six years.
Chinese TV has proudly trumpeted the presence of Obama's half-brother in the city just across the border from Hong Kong, where he runs an internet company, teaches orphans how to play piano and is a keen student of calligraphy.
Local media hails the fact that he is slim, a vegetarian and more than six feet tall. Like his brother, his philanthropic credentials are impeccable, but he keeps a low profile in the international media.
The footage on Chinese TV, which can be seen on YouTube, shows Ndesandjo engaged in the highly complex art of Chinese calligraphy, an interest that is guaranteed to win him friends in a country where skills with a brush and ink are treasured very highly. He has apparently shown his calligraphy to his brother.
Another photograph on a newspaper site shows the Stanford-educated Ndesandjo wearing a baseball cap backwards while taking a photograph, and the resemblance to Obama is amazing.
Media in the US have focused on Barack Obama's half-brother living in Kenya, but Ndesandjo lives a very different life. He is married to a Chinese woman from Henan province. He shares the same father with the president- elect, but carries his mother Ruth Ndesandjo's last name.
An article in the Nanfang Metropolitan Daily from March 2004 quotes Ndesandjo as saying: "Here the children have enough food. What they are lacking is art and music. Music unites humans in a spiritual level. It has a long and deep effect on children. So I decided to teach music here."
According to the Shenzhen TV report, Ndesdandjo welcomed his sibling's election with a widely distributed text message in Chinese which basically hails a new America, a sentiment that most people on the ground in China seem to share.
Although the Bush family is very popular in China, Obama's election was widely applauded, particularly among young Chinese people in the US.
Although Chinese people themselves cannot vote, and residual prejudices against black people can still be found, particularly outside big cities, there was close interest in the American poll and most Chinese said they were very pleased at the result.
Online reactions to the footage of Ndesdandjo teaching orphans to play piano have been overwhelmingly positive.
"Keeping a low profile is a good thing. Obama's half-brother can do this and I think he is a respectable person indeed," wrote one netizen from Jiangsu province, near Shanghai.
The footage has even prompted requests for similar diligence from Chinese people.
"Can our government officials' relatives do volunteer work like this?" wrote a Liangning resident.
"What a good opportunity for him. He could even get a government job. But he did not. He depends on himself and pursues his own dream! What a good man! Please give him some freedom," said a Shanghai webizen.
Ndesandjo is shy of publicity, and efforts to get in touch with him were not successful. Irish-American journalist Thomas Crampton has been tracking him for several months and has a site on his blog (www.thomascrampton.com) devoted to getting more information about him.
"He seems like a really interesting guy. He helps out at the orphanage but is very wary of media coverage. Most of the coverage in the Chinese media comes from before Obama came to global prominence and he seems like a sincere guy," Mr Crampton said.