"I think there is nothing bad about my daughter marrying a foreign man. Nowadays more Chinese parents have the same idea because China is open to the world and foreigners can be seen everywhere," Wang says.

Zou Qiuqiong, who married a man from Tanzania who was studying at a college in Guangzhou in 2005, recalls how they caught people's eyes when they walked in the street hand-in-hand during their dating days.

They once ran into an embarrassing situation in a restaurant when four drunk Chinese men laughed at her boyfriend and flirted with her, saying: "Why do you choose to date a black guy? Aren't we better than him?"

"I gave them the cold shoulder. I don't care what others say," Zou says. "My husband loves me very much and is a knowledgeable and wise man. I adore him. Love is color blind."

Guangzhou is now home to one of the country's biggest populations of Africans. People are no longer surprised at the sight of a Chinese-African mixed family, but many still hold the same discriminating view about Africans and their mixed-blood children "just because of the darker skin tone", says Zou, a mother of three.

Before sending her own children to kindergarten, Zou says, she told them they just need to "tell other kids with calm and confidence that people in the world have three main skin colors and they have a darker skin because they have an African father and a Chinese mother".

Another challenge for the parents is coping with the high educational expenses for their mixed-blood children who hold a foreign passport.

Huang Danli, who married a Canadian man, frets about the high fee of 8,000 yuan ($1,313) per month that the kindergarten is going to charge for her daughter.

"And we will probably have to give about 100,000 yuan to the primary school in addition to the tuition fees," Huang says. "But I still plan to let my daughter finish her primary education here before we go to Canada. I hope that she can acquire the Chinese language, which will be useful for her future since China is becoming more and more powerful."

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