Are you looking for a way to stay sane in an environment that has been torn apart by war? Then perhaps what you need is a bubble tea.
That is the philosophy guiding Brother Dong, a Chinese-German volunteer in Ukraine. The 52-year-old former officer in China’s People’s Armed Police drives once a month from his home in Frankfurt to collect a haul of tapioca pearls from a warehouse in Berlin. From there he drives across Poland to reach Ukraine.
Brother Dong, who asked that the Guardian use his nickname for privacy reasons, is one of a small handful of Chinese volunteers in Ukraine. For him, the tapioca pearls are an opportunity to show his support for a country under siege by China’s biggest ally.
For many other Chinese people in Ukraine, support for Kyiv comes from a distrust of authoritarianism. With no way of expressing their political beliefs in China, Ukraine has become a forum in which some Chinese feel they can play a more active role in the global struggle between democracy and dictatorship. But their support comes at a price: harassment from Beijing, for themselves and their families.
‘We have courage in our blood’
Brother Dong opened the first of his bubble tea shops in Odesa in November 2022, crowdfunding more than $12,000, mostly from the Chinese diaspora, to start his business. Now he runs four “Maomi cafes” in different Ukrainian cities, stocking a range of Asian drinks and snacks. The shops are run on a for-profit basis, although he says he is yet to make any money from them.
Bubble tea is the unofficial national drink of Taiwan, although it is now popular across China and other parts of east Asia. It comes in a dizzying array of flavours, but the most typical way of drinking it is as a sweetened milky tea containing chewy tapioca “bubbles” made from cassava root.
The walls of Maomi are adorned with pictures of Chinese and Taiwanese soldiers – all volunteers – killed in the fight against the Russian invasion. “We do it so they are not forgotten,” said Brother Dong on a video call from Frankfurt. He wants to remind the youths who come for bubble tea: “We, the Chinese, the Taiwanese, have courage in our blood, and we will help you.”
Each round trip to collect the pearls can be up to 5,000km, Brother Dong estimates. As well as bubble tea ingredients, Brother Dong carries other supplies that might be useful in Ukraine, especially in the depths of its frigid winter: blankets, gloves, portable heaters. After crossing the border into the western city of Lviv, Brother Dong and a small team of about 10 volunteers, known as the “Odesa Fighting Cats”, distribute the goods across the country, including to four bubble tea shops that Brother Dong has opened since the start of the Russian invasion. The shops are “not a business plan”, he wrote on Instagram recently, but a “belief in leaving a little light in the dark”.
Brother Dong with the employees of the Maomi cafe in Lviv. Photograph: Katya Moskalyuk/The Guardian
Brother Dong is one of a growing band of Chinese volunteers who are lending their support to Ukraine, even as the international community grows increasingly alarmed by Beijing’s support for Moscow in the war effort.
China claims to be neutral in the conflict and has called for peace, but its trade with Russia has soared since the start of the invasion in February 2022, and there is mounting concern about Beijing’s support for Moscow’s military operations, particularly through the export of parts needed to make weapons, such as ball-bearings and fibre-optic cables.
In Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, such as Luhansk, there are reports of Chinese businesses opening, such as a Chinese-run school for teaching students Russian. In July, Ukraine arrested a Chinese father and son who were suspected of spying on Kyiv’s Neptune cruise missile programme.
Those arrests led to Chinese people being treated with more suspicion in Ukraine, volunteers say. Some have been subjected to lengthy checks at the border. But people like Brother Dong and the artist Du Yinghong are determined to win over any doubts the Ukrainian people may have.
In October, Du, who left China for Thailand in 2022, travelled to Ukraine “to use my body and my works to support Ukraine”. Painted head to toe in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag, he is travelling around the country to meet local people and show his support for those affected by the war. He also has plans to open an art gallery near Kyiv. “I want to interact with them. In this country, everyone has a slogan that boosts their national spirit: Slava Ukraini, meaning glory to Ukraine. So whenever you say this to Ukrainians, they will reply: Heroiam Slava (Glory to the heroes)”, he said.
Du Yinghong in Ukraine. Photograph: Du Yinghong
One of the aims of this new Chinese diaspora is to draw attention to the ethnically Chinese people killed fighting for Ukraine. The most famous of these is Peng Chenliang, a man from Yunnan province who was killed in 2024. There is also Tseng Sheng-guang, a Taiwanese volunteer, who in November 2022 became the first soldier from east Asia to be killed since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
But they are also charting their own path away from the diktats of the Chinese Communist party, which oversees a state-run media in which pro-Russia content drowns out anything supportive of Ukraine.
‘A violation of human dignity’
Brother Dong’s journey began in the 1990s. After leaving China’s armed forces and moving to Europe, he settled in Germany, working as a tour guide. But he held on to his Chinese passport. Even as he raised three children, he would sing the Chinese national anthem to them at home. “Why? Because I was patriotic towards China and the Chinese Communist party.” For Brother Dong, patriotism, loyalty to theparty, and love for his family “were all blended into one”.
It wasn’t until the Covid-19 pandemic that Brother Dong started to question his lifelong loyalty to the CCP. When his mother-in-law fell ill, pandemic control restrictions meant that she couldn’t see a doctor or get her medication. His wife, who had travelled to China to be by her side, was kept in hotel quarantine in Shanghai for 15 days, during which time her mother died. “It was an absolute violation of human dignity,” he said. “I never imagined that the party and the government we once loved would do such things. Why couldn’t they let her children see her one last time? I still can’t understand it.”
A few months later, Brother Dong applied for German citizenship. Then the war in Ukraine brought thoughts about authoritarianism to his doorstep.
Brother Dong unfurls a flag with his compatriots who died in the Russia-Ukraine war. Photograph: Katya Moskalyuk/The Guardian
“I believe there is some connection between this pandemic and the war in Ukraine … These are actions driven and desired by authoritarian regimes and dictators around the world today. And we ordinary people are often completely powerless to resist such forces.”
Having been unable to help people, including his own family, during the pandemic, Brother Dong wanted to channel that energy towards supporting people in Ukraine, whom he sees as being under a similar assault from authoritarianism as the people in China.
But in China, publicly declaring your support for Ukraine comes at a price. On a recent trip, Chinese border agents detained Brother Dong for more than four hours and searched his phone (he stresses that he handed over his device voluntarily), interrogating him about his activities in Ukraine, including whether he planned to join the army.
When Du, the artist, organised a petition for Chinese people to support Ukraine, more than 200 people signed it. The letter said that they were “a group of peace-loving, justice seeking Chinese people” who “will always support Ukraine”. After delivering the petition to various Ukrainian embassies, several of the signatories received calls from the Chinese police, Du said.
But Du is undeterred. Having arrived in Ukraine in the autumn ago, he says he plans to open an art museum to display works inspired by the war.
And Brother Dong, now armed with the protection of a German passport, says he wants to continue supporting Ukraine through peaceful methods.
“Although I cannot go to the battlefield or take up arms,” he said, “I still hope to do everything I can to help the mothers and children of Ukraine,” who remind him of his own mother, thousands of miles away.
Additional research by Lillian Yang
