The First Chinese in Serbia: Kang Youwei’s Arrival in Belgrade as the Bridge between Two Distant Cultures

Digital Art Ana Stjelja

Nearly 120 years ago, a great Chinese reformer visited Belgrade, forging a bridge between Serbia and China

The history of encounters between nations often begins unexpectedly—through a single journey, a passing through a city, or one person who, perhaps unknowingly, becomes a bridge between two civilizations. Such a bridge between Serbia and China appeared in 1908, when Kang Youwei, the great Chinese reformer, philosopher, and traveler of remarkable destiny, arrived in Belgrade. His visit did not come as part of a diplomatic delegation, nor as the result of a planned exchange. It was a quiet, almost incidental moment in which the path of a Chinese émigré crossed the path of a young Balkan country. Interestingly, the renowned Hotel Moscow in central Belgrade also opened that year.

Kang Youwei (康有為, 1858–1927) arrived in Belgrade by car from Budapest at around 11 a.m. on July 21, 1908. He recorded that the journey of roughly 400 kilometers took ten hours. His stay in Belgrade lasted only a few days before he continued on to Sofia, then Romania, and Constantinople. Surprisingly, the leading Serbian newspaper Politika did not report this unusual visit, and it remains largely unknown to the Serbian public. Yet its significance is undeniable: this was the first documented stay of a Chinese person in Serbia.

A traveler from turbulent China

The late 19th century in China was a time of upheaval, political turmoil, and tension between tradition and modernization. Kang was one of the central advocates of that modernization. His vision of China was one of an open, educated, and reformed state.

Such boldness had its price: the reforms were crushed, and Kang was compelled to flee the country he so deeply wished to transform. His exile became a long journey that took him across Asia, Europe, and eventually to Serbia as well.

Belgrade in 1908 – a city of encounters

When he entered Belgrade in 1908, Kang Youwei could not have known that he would be remembered as the first Chinese person in Serbia. The city was then lively and full of contrasts—streets of cobblestone alongside wide avenues, people in traditional Serbian clothing but also an increasingly European-looking urban population. It was a Belgrade just learning to breathe in rhythm with the wider world.

For Belgraders of the time, Kang was a rarity, almost an exotic presence; and for him, Belgrade was another stop on a long journey—small enough that no one knew of his political troubles, yet open enough to receive him without question.

Though his stay was brief, it left a trace—not in political archives but in symbolism. His arrival represents the first recorded presence of a Chinese individual in Serbia, the first touch between two peoples separated by thousands of kilometers.

Kang's Impressions About Belgrade

In his notes, Kang admired Belgrade’s cleanliness, flower-lined streets, and greenery, comparing some elements of the city to his homeland. The old Roman well at Kalemegdan Fortress struck him as eerie, yet he noted that there was nothing like it in China. He also observed similarities between Serbian military barracks and Chinese ones, and found that the long blue uniforms of Serbian soldiers resembled Chinese attire.

Kang drew parallels between Serbian churches and the ancestral halls of Chinese villages and saw the marketplaces as reminiscent of Chinese bazaars. He also made candid observations about Serbian society: tax revenue amounted to 86 million dinars, collected from a population of about one million, a burden he felt was significant. He commented on the political turbulence of Serbian history, including the secret order given by King Peter I to assassinate his predecessor Aleksandar Obrenović and Queen Draga in 1903, noting that no perpetrators had been punished.

Kang further observed Serbia’s strong sense of national identity, the prevalence of uniforms among one-sixth of the population, and the military’s loyalty to the king—lessons, he noted, that the Chinese might learn from.

The significance of one brief encounter

When we speak today of Sino-Serbian relations—trade, bridges, cultural cooperation, and long-term projects—it is difficult to imagine that the story began not with diplomacy, but with the solitary travels of a single man. Yet history often unfolds this way: great processes emerge from the quiet epics of individuals.

Kang Youwei did not come to Serbia to build relations—he arrived as a traveler, an exile, a thinker. And precisely because of this, his arrival holds special significance. It marks the moment when a great civilization first touched Serbia through the figure of a man who carried within himself the depth of Eastern thought and the weight of political upheaval in his homeland.

A legacy that outlives the traveler

After leaving Belgrade, Kang Youwei continued his journey, leaving behind a city that was only beginning to sense the breadth of the world. He died on March 31, 1927, in the coastal city of Qingdao, in China’s Shandong Province, where he spent his final years in quiet seclusion. Yet in Serbian historical memory, his name remains recorded as the first Chinese person to set foot on our soil—a traveler who, even in passing, linked two distant cultures and opened a story that continues more than a century later.

Sources: Wikipedia / NIN FB