The Alcatel Shanghai Bell crowd were settling in for a long haul. It was the eve of China’s National Day, they were thousands of miles from home and in a private room at Shanghai-Baia, Luanda’s finest Chinese restaurant, they were looking forward to a night of singing, drinking and reminiscing. Outside the bay window, the rays of the setting sun slanted across the glassy surface of the lagoon around which Angola’s battered capital nestles, spreading a sympathetic glow over the pastels of the Portuguese colonial-era buildings.

In the restaurant, with its garish fittings, all eyes were fixed on a giant karaoke screen. A sinuous young woman in a silk dress dipped her head in and out of the surf in what at first glance could have been a more elegant variation on a Beach Boys video. It was, I gathered, a cult Chinese love song. Cheers broke out as one of the guests strode to the microphone and started crooning.