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Young Africans studying in China are expected to help build a “bridge” between this country and their own. However, their experience is rarely seen as the foundations on which this bridge is built. This article is based on a qualitative exploratory survey conducted in Chengdu in 2022, when the borders were still closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The testimonies collected from French-speaking African students show the ambiguity of their reception, the difficult choices they have to make when it comes to learning Chinese, or the sometimes misunderstood workings of their scarcely Sinicized sociability. Shedding light on these difficulties thus allows preparing the ground to rethink Afro-Chinese university exchanges “from the ground up.”