There is a moment in Bob Marley’s One Love when the melody opens up, and the whole world seems to fit inside a single chord. 

I listened to that song a hundred times in my office in Hangzhou, but I did not truly hear it until I stood on Jamaican soil last August. Tonight, as the Year of the Horse arrives and firecrackers light up the winter sky over West Lake, my thoughts cross the ocean to an island digging out from under the worst storm in its recorded history—and yet still finding ways to look after its neighbours.

Before that visit, I thought I understood the Caribbean. I had read Claude McKay, studied Miss Lou, built an academic career in Caribbean studies. But there is a Jamaican proverb—“You never know how deep the river till you put your foot in it.” At UWI’s Mona Campus, Campus Principal Professor Densil Williams talked frankly with me about the challenges facing Caribbean higher education. At the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre, I saw scholars working on the question every Jamaican lives with: how does a small island survive when the next storm is always coming?

In Chinese culture, the horse represents the courage to press forward. We say “马到成功”—success arrives with the horse. With forty-five lives lost, over 150,000 structures damaged, and losses exceeding forty per cent of GDP, that spirit feels less like a festive metaphor and more like a portrait of the Jamaican people themselves.

Every Jamaican knows the corner Chinese shop—not just a place to buy goods, but a community institution where credit was extended on trust and cultures merged over counters. Since the first Chinese labourers arrived on the Epsom from Hong Kong in 1854, Chinese Jamaicans have grown into this society, and it into them. Leslie Kong produced Bob Marley’s first singles at Beverley’s Records. Patricia “Miss Pat” Chin built VP Records into the label that carried reggae across oceans. Byron Lee and The Dragonaires became the heartbeat of Carnival. These people did not “contribute to” Jamaican culture from the outside—they helped make it.

When Melissa struck last October, that bond was tested. Yangsen Li—CEO of LCH Developments in Montego Bay, who runs Grand Depot and Afresh Marketplace—lost some $200 million in stock when floodwaters swamped Catherine Hall. But instead of retreating, Li and his partner, Brothers Concepts & Solutions, deployed bulldozers to clear roads within hours. In the days that followed, as Jamaican media reported, his team delivered care packages across St Elizabeth and Westmoreland. “We’ve secured more than $100 million in total support,” Li told the Gleaner. Agriculture Minister Floyd Green praised the effort, saying he was grateful to the Chinese partners who helped reach communities cut off by floodwaters. A St Elizabeth resident who had swum out of her flooding house said, “When you get food and have children, you have to be grateful.”

China also sent two million US dollars in direct aid, and the hospital ship Ark Silk Road, over 100 doctors, nurses, and technicians, 12 days across three ports. With Cornwall Regional Hospital on emergency-only services, the ship performed surgeries, scans, and ultrasounds alongside Jamaican specialists. Li, who coordinated the Montego Bay stop, told the Gleaner: “After Melissa, many people are mentally sick, physically sick. This is a very good opportunity because you can get a full check.” The voice of a neighbour, not a diplomat.

I tell this story because Jamaica has long taught the world something: solidarity is a practice, not a slogan. This is the spirit behind our Centre for Caribbean Studies at Hangzhou Normal University, where I edit Blue Humanities, a journal on ocean cultures. The Caribbean has things to teach China—about resilience in the face of repeated shocks, about what it means to hold together, and to build a society from many different peoples. When I visited UWI last August, I arrived with questions and left with friendships—and with the humbling recognition that academic study is no substitute for standing on the ground.

Miss Lou spent her life insisting that the Jamaican voice—patois, proverb, and all—deserved to be heard on its own terms. She turned the language of the yard into the literature of a nation. She was right. Jamaica is rebuilding now—from flattened roofs in Parottee, from flooded shops in Catherine Hall, from farms stripped bare in Clarendon. Community kitchens, volunteer clearing crews, neighbours sharing generators—Jamaicans do not wait for permission to get back on their feet. From West Lake to Montego Bay, may the Year of the Horse carry us forward—not with the polished stride of diplomacy, but with the honest gallop of friendship. One love, one heart. Out of many, one.

Professor Min Zhou is Director, Centre for Caribbean Studies, Hangzhou Normal University, China