Kanye “Ye” West’s roots might be in Chicago, but he received quite the worldly experience and education in China, too. In an interview with JETback in 2007, his late mother, Dr. Donda West, explained that she and her son lived in China for one year. She told the publication, “We had such a full and rich lifestyle when we didn’t have a lot. There were benefits to being a university professor. Our staying in China for a year was because I was a foreign expert to the People’s Republic of China, teaching English.”
What’s more, Ye himself also told Jonathan Cheng of the Wall Street Journal that living in China had a profound effect on his life. He also seemingly defended the people of China during the COVID-19 breakout in 2020. “I love China. I love China. It’s not China’s fault that disease. It’s not the Chinese people’s fault. They’re God’s people also. I love China. It changed my life. It changed my perspective, it gave me such a wide perspective,” he said, according to Cheng’s Twitter. But China isn’t the only foreign country in which Ye has spent some time.