On the streets of Guangzhou and nearby Shenzhen, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo is turning heads. Since holding a press conference for his semiautobiographical novel Nairobi to Shenzhen: A Novel of Love in the East on Nov. 4, Ndesandjo, the half brother of U.S. President Barack Obama, has appeared on television in Hong Kong, and his picture has been splashed on the front pages of the China Daily, the South China Morning Post and other regional newspapers.
Ndesandjo had shunned the limelight until now. He is one of two children born to Barack Obama Sr. and his third wife, an American teacher named Ruth Nidesand, whom Obama Sr. met while the two were students at Harvard. Tall and slim like the President, Ndesandjo had avoided any association with the Obama name. For most of his life, he used only his stepfather's Tanzanian surname Ndesandjo, but he's now added Okoth, a word from the language of his father's Kenyan tribe, the Luo, as well as his original surname, Obama. (See Barack Obama's family tree.)
His novel, written in diary form, is based on his own experiences growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father and moving to China where he fell in love with a Chinese woman and began working with orphans. President Obama's name is mentioned just once, when Ndesandjo thanks several people, including "Barack," in the foreword. With this book, Ndesandjo says he's stepping into the public eye in order to raise awareness of domestic violence, promote volunteerism and share his tale of starting a new life in a new land. "I am an Obama, and a large part of my life was a repudiation of that," Ndesandjo tells TIME. "To a certain extent, my brother ... opened my eyes to things that I had left behind for a long time." (Ndesandjo is still reticent about detailing his personal life beyond the fictionalized account, saying he may save that for a second book, a true autobiography.)
Ndesandjo's life was hardly ordinary even before the world discovered his connection to the President of the United States. Educated in international schools in Nairobi, Ndesandjo, an American citizen, moved to the U.S. after high school, where he earned physics degrees from Stanford and Brown as well as an executive M.B.A. from Emory University. Soon after 9/11, he was laid off from his marketing job at telecommunications-equipment maker Nortel Networks in Atlanta. He decided to reinvent himself by moving to China, a country he had visited with classmates while at Emory. Since 2002, he has taught English and worked as a business consultant in Shenzhen, a 14 million–strong metropolis in southern China, just across the border from Hong Kong. (See the story of Barack Obama's mother.)
His self-published book was released just days before his brother's visit to China. Ndesandjo says he plans to introduce his wife, a native of Henan province whom he married last year, to his brother before he leaves China on Wednesday. During the course of TIME's interview in Guangzhou, Ndesandjo, who speaks fluent Mandarin and practices Chinese calligraphy, was overwhelmingly positive about his life in China, the Chinese people and culture. "I'm so happy my brother is coming to China because I've experienced the warmth and the graciousness of the Chinese people," he says. "If we can continue seeing the mutual positive points in these two great cultures, I think it'll be good for the world in general."
The two brothers have met a handful of times in their lives, the last of which was during Obama's inauguration in Washington. In his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama describes his first encounter with his brother, an ambitious student who had severed ties with his father's side of the family as well as his African roots. "I don't feel much of an attachment [to Kenya]. Just another poor African country," Ndesandjo says in Dreams. He goes on to say, "You think that somehow I'm cut off from my roots ... Well, you're right."
One of Obama Sr.'s eight children with four women, Ndesandjo was raised by both birth parents until their divorce in the early 1970s. He has refused to tell reporters his age, but he is likely to be in his early 40s. Ndesandjo says his father was brilliant, but that alcoholism drove him to beat his wife and children. "The relationship I had with my father was a difficult one," he says, fighting back tears. "I didn't have positive memories of my dad because of domestic violence."
Ndesandjo says his mother, who runs a kindergarten in Nairobi, inspired him to work with children. A trained pianist, he has given piano lessons to Chinese orphans and performed at an event in January that raised $37,000 to alleviate poverty in China. Harley Seyedin, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, the organization that sponsored the charity event, has been a close friend of Ndesandjo's for the past six years, but only learned of his friend's relationship with the President last year when reading news reports. "He's a very private person and he wanted to continue to live his modest lifestyle," says Seyedin. "But his primary message is raising awareness of domestic violence and to get the message out, you have to go public." To underline this message, Ndesandjo has arranged for 15% of the proceeds from book sales to be used to help orphans in China.
As a Kenyan-American in China, Ndesandjo is part of a growing community of Africans migrating to cities like Guangzhou to do business. Ethnic strife in China has made headlines in recent months after 200 Han and Uighur Chinese were killed in July, in the worst ethnic violence in decades. That same month, a Nigerian man was critically injured trying to escape one of many visa checks in Guangzhou's sizeable African neighborhood. Also this year, a half–African American, half-Chinese contestant on a Chinese reality-TV show and a half–South African, half-Chinese athlete on China's national volleyball team became the subject of a flurry of racist comments in China's blogosphere. But Ndesandjo is optimistic about ethnic-minority life in China, saying, "If you make an attempt to understand where these attitudes come from, it can really help."
Read "The Five Faces of Barack Obama."
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MOUNT AIRY, N.C. – A soured love affair may have led an ex-convict to gun down four men in the town that inspired the idyllic community of Mayberry on the 1960s TV series "The Andy Griffith Show," police said Monday.
Marcos Chavez Gonzalez, 29, was charged with four counts of murder in the slayings late Sunday outside a television store in Mount Airy, about 100 miles north of Charlotte.
The four were shot with a high-powered assault rifle outside Wood's TV, in the shadow of a water tower that says "Welcome to Mount Airy" and has a picture of Griffith and Opie, his son on the show.
Police do not believe the shootings were random. Mount Airy Police Chief Dale Watson said officers are investigating several leads, including whether it was a contract killing or repercussions from a love affair gone bad.
"This is Mayberry ... Andy Griffith's house is in spitting distance here," said Michael Wood, one of the owners of Wood's TV.
The town, population 8,700, has built a tourist trade on nostalgia for the show that continues to thrive in syndication.
Watson identified the victims — all residents of the town — as Victor Alfonso Martinez-Jimenez, 22; Javier Manuel Martinez, 21; Juan Manuel Martinez, 26; and Marcos Oviedo Aguliar, 21.
Michelle Oviedo, 21, said her boyfriend and brother were among the dead and the alleged shooter is her mother's boyfriend. She said she was sitting on her porch not far from Wood's TV when she heard the gunshots.
"When I got there, Javier and my brother were already gone," she said. "They were on top of each other."
Jose Armando Hernandez, 46, said through a translator that three of the victims were his nephews. He said his family is "destroyed" over the deaths, which he said stemmed from a problem with a woman.
Gonzalez was arrested without incident at a motel about 50 miles northeast of the town, Henry County, Va., Sheriff Lane Perry said. He was unarmed when he surrendered just before 4 a.m. to officers who had surrounded the motel.
He was extradited from Virginia and was being held in the Surry County jail. Jail workers said it was not clear whether he had an attorney.
Watson said 16 shots were fired but the assault rifle had not been found.
"It was quite a crime scene," he said.
State prison records show Gonzalez was released more than two years ago after serving more than two years on a 2002 conviction for kidnapping a minor and a probation violation.
State records show the felony kidnapping charge required Gonzalez to register as a sex offender. North Carolina's post-release supervision of Gonzalez ended in June 2006 when he returned to prison after failing to stay in contact with a probation officer, Correction Department spokesman Keith Acree said.
Nursing supervisor Sue Coe at Northern Hospital of Surry County confirmed that two people died at the store around 2:30 p.m. Sunday. She said two who were wounded died at the hospital, just across the street from the store.
By Monday, someone had set up a makeshift memorial with flowers. Mourners gathered there and some women lay on the ground crying. Someone christened the memorial with a bottle of Corona beer, which sat half empty next to brightly colored candles with photos of saints on them.

Gary Chilton, an owner of Chilton Insurance Group, which shares the building with Wood's TV, said the crime is an anomaly. Andy Griffith doesn't live there any more, but the town is still quiet.

"I'm not sure it's totally sunk in because it's so unusual. On any given Sunday there is nothing here in this parking lot. There's nothing here at all," he said. "My biggest question is why in this parking lot at all. Why Wood's TV parking lot?"

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Associated Press writers Emery Dalesio in Raleigh and Mitch Weiss in Charlotte contributed to this report.