CHINATOWN

China’s rise on the global stage has been rapid, but how has that success affected the Chinese communities in Europe? As we enter the year of the rat, we discover the changing influence of China in the VLM Airlines destinations.

AS YOU TRAVEL ACROSS EUROPE THIS SPRING, TAKE A LOOK at the various exhibitions, shows and events happening around you and you’ll notice a recurring theme on the cultural agenda. Sparked by February’s Chinese New Year celebrations and fuelled by a cocktail of economic advancement and Olympic excitement, China is being fêted across the continent. From London’s extravagant Chinese New Year celebrations, which will run until 6 April when the Olympic torch passes through town, to the Go China! season at Groningen’s Groninger Museum, there has never been such interest in all things Chinese.

The Beijing Olympics clearly has a major part to play in this sudden interest, but there are other changes afoot, their affects visible within Chinatowns in London, Manchester, Amsterdam, Antwerp and elsewhere in Europe. Where once Cantonese was the predominant language of most Chinatowns, today you’re just as likely to hear Mandarin being spoken by diners in the restaurants, chefs in the kitchens and owners in their upstairs offices. Thanks to their newfound freedom to travel, mainland Chinese are arriving in droves, armed with cash and changing the face and character of Chinatowns around Europe.

Among all this excitement, the menu at Yming on London’s Greek Street is reassuringly familiar. Chinese chefs have been dishing up shark’s fin soup, Szechuan shredded beef and egg fried rice in some shape or form for 5,000 years, and Yming owner Christine Yau promises that the standard of cuisine in Chinatown has never been higher. “Now that people travel so much more, they know the difference between good and not so good Chinese food,” she says. “They no longer accept what they’re given.”

Most of the Chinatowns in Europe were created by the early Chinese traders who settled in port cities. The first Chinese shops and restaurants appeared around the docks of Liverpool in the middle of the 19th-century and served only Chinese sailors. As European empires began colonising chunks of Asia, other Chinese emigrants ‘jumped ship’ to Europe after working on European ships or docks. Following the fall of Saigon at the close of the Vietnam War, a wave of ethnic Chinese boat people from Vietnam found new beginnings in Europe’s Chinatowns, as did the immigrants who fled Indonesia’s violent pogroms against the ethnic Chinese.

But although most tourists seek out the bright and colourful city-centre Chinatowns with their arches and pagoda-shaped telephone kiosks, the Chinese themselves often become Europe’s ‘invisible’ minority. Unlike in the US, the Chinatowns of Europe are not heavily residential. The Chinese communities here are relatively dispersed and don’t form ethnic enclaves as they do in North America. “In America, Chinatowns are areas where people work and live so that they become a mini city,” explains Gerry Yeung, owner of the Yang Sing restaurant in Manchester. “Chinatowns in Europe tend to be more service centres for Chinese communities, where they come to eat, shop and socialise.”

According to Yeung, Manchester’s Chinatown, like that in London, was built almost exclusively by immigrants from Hong Kong who began arriving in the 1950s. Hong Kong was one of China’s culinary capitals, and most of the immigrants came to start up or work in restaurants. The UK has Europe’s biggest Chinatowns, while the Netherlands’ most significant Chinatown is in Amsterdam’s De Wallen district. Rotterdam’s Chinatown is West Kruiskade, while in Belgium, Antwerp has a Chinatown street, Van Wesenbekestraat. But in Germany, the mention of Chinatown provokes mixed reactions. One still exists in Dusseldorf, but Hamburg’s Chinatown in the St Paul red light district was destroyed by the Nazis. “The Chinatown concept, to German minds, is not entirely positive,” explains Tim Glaser, director for the Chinese-German Trade Association. “To some people it implies a ghetto mentality, and not every city finds that attractive. There have also been some complaints of visa problems with people settling in Chinatowns. The Chinese tend to do things the Chinese way, even in Germany... but in Germany we love rules!”

While the Chinese business community has largely been concentrated in the restaurant and takeaway trade, new-style businesses are springing up in Chinatowns. Travel agencies, supermarkets and financial advisers are all now taking hold, but the most noticeable trend is the rise of shops and clinics promoting traditional Chinese herbal medicines and acupuncture, offering alternative remedies for health complaints ranging from skin problems to chronic fatigue syndrome.

These new ventures are a sign of the growing confidence and expanding skills among Chinatown’s second and third generation Chinese, says Gerry Yeung, who is branching out of the restaurant business himself, and building a “classic oriental” boutique hotel on the edge of Manchester’s Chinatown. “Chinese children are among the highest academic achievers in Europe,” he says proudly. As a result, the career aspirations of these second and third generation Chinese now reach well beyond Chinatown, to the worlds of business, the professions and the arts. They are reported to be not only the most highly educated ethnic grouping in Europe, but also the least likely to be unemployed, characterised by diligence, strong family values and sheer hard work.

And these highly educated, high achieving European Chinese are being joined by another community that is having a major impact on our cities. For the past 20 years, most of the Chinese immigrants in Europe have come not from Hong Kong, but from mainland China, including ever-increasing numbers of mainland Chinese students, their ranks swelled by the rise of the Chinese economy. While the United States was initially their preferred destination, tougher visa controls following 9/11 have encouraged many to come to Europe instead, and in the UK alone there are an estimated 80,000 Chinese students.

“I reckon the Chinese population in London has risen by 20 per cent in the past three or four years,” says Christine Yau. “And it is changing Chinatowns. The mainland Chinese coming to Europe now are very different from the older generation, who came with very little, settled in rundown parts of the cities and started up restaurants from scratch. These new arrivals all come with money to invest, to spend and to help them enjoy life. Even the students who come to university here are from well-to-do families.”

Fai is a British-born Chinese blogger who charts the changes in Europe’s Chinese communities. “Chinatowns are a home away from home for a dispersed people, an outpost in a foreign land,” he tells me. “The difference now is that Chinatown, in London at least, is becoming increasingly an outpost for people from mainland China as opposed to Hong Kong, which it was when I was growing up. There is a subtle change in the character of Chinatown that the average tourist probably isn’t aware of.”

As European-born Chinese seek horizons beyond Chinatown, many of the restaurant businesses established by their parents are passing into the hands of these new immigrants from mainland China, says Alex Lai of the Netherlands Council for Trade Promotion. “Where once the main language of Chinatowns here in the Netherlands would have been Cantonese, now more and more you hear Mandarin. Many of the first generation Chinese have sold their businesses to mainland Chinese because they encouraged the second generation to study and do something else.”

But this new wave of Mandarin-speaking Chinese has fingers in many other business pies, says Gerry Yeung. “Many set up their own trading companies to sell and buy goods with China. Others work for larger European companies trading with China.”

While Chinatowns still attract holidaymakers, they’re also proving to be magnets for Chinese business travellers. “Chinese people often miss good Chinese food,” says Tim Glaser, “so Chinatowns are great for Chinese business people to come together to network.” This ability to attract investment from China has not escaped the notice of city officials, and London mayor Ken Livingstone, for example, has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, and still harbours plans for a new oriental quarter in the East End of London to attract more Chinese businesses.

But there are more immediate challenges for Europe’s Chinatowns, not least the developers who would like to snap up their city centre locations. “Chinatowns bring diversity and a vibrancy to cities,” says Fai, “but they are often in prime locations and I’m sure some landlords are tempted to boot out the Chinese.” Back at the Yming, Christine Yau worries about competition from the likes of Starbucks, Costa and Caffè Nero, which have colonised much of nearby Soho. “We struggle with very high rents and I can only hope that because of Chinatown’s popularity, it will not be taken over by the big coffee chains,” she says. “I could never compete with them.”

WORDS BY IAN WYLIE