Chinatown: Berlin may finally get one (loosely speaking)
In the near future, one of Berlin eternal riddles could be answered: Where can you get some decent Chinese food? Technically the only correct answer will remain "nowhere, shut up and eat your currywurst." But only if Oranienburg--a city a few miles north of the capital--is ruled out by a strict definition of geographical terms.
Two engineers out of Frankfurt, with two Chinese partners, have submitted plans to build a 2,500 resident Chinatown on an abandoned Russian landing strip in the city of 40,000 residents. The 691 million euros project is so ambitious the plans first drew gasps, then left behind skeptics, dazzled believers and confused townspeople--they had a hard time magining Chinese temples embroidered with delicate dragons next to their hulking Soviet-style apartment complexes drowning in graffiti,
The new Chinatown will be patterned on the architecture of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 a.d), described as "the flowering of cultural and economical development in China" in the plans. A cultural center resembling the Forbidden City will be built on the 80 hectare (198 acre) former home to Russian planes, along with small houses, shops for traditional crafts, a Chinese circus, a park with "organic" lakes and springs, and of course, pagodas and temples.
We are just guessing, of course, if that more than 2,000 Chinese among the 80,000 estimated to live in Germany move in--expected to be mainly businessmen and employees working in Berlin--they are bound to demand some good food worth a trip on the S-bahn or by car.
The project took one hurdle last week when the city building committee voted 7-3 in favor of the project, now it has to be voted on by the city parliament on May 21. Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2008, with hopes the "Chinatown" will lure tourists and turn around a city with 14 percent unemployment. Most new businesses have settled south of Berlin, not north of Berlin.
Oranienburg mayor Hans-Joachim Laesicke hopes it will blossom into a center for German-Chinese trade relations, maybe with a school for young German managers who can steep themselves in the business customs of the Asians. "The plans are really good. One can't miss the sign of the times," Laesicke said. "Chinese growth is so powerful that even I have to deal with it as a local politician."
Laesicke acknowledges many Oranienburg residents are "confused" and see the project as a potential disaster. They would gain five percent more residents overnight, very foreign ones at that, and they can't figure how that will work when they still can't get along with the "German Russians" (people from the Soviet Union with German heritage) that emigrated into their city after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The financing for the project remains murky at the moment, with the Brandenburg-China-Projekt Management GmbH turning in a 40-page plan with beautiful drawings and simulations, but no word of a money source. "We are in talks with Chinese investors," said Stefan Kunigam, one of the project managers.
Laesicke reports meeting with a Chinese businessman out of Harbin, who is searching for the funding in his homeland. The mayor reports an immediate culture clash, with the direct blunt German style running into Confucianism. "I thought we would be finished in 45 minutes," Laesicke said. "A mistake. First you have to build up an emotional relationship."
The idea of a Chinese town being erected in the middle of Europe may seem fanciful, but in the age of globalization all that is new about transplanting cultures is the location. In China itself, a 10,000 resident Thames Town with cathedral and pub is finished. Reportedly copies of Barcelona and Venice are under construction.
In 2004, there was also an "Asia-town," as the Germans call it, planned for Prenzlauer Berg. A Greens politician wanted to turn a former slaughterhouse into a center of art, culture and restaurants from the far East--but the investors never materialized.
Skepticism is rampant about the Oranienburg Chinatown, but the developers have also left many hopeful of deep-pocketed Chinese can be found. Among them is the Brandenburgische Boden Gesellschaft (BBG), which manages the old Russian landing strip where the temples and pavilions would rise like a symbol of the new Chinese empire out of the broken concrete. "Their project is visionary," BBG project manager Angela Podwitz said. "But Herr Kunigam has convinced us that there are a lot of Chinese with money that want to invest abroad."
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