Fariba Mosleh

As the title indicates, Vienna Chinatown INvisible presents the 30.000 strong Chinese community in Vienna, Austria, in a delightful way. There is no Chinatown proper in Vienna as the Chinese community in contrast to many other immigrant groups tends to keep their activities quiet, building its own infrastructure of schools, services and associations (with sometimes parallel institutions for Taiwanese and PRC), thus the adjective "invisible". What is highly visible are the countless Chinese restaurants in Vienna that have been established since the 1980s, from 80 to over 1000 restaurants in Vienna alone. The economic growth in China has resulted in a scarcity of Chinese wanting to emigrate so that more and more the restaurants are staffed by other Asians. Many of Vienna's Chinese restaurants are still trapped at the low end of the market, providing bad tasting food at a very low price. There is, however, movement, in both specialization and pan-Asian cookery.

An interesting aspect of the Viennese Chinese community is that 80% are coming from only three cities in Zhejiang province which helps to keep up connections. The third generation of Austro-Chinese is faced with the problem that their Chinese writing skills are only sufficient for formulating basic texts. The University of Vienna has set up courses to help the Austro-Chinese improve their Chinese to meet academic standards.

Overall, a very interesting report about a Viennese immigrant community. I wish such reports were available about other communities as well.… (mer)