Nach dem erfolgreichen ersten Stammtisch am 10. Februar, laden wir Sie herzlich zu unserem  2. Stammtisch mit dem Thema "Lernen in Deutschland und China -- Ein Austausch über persönliche Erfahrungen“ ein.  

Einführend wird Frau PeiPei Li aus ihren Erfahrungen aus der Arbeit mit der chinesischen Schule „De Hua“  im  Ruhrgebiet  berichten. Danach soll es einen Austausch über Ihre persönlichen Erfahrungen und Eindrücke geben.  Wir freuen uns, wenn Sie teilnehmen können und bitten ihre Benachrichtigung per E-Mail an chinagermany@aol.com.  Wir möchten Sie auch bitten, diese Einladung an Freunde, Bekannte und andere Interessierte weiterzuleiten. 

P.S. Fall Sie auch Interesse  an einem bestimmten Thema  zum Verhältnis von  China  und  Deutschland  bzw. zum Miteinander von Deutschen und Chinesen haben und dazu einen Austausch anregen möchten,  freuen wir uns, wenn Sie Ihre Ideen an Frau Angie Henle (angiehenle@aol.com)  schicken oder direkt beim Stammtisch vorschlagen. 

Donnerstag, 10. März 2005, 19.00 Uhr, Jade (Chinesisches Spezialitätenrestaurant), Rellinghauserstr. 6, Essen (direkt gegenüber von RAG Hochhaus, und wenige Minuten Fußweg von Essen Hauptbahnhof)

Um eine genauere Planung vornehmen zu können, bitten wir um eine Benachrichtung per e-mail an chinagermany@aol.com .

Angie Henle, Essen

Auf Initiative der Chinese Association for NGO Cooperation (CANGO) ist das Asienhaus deutscher Partner bei dem Programm, in dem deutsche und chinesische Freiwillige Praktika bei NRO in Deutschland und China absolvieren. Dabei soll jeder Praktikant in beiden Ländern und bei Organisationen mit ähnlichen Arbeitsschwerpunkten jeweils ein dreimonatiges Praktikum absolvieren. Die Praktikanten sollen den beiden Organisationen bei der Kontaktknüpfung, dem Erfahrungsaustausch und der Umsetzung gemeinsamer Projekte behilflich sein.

Ziel des Projekts ist - neben der Vermittlung von Praktika im dritten Sektor - einen Beitrag zur internationalen Vernetzung deutscher NROs und zum Kapazitätsaufbau chinesischer sozialer Organisationen zu leisten.

Das Projekt befindet sich in der Pilotphase. 2005 und 2006 werden je 10 Partnerschaften vermittelt und auf Abschlussworkshops ausgewertet. Auf chinesischer Seite nehmen 17 Organisationen aus unterschiedlichen Sektoren am ersten Durchgang des Projekts teil, in Deutschland werden Partner ermittelt.

Nähere Einzelheiten finden Sie unter www.asienhaus.de/zivilgesellschafter. 

Chinese Migration in Germany, von Maggie W.-H. Leung (Broschiert - 290 Seiten - Iko-Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, ISBN: 3889397123). Die Besprechung wurde erstellt von Angie Henle, Essen. 
In diesem Zusammenhang möchten wir Sie noch auf eine weitere Neuerscheinung hinweisen. Erich Gütinger: "Die Geschichte der Chinesen in Deutschland. Ein Überblick über die ersten 100 Jahre seit 1822", Münster/New York/München/Berlin (Waxmann Verlag), 2004.

In her book „Chinese Migration in Germany,” Ms. Maggie Wai-Han Leung makes a substantial attempt to study which would almost be seen as an invisible population, namely the Chinese immigrants in Germany. From a sociologist perspective, this book contains the right concepts such as “Diaspora” and “Transnationalism,” and the extended explanation on these concepts when the author narrates her interviews with real immigrants. However, I find this book lack insights. That is, there is no psychological, cultural and economical dimension of her migration story, and thus the book reads like, with minor corrections, immediately applicable to any ethnic migration and in any hosting country..

Germany is a very unique country for immigrants. Among others, its language is much harder than, for instance, English. Every noun has a gender; there are Nominatives, Accusatives, Datives and Genitives; and the infamous “dass” sentences carry verbs in the last positions; so on and so forth. These grammatical rules, to a large extent reflecting also the logic thinking process, are very different from the Chinese language. Recently neurological study even indicates that the Westerns and the Chinese even use different brain parts to reason. Therefore it is extremely difficult for the first generation immigrants to feel at home, even just because of the language reason alone. 

Germany has a long history with strong sense of cultural identity, respect for tradition and desire for self-preservation as a nation. Its attitude towards foreign immigrants hence has been ambivalent. The geopolitical location in central Europe determines that Germany has been under constant influx of people from different parts of Europe, particularly those from the East since it has been historically poorer. For those from Eastern Europe, and even from near East such as Turkey, so long as they speak perfect German and internalise the German culture and tradition, from the outlook it is difficult to tell them apart from the native Germans. However, with the Chinese it is not the case. The physical features of Chinese are simply so different from the native Germans, so that even in case of Chinese-German marriages when the family 100% adopts German culture at home and when genetics are already mixed, the children often bear so strong Chinese distinctions that people can still immediately identify them as being Asian. Related to the physical differences, the thousands of years’ dietary difference between the Chinese and Westerners, whereby the Chinese eat rice, vegetables and fish as main nutrition sources and the Germans eat bread, meat and cheese, dictates that the differences in physical outlook and lifestyle are not going to be homogenized within a couple of generations.

The industrialization and urbanization process in Germany is also different from that in America, England and even Asia. At the first part of the last century, when China was still suffering “half-feudalism half-colonization,” Germany was already an industrialized country.  This means, the Chinese immigrants coming to Germany then didn’t possess the skills and mentalities to work in manufacturing factories. Another interesting phenomena, very unique to Germany, is that even though Germany has been an industrial country for long, it does not have real metropolitans, such as New York, Los Angeles, London, or Paris. Possibly this has to do with the German romanticism, i.e. the Germans love nature and freedom, and they avoid living in confined urban dwellings. Nevertheless, for immigrants, these metropolitans are exactly the necessary incubators in the process whereby the immigrants become linguistically, culturally and economically adopted to the host country and eventually move outside to the suburbs as the locals.

There is also a lack of elite Chinese immigrants because of the recent German history, i.e. the two world wars. In both cases, Germany was defeated. The elite Chinese, whether it was under the early nationalist party before the people’s republic or during the economic reform after a long close-up during the cultural revolution, orient itself always towards the Anglo-Sachsen world, particularly the United States. Not only many of the Chinese governmental and business leaders were previously educated in the US, and but also when the communist took over the country, many educated wealthy Chinese migrated to the US. These immigrants brought with them wealth and prestige, so that they could quickly establish themselves in America and set up prominent institutions such as the China Institute and Asia Society in New York. Additionally, because of their high educational level, they were able to rise in the American society as leading businessman, scientists and social activists. Today, it is estimated circa 30% of students in elite US universities such as Harvard, MIT and Stanford are of Chinese origin. In comparison, as a group the calibre of Chinese immigrants to Europe, in Germany particularly, is lower and therefore they have not been visible as their counterparts in the English speaking countries.

Ms. Leung’s “Chinese Migration in Germany” book completely neglected all these important distinctions and features about the Chinese immigrants in Germany.  Not only so, in the latter part of the book, she has borrowed trendy phrases such as “venture capital” to describe the traditional financial support from friends and family to open small businesses, and put down quite a few anecdotes about the Chinese IT experts which, in my opinion, represents a yet-to- mature nor dominant trend of Chinese immigrants in Germany. In other words, I find that she has lost the academic vigour as the book drags on. Certainly the Figures, which compose maps of Germany and China as well as two magazine posters, are not very convincing in telling any kind of story. 

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