Chinese wherever you go, Chinese restaurants will definitely open. Like the Chinese in other countries, the overseas Chinese who have taken root in Austria have started from the catering industry from making a living to getting rich. Today, the business tentacles of the Chinese have gradually integrated into all walks of life in the local society, but both in terms of scale and number of employees, it is still not enough to shake the "pillar" status of Chinese restaurants.
It is understood that the Chinese food industry has developed in Austria for more than half a century, and more than 80% of the Chinese are still engaged in the catering industry. The past of the predecessors who came to Austria to start a hard business and pioneer the countryside is little known to our new generation of Austrian immigrants. Today, let's learn about the Austrian Chinese restaurant from the mouths of our elders.
The elder figure of the Austrian Chinese food industry - Yu Linong
In the famous Sapporo Hotel in the third district of Vienna's city center, the owner Yu Linong, as one of the first Chinese to come to Austria to start a business, told the reporter of Helvar Media about the story of overseas Chinese in Austria...
Chinese stories
Austria's earliest Chinese restaurant
Austria's first Chinese restaurant was born in 1940, and it is said that the owner is an international student from China, whose name background is unknown. But the first Chinese restaurant recognized was the China Pavilion in Vienna's 13th arrondissement, opened by the Du family of overseas Chinese in Qingtian, Zhejiang Province, in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
Most of the Chinese who made a living in Austria at that time came from Taiwan, and many of them were Taiwanese veterans from Shandong who worked as cooks in garden restaurants. They brought Lu cuisine, one of the four major cuisines in China, to distant Austria, and also opened a chapter in the history of the entrepreneurial struggle of the Chinese in Austria.
After years of hard work, some of these Shandong chefs have set up their own doors and opened several Chinese restaurants in Vienna. Therefore, the first Time Austrian locals knew Chinese food was from Lu cuisine.
Opportunities change lives
In 1967, at the age of 22, Yu Linong had just graduated from Taiwan's National Defense Medical College and left his hometown from Taipei to Vienna for further study. In order to earn living expenses, Yu Linong came to a Beijing hotel opened by Shandong people to work and study, and gradually developed a strong interest in the catering industry. Five years later, by chance, he and Yan Jiayu, who were also from Taiwan, opened the Waldo Hotel. As soon as the hotel opened, the business was booming.
▲Today's Waldo Hotel has changed owners more than a decade ago
Yu Linong said that after US President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, the photo of him holding chopsticks in the Great Hall of the People immediately spread throughout the world, leading the Western society to pursue Chinese food, and Chinese restaurants mushroomed in every country in the West.
The following year, Yu Linong opened another Chinese restaurant in Linz. After Sapporo hosted the Winter Olympics in the 1970s, Austria, a winter sports powerhouse, set off a "Japanese fever", so Yu Linong gave his third Chinese restaurant a Japanese name, the sapporo inn.
Talking about the past of this hotel, Yu Linong still remembers it vividly. He and his younger brother Yu Ligong (a well-known professor of international political science and international review columnist), the two brothers designed, bought and decorated the hotel themselves. In order to save costs, the younger brother bought the raw wood, and the two brothers painted and worked together to support the two Japanese-style porches. Forty years later, the pillars are still bright and strong, just like the stoic and tenacious character of a generation of Austrian overseas Chinese, which will continue to be inherited and carried forward.
The most beautiful is the Qingtian people
By the 1980s, China's relaxed policy of going abroad after reform and opening up brought about the first wave of immigration from Chinese mainland. Chinese, who traveled from Zhejiang and Fujian to Austria to earn a living, worked for a Chinese restaurant as soon as possible. They not only provide sufficient labor for the Austrian Chinese food industry, but also inject vitality into the development and growth of the Chinese food market.
Yu Linong, who already owned six Chinese restaurants at that time, also accepted many Chinese from Qingtian, China. When it comes to the first Qingtian people who entered Austria, Yu Linong's tone is full of admiration and praise, and he most admires the Spirit of Hard-working and Solidarity of Qingtian People. In the 1990s, the Chinese, who were the main group of Qingtian people in Zhejiang Province, opened Chinese restaurants to every corner of Austria's large and small towns, making the Chinese food industry bigger and bigger.
Delve into innovation and be worthy of the "first person" of Austrian Chinese food
At the same time as the number of guests was filled, many Chinese restaurants began to encounter a shortage of chefs at this time. Yu Linong, who studied medicine, has always maintained a life attitude of loving learning and pondering, and he has visited restaurants in other countries in Europe and the United States to learn from his experience, and found that time-saving and labor-saving buffets can solve the problem of chef shortage. So he brought the buffet to Austria, which was immediately popular, and other Chinese restaurants followed suit. As a result, Yu Linong became the first person to buffet Chinese food in Austria.
Although Yu Linong can be called one of the "elders" of the Austrian Chinese food industry, he has never been complacent, but loves to learn more than young people and dares to innovate boldly. With the expansion of Chinese restaurants, Yu Linong, with his keen business insight, discovered the limitations of the family business model. Therefore, he borrowed from the McDonald's mode of operation, procured a number of advanced machines from home and abroad, and established the first Chinese food central kitchen in Vienna. This model enables "standardized" production, increases efficiency, and reduces labor costs. Yu Linong revealed that in a sense, this method also allows the participating employees to get exercises in all aspects from procurement, ingredients and cooking. Many employees learned valuable experience under him and became the leader of the Austrian Chinese business community after many years.
When Chinese cuisine was about to reach a bottleneck of cookie-cutterity, he made another expedition and found that Japanese cuisine, which is as popular as Chinese food, still has great potential. So he opened Austria's first turntable sushi and hired a senior Japanese chef to handle it himself at a high salary to ensure the freshness and authenticity of the ingredients and tastes.
Over the past 40 years, Yu Linong has made great efforts in the Austrian catering industry, with a number of Chinese, Japanese, and even Western restaurants, becoming the pride of a generation of Chinese entrepreneurs. Now a grandfather, Yu Linong is retiring, and his two sons have started a family, one is a software engineer and the other is an airline captain. The sons lack interest in the catering industry, so Yu Linong, who has achieved success, hopes to take a few "apprentices", pass on his life's experience to young people with potential and aspirations, share his successful business path, and continue to expand the influence of Chinese in the Austrian business community.
From his hometown to a foreign land, from a teenager to a white head, Yu Linong, like many overseas Chinese, has harvested respect and wealth with diligence and wisdom, and has performed a different wonderful life in Austria.
Author: Xiao Pei