andkrab) has parallels with how the community has evolved. The furry-clawed creature first reached Dutch waters in the bilge-water of ships from China about 100 years ago. It settled into the fresh waters around Amsterdam and other harbors, managing to cross large swathes of land to reach the salt water necessary for mating.In recent decades, the crab has become an extra source of income for Amsterdam's eel-fishermen, who sell them to local Chinese restaurants.
Now, reports Martin Melchers, an expert on city ecologies, the crab is being exported back to China.
Coming the other way are groups of mainlanders, now seen surging through Amsterdam's famous red light district, part of which has morphed into an attractive Chinatown.
The Zeedijk, the Warmoestraat, the Geldersekade and the Nieuwmarkt on the southern banks of the city formed the shipping quarter of old Amsterdam. The first streets were made on the dams and dikes. The medieval city was extended by digging new canals: first the Kloveniersburgwal and Geldersekade and then the Singel and Spui and all the streets that connect these canals.
The Zeedijk area of this system was once full of junkies, hard drinkers and tough prostitutes. Now it's the heart of Chinatown.
Whereas most people once feared to tread here, now tourists can't stay away. Food lovers flock to the Chinese restaurants and religious worshippers to the stunning He Hua temple, built with a combination of Dutch architecture, Taiwanese imports, Chinese money and local political encouragement.
The Waag, or weighing station of the old port, centers the area on a cobbled square, with fresh flower and fish stalls, and streets signs in Chinese and Dutch radiating off in all directions.
The several Chinese supermarkets offer rare produce, from Thai rice to canned Chinese lychees, pickled mud fish, Japanese seaweed and more. The area also boasts a large number of Thai, Malay and Indian restaurants.
In between exotic escort agencies and Chinese apothecaries, generations of Chinese families - many from south China or Hong Kong - have created a rich community. Take the Wah Kiu book store on Geldersekade, one of Chinatown's main thoroughfares. Many of the growing numbers of Chinese tourists to the Dutch capital like to pop into the store to pick up Chinese-language books they are not allowed or unable to buy at home.
The two generations of the Chow family who run the Wah Kiu stores - one in Amsterdam and one feeding the larger Chinese community of Rotterdam - have been tracking Chinese tastes since arriving in 1976.
The older Chows are from Shanghai but moved to Hong Kong, "because of politics," says Chiwah Chow, the 30-something daughter managing phones in the back of the shop. Her father, the pioneer, runs the front counter. He's most comfortable speaking Chinese, but prefers speaking English to Dutch.
"I spoke Dutch from my school days here and went to the Vrije Universiteit [Free University] to study business," says Chiwah Chow, switching from Chinese to Dutch to English as the customers demand.
Chow went to Chinese school on Saturdays when she was growing up and says third-generation children like to do the same: "They still have the idea they want to understand Chinese."
But nowadays the business cannot survive on selling Chinese books alone. Second-generation Chinese "like me," she laughs, find reading books in Chinese too tiring.
"We read Dutch better than we read Chinese, so there is less demand for Chinese books," she says. Around her, the store now sells all manner of gadgets, toys, slippers, souvenirs, stuffed animals, Chinese lanterns, chimes, tea, jade and more.
A copy of the Sing Tao Daily newspaper here costs 2.20 euro while the Oriental Daily News costs a whopping 6.50 euro. Free papers available include the Wah Kiu Tong Sun, a Chinese paper published every three weeks by Chow's brothers, who divide their time between Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
They all gained Dutch citizenship through their father's investment in business. Chiwah Chow reckons the Chinese are quiet and hard-working, thus presenting little trouble to the authorities. Her brother is on the committee of business owners for the Chinatown district but her family isn't interested much in politics beyond that.
It was in the late 1800s that the Chinese first started appearing in Amsterdam and in the larger port city of Rotterdam. They arrived on ships as stokers, sailors and cooks, living together in dormitories which became the precursors to today's Chinatown. The 1915 Seamans' Strike provided an opportunity for more Chinese workers, recruited by Dutch ship-owners, to break the strike and keep trade moving. By 1933, the largest group was in Rotterdam, numbering more than 1,000 men.
No Chinese women are recorded as settled in Holland before World War I.
Alongside the sailing fraternity were small groups of traders and salesmen who arrived in Holland in the early 20th century, on a route from Shanghai to Marseille. They roamed through Europe seeking business opportunities and selling trinkets, beads, shoelaces, ties and more.
Some of those who still found it difficult to make a living went back to China in the late 1930s, amid allegations that some of the older and poorer were pushed on to ships back to their homeland. By 1939, there were only about 800 Chinese left in the Netherlands.
During World War II a few Chinese restaurants and shops stayed open, with some managing to store rice. But even these families ran out of food before the war, and three years of German occupation, was over.
It is in the half-century or so since the end of the war that Chinese communities across the Netherlands have grown. The first post-war wave was from Indonesia in the late 1940s when the Dutch colonial era ended there and people fearing the new republican rule chose to flee. These people were mostly well-educated, Dutch-speaking Chinese Indonesians who faced few problems integrating in Holland.
Also arriving were Chinese from southern China, especially from Zhejiang and Guangdong, who were escaping civil war and the communist victory.
Chinese from Hong Kong also began appearing, their British papers paving their way through Dutch immigration. Over the decades up to 1997, many Chinese took this route.
A fourth group came from Suriname, the former Dutch colony in the Carribbean. Some Chinese (and Javanese) had moved to Suriname from Indonesia, many more were Hakka. These people joined the waves of migration to Holland in the late 1970s, when Suriname became independent and a third of the population moved out.
A fifth group of Chinese arrived from Vietnam, also in the late 1970s, as refugees, along with ethnic Chinese from Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia.
The development of the Chinese community is closely related to food. When post-war Dutch people spoke of "going into town to eat," it usually meant going to a Chinese restaurant. The book seller with the peanut-man song sheet believes it was the Chinese who brought restaurant culture into being in Amsterdam.
At the Amsterdam Historical Museum, the one allusion to the city's Chinese community offers up a typical narrative about a Chinese boy called Gally Wu.
His father had arrived in the Netherlands around 1918, then married a Dutch woman who gave birth to Gally in 1920. In 1927, as shipping went into decline, Gally's father swapped his seaman's pension for a restaurant called Kong Hing on Binnen Bantammerstraat, number 11. The street is still there, with new street signs in Chinese characters, but the Wu restaurant has disappeared.
Young Gally lived on Oude Schans, an old street edging the area now known as the red light district, where most of his neighbours and school mates were Jewish.
The Wu family moved next to the restaurant on Binnen Bantammerstraat when Gally was 12, a street where four other Chinese families lived at the time. The street had been home to boarding houses for Chinese sailors so that an early toy for Gally and his sister was a set of opium scales. The Wu family never went on holiday but were proud to host American entertainer Josephine Baker at Kong Hing in 1932. They had worked hard enough to open a second restaurant in 1936.
Chinese restaurants, then and now, are famous for providing large servings for low prices. But for many Dutch, "Chinese" meant Indonesian dishes such as nasi goreng. By the 1980s, more authentic Chinese food was becoming popular.
The most recent development is the emergence of Asian fast food shops, exploiting the Dutch love of a fast, hot meal as part of a long night of fun in in the entertainment district.
The result of all this eating and general enterprise is a thriving Chinese community which spreads across the Netherlands. Official figures from 2004 reckon a total of 13,000 people of Chinese nationality lived in the country, but this excluded students, illegal immigrants and temporary workers, leading experts to reckon a figure of 70,000 to 100,000 Chinese in the Netherlands as more accurate.
Among a plethora of organizations, newspapers, radio stations and political representation is the Inspraakorgaan Chinezen or IOC, founded to represent, advise and act as intermediary between government and Chinese people. Its 15-member board represents all the main subcultures of Chinese origin.
Now, yet another wave is on its way - tourists from the mainland are being allowed travel visas and are rapidly making their mark on the world's destinations. In 2004, there were 55,000 visitors from China who stayed overnight in Amsterdam. The new travellers like to go to Amsterdam's diamond factories, such as Gassan Diamonds and Coster Diamonds, shopping districts and for quick tours north of the city to see tulips and windmills.
The national tourism board also offers what they call Technical Visits for business and educationalists. Mainland groups can choose, for example, a social welfare tour and be taken to homes for the aged in order to study how Dutch-style government operates.Tours of waste processing and household waste incineration plants are available, to the port authority for a look at water management issues or to cheese farms and wooden shoe makers. Particularly popular are the agriculture and horticulture technical visits, which include trips to the Aalsmeer Flower Auction and various flower markets and industries.
More familiar to the Hong Kong visitor will be the Sea Palace, moored close to the central train station, offering dim sum, VIP rooms and 700 seats in what it claims is Europe's first floating restaurant.
As entrepreneurs in Amsterdam gear up to meet the new demands for a European experience with Chinese characteristics, they are following the footsteps of more than a century of Chinese entrepreneurs.
There's more business than ever before, says Chiwah Chow of Wah Kiu bookstore, most of it fueled by Chinese tourists. Years ago, she and her family used to live above the shop. Now the family can afford homes in the suburbs.
But ask Chiwah where she really feels she is from and she laughs: "I'm made in Hong Kong!"
