Mandarin: Emerging communities

21 Jun 2012, 11:30 am   -   Source: Andy Park, SBS
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Take down the red lanterns: Sydney restaurateur Diana Ren symbolises the rise of the monied Chinese middle class, as they push Cantonese off the list as the most-spoken Chinese language in Australia for the first time.

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By Andy Park

Diana Ren’s customers sometimes gaze down her menu of modernised Shanxi province specialities and say “but I want real Chinese food”.

They sit under sleek designer lighting straight out of a cutting-edge Shanghai nightclub.

But gone are the day-glo sweet and sour pork and the stodgy Mongolian lamb that spun around lazy susans across Australia since the Cantonese gold rush of the 1850s.

“We serve fresh handmade noodles, authentic Peking duck and the final stage will be artistic conceptual Chinese cuisine,” the entrepreneurial 28-year-old year-old Mrs Ren announces.

Dan's House, Mrs Ren’s fledgling restaurant in Sydney’s CBD, is one of a new wave of mainland Chinese eateries that not only reflect China’s flourishing middle-class, but a significant tipping point in Australian immigration.

For every customer who is challenged by Mrs Ren's departure from what Australians have always called "Chinese", there are just as many who recognise the familiar swish lines of the interior of a neoteric Chinese eatery.

The latest census data shows that for the first time, the numbers of Mandarin-speakers in Australia has overtaken the historically dominant Cantonese.

After the first wave of Cantonese-speaking Chinese came to Victoria in search of gold rush profits in what was then called “New Gold Mountain”, the second wave arrived after the Vietnam War.

A relaxation of immigration legislation in the 1970s saw an influx of Cantonese-speaking Hoa from the Saigon region, who were often mistaken for Vietnamese.

The recent rise of the Mandarin-speaker rests largely on the back of increased trade, entrepreneurship and ever-buoyant student numbers.

Ms Ren perfectly embodies this shift toward Mandarin-speakers in Chinese Australia.

Born to a successful merchant family in her native Shanxi province in central China, she came to study a double-business major at the University of New South Wales.

She met her husband there, who is also from mainland China.

With no restaurant experience, but with the financial backing of her father, she set about opening a restaurant near, but no too near, Sydney’s predominantly Cantonese Chinatown.

“China developed very fast. All restaurants look similar to my restaurant, it’s not like really old-fashioned,” Mrs Ren said.

Dan’s House looks and feels like the new money that has come to represent the affluent Chinese middle class.

Her business even satisfies the tastes of a her upwardly-mobile and health-savvy patrons, by serving duck that is not flash fried.

There is even sashimi on the menu.

But there is still a lazy susan in the sumptuously decorated VIP dining room.

The huge custom-made marble table imported from China has been modernized with an electric motor.

Census , Andy Park SBS

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Your Comments

Dan's house

John - from Ultimo, 11 months ago

That was a nice interview! I have tried their duck, It was really delicious and had a nice twist! The food certainly evoked a sense of modern chinese food. Brilliant!

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