Second-generation Chinese in the Dutch city of Amsterdam are standing up against racial stereotypes as they navigate the contradictions of their traditional upbringing in one of the most permissive societies in the world. In doing so they are forging their own unique voice. So while many still follow the traditional immigration path from the restaurant kitchen to finance and similar professions, a new breed of artists, writers and other Chinese creatives are also emerging. Their experiences have been captured in a new book, Banana Generation , by 34-year-old Sino-Dutch journalist Pete Wu. “My mother and parents of other Chinese Dutch always call us ‘bananas’, because they say you look yellow, but you are white on the inside,” Wu said. “At the same time, I’ve always felt people treat me differently because I look different. I wanted to write the book to show what it is like living between two cultures and also to find answers for myself.” There are well over 100,000 Chinese people living in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics. If you count illegal migrants and those of mixed heritage, the real number could be double that. The majority come from mainland China, followed by Hong Kong, with smaller Chinese communities from the former Dutch colonies of Indonesia and Surinam. My mother and parents of other Chinese Dutch always call us ‘bananas’, because they say you look yellow, but you are white on the inside Pete Wu Squeezed between Amsterdam’s dwindling red light district, where scantily clad sex workers sit in windows, and the bustling tourist zone of Nieuwmarkt, it could be easy to miss the Dutch city’s Chinatown. There is no giant arch marking the beginning of the area’s main artery, Zeedijk, a narrow road of late medieval houses that once held back the sea. But a stroll down this increasingly hip street soon reveals the city’s strong Chinese presence. The Chinese first began arriving in Amsterdam at the turn of the last century, mainly sailors from Guangdong hired as cheap labour, according to a book We Need Two Worlds , published 20 years ago by Professor Li Minghuan, one of China’s leading experts in diaspora studies. Some of them jumped ship and settled in boarding houses near Amsterdam’s Chinatown, and found work as coal stokers. They were then followed by migrants from Wenzhou and Qingtian, peddlers of neck ties and for the latter group, soapstone statues, made popular with the Dutch aristocracy after a Qingtian man gave an incense burner with two lions playing with a pearl to the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina. During the recession of the 1930s, many Chinese “Amsterdamers” scraped by selling peanut cake. In World War II, they suffered like the Dutch under German occupation. Li cited stories of Chinese pretending to be Japanese to escape Nazi cruelties. After the war, a new wave of Chinese arrived from Hong Kong and the mainland, some escaping the Cultural Revolution followed by Chinese from the newly independent colonies of Surinam and also Indonesia, where the Chinese community has faced discrimination and violence. Almost all of them started out in menial jobs in the catering trade or running grocery shops. A lot of people have this image about Amsterdam that it is this free tolerant city but that is totally not true Sioejeng Tsao In another twist of history, just a few hundred metres from where the Chinese migrants settled, is the old headquarters of the Dutch East India Company. Like the British, the Dutch were also keen to trade and even plunder China for its porcelain and tea. In 1624, the Dutch took control of Taiwan and ruled it until 1662, when the pirate Zheng Chenggong (better known as Koxinga) swept them off the island, bringing it under Chinese rule. Amsterdam’s Chinatown is today in the throes of gentrification. But dotted between the “coffee shops” selling cannabis and trendy boutiques, there remains a handful of vintage east Asian supermarkets and restaurants. The Chinese who helped make tiny Mauritius an African success story About halfway down Zeedijk, stands Europe’s largest Chinese-style Buddhist temple. The He Hua temple was opened nearly 20 years ago by the reigning monarch of the time Queen Beatrix and was financed mainly by the Dutch state. There is the Hoi Tin bakery and restaurant selling delicious egg cakes, and the first Nam Kee restaurant, now part of a chain, made famous by a Dutch book and film Oysters at Nam Kee’s, after the restaurant’s signature dish. There are Chinese restaurants from Surinam dishing up Hakka pork belly fused with friend creole plantain and Sino-Indonesian restaurants serving up babi pangang – a Chinese/Indonesian dish that Chinese migrants served up to returning Dutch colonists, and is still popular today. The area has changed enormously since the “sin city” days of the 1970s and early 1980s, when many of Amsterdam’s older generation arrived. Liverpool blues: the sad decline of Europe’s oldest Chinatown Then, the area was notorious for drug dealing, gambling and prostitution, sometimes with Chinese Triads and snakeheads involved. “There were special tables in restaurants that you wouldn’t touch, the owners were given thousands of gilders to keep them free in case they were needed by the bosses,” said Henk Lie, whose family came from Surinam in the 1970s, and who now owns a celebrated comic shop in Amsterdam’s Chinatown, on the same premises his parents had a Chinese grocery store. “I remember my parents going grocery shopping in Chinatown and at certain times my mother would say close your eyes because there would be prostitutes and a lot of junkies,” said Peter “Masta” Lee, 44, a DJ, former champion skateboarder and creative director of Patta, a hip Amsterdam streetwear store. His paternal grandfather, a scholar, was executed during the Cultural Revolution and his father escaped to Amsterdam from Holland where he met his mother, who came from Hong Kong. “They met in the restaurant world as many overseas Chinese do,” Lee said. Even though by the age of 14 he was making more money than his father as a professional skateboarder, his father struggled with the idea his son “could make a living riding a wooden plank”. “He thought I was getting into crime,” Lee said. Chinese coffee seller back in business after East London locals save stall from gentrification Like most of the people interviewed by Wu in Banana Generation , Lee said he suffered racism growing up, getting into fist fights, but that it was worse in rural areas. “There is a huge divide between big city people and small-town village people – and now we have the super racist people coming out of the woodwork and feel like it’s OK to be vocal.” But there are challenges for minorities in Amsterdam, which is among the most culturally diverse cities in the world. “A lot of people have this image about Amsterdam that it is this free tolerant city but that is totally not true,” said artist Sioejeng Tsao, whose father is from China and mother is Sino-Indonesian. “Every Chinese person that grows up in the Netherlands has this contradiction, they don’t really know who they are or who they want to be.” She said the main problem was the lack of Chinese and other ethnic minorities represented in the media. “You don’t find anywhere where you feel included in this society.” It was a Chinese PhD student Xiao Wang who unwittingly exposed the undercurrent of racism in Dutch society when he entered popular TV show Holland’s Got Talent in 2013. When he said he was going to be singing an aria from Verdi’s Rigoletto, the show’s host, Gordon, a well-known singer Dutch TV celebrity, said: “Which number are you singing? Number 39 with rice?” The cheap, unfunny gags continued after Xiao’s performance as Gordon added: “This is the best Chinese I’ve had in weeks, and it’s not a takeaway”. His comments triggered a stream of complaints and made international headlines. Restaurants in Chinatown responded by offering a 39 per cent discount on number 39 dishes in their restaurants. To this day Gordon, has not officially apologised. “A lot of people think to be Dutch you have to have blonde hair and blue eyes,” Tsao said. “Even in 2019 I have to fight against this every day - and not without a reason.” But after a sojourn in the Dutch countryside, where she was bullied and teased, on returning to Amsterdam, Tsao realised that the fast pace of the city, and its free and easy attitudes to drugs in particular, was messing up a lot of young people from all communities. In response she started her own streetwear fashion label, Sick Kids of Amsterdam. The story of Wu, author of Banana Generation , also highlights other problems faced by young Chinese people. The son of immigrants from Wenzhou, a port and industrial city in China’s Zhejiang province, he tells of his struggle from being the “golden boy” to coming out as a gay man – a fact his family have now accepted, but not before whisking him off to China and trying to persuade him into an arranged marriage. “I had come out of closet to parents which wasn’t great. Then my mother took me to China for a wedding of a cousin. But when we got there, she tried to match me to a potential bride,” he said. In his book he tells of racism in the gay community, with Asians not allowed on gay dating sites and of being interviewed on a Dutch radio station and being asked: “how many Chinese eat dogs”. “From the 45 Chinese Dutchmen I spoke with, I learned that if we don’t get the life we dreamed of as small children, then we will look for it ourselves. Then, we will storm the gates of heaven and will gradually take paradise back, until people no longer see us as ‘those others’, but others see us as people,” Wu wrote at the end of the book. “We have turned our shame into pride.” He said the writing process also taught him to accept and understand what his parents went through, working long hours in restaurants, and why they had so little time and energy to talk to their children and help them navigate the “two worlds” that Professor Li wrote about 20 years earlier.