Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS
Drive east along Marcia Avenue towards Bruma Lake. At the intersection of Derrick Avenue, turn left and blink. You could be forgiven for thinking you had been transported to China.
The Chinese signs jump at you from both sides of the street. Apart from the video shop, the fast-food chicken outlet, and a couple of others that have been there for years, the rest of the stores are new and Chinese.
The middle-class suburb of Cyrildene, with its large houses of face brick and tiled roofs, has experienced a transformation over the past 15 months. And nowhere is this transformation more evident than on the commercial Derrick Avenue. It’s already being called the new Chinatown.
The original Chinatown has always been at the bottom of Commissioner Street, near John Vorster Square. With the flight of business from the city, and many patrons of Chinatown’s restaurants seeking refuge in the upmarket suburbs of the north, perhaps it was inevitable that Chinatown would also look north.
On Derrick Avenue, where once there were a hairdresser, a pizza parlour, a property agent, a hamburger outlet and a delicatessen, now there is a a supermarket, two electronics shops and many restaurants, and they are all Chinese.
Across the street, similar changes have taken place, as they have on most of the properties all the way up to Friedland Avenue, at the north end of Derrick.
The majority of these establishments do not make any bones about the clientele they are catering for. If you cannot read Mandarin you have to go to the door in many instances to even know what’s inside. Often you will come against security gates and a buzzer you have to press to be let in. Or not.
”No work!” may be shouted through the security grill, until you explain that you are not looking for employment. Most of the owners speak very little English and it can take a five-person collaboration to be understood.
It is so with Li Lizng Hai, the proprietor of the North China Dumpling restaurant who has a very limited English vocabulary. The restaurant is empty on this Friday afternoon and Li is enjoying green tea with four friends.
”It’s been empty like this all day,” says Li. ”Who knows, maybe Chinese people feel like rice or noodles on Friday.”
His restaurant is little more than a narrow passage that can barely accommodate five formica tables and tiny plastic bar stools that wouldn’t do well with indigenous backsides. Li laughs and points to a tiny sixth table: ”How do you like my office?”
He does not see the big deal about not having English on his sign. ”It says dumpling,” he shrugs. ”North China Dumpling.”
But the menu is in Chinese and English. Advertised as today’s specials are dumpling regulars like pork and garlic chives, pork and coriander, pork and celery, pork and Chinese cabbage, and variations with beef, lamb and seafood.
Lovers of Chinese cuisine are spoiled for choice on Derrick Avenue. There are 13 restaurants on the street, serving food cooked in various regional styles – Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Korean and the different regions of mainland China.
The interiors are uniformly stark, and the furnishings the barest formica and plastic. The shabbiness and the often cramped circumstances sometimes fall short of licensing regulations.
”You can’t use the same standard for European and Chinese restaurants,” says Steven Ma of the Shi Chuan Chinese Restaurant. ”The health inspector complains about too much oil, but that’s the way Chinese food is prepared!”
Derek Bruce, an inspector in the city’s Trade Licence Department, is inclined to agree
”The traders here are prepared to trade in very small shops,” he says. ”Maybe they are used to such cramped circumstances back home. But the food is good and their target market is their own people. So I think the department should relax some of the laws, like insisting that a kitchen be 16m2.
”We haven’t been rejecting licences outright. We ask for improvements like bringing in an extractor to improve the kitchen.”
Patrons can count on good food, if nothing else. Steven and Maria Ma have been serving Szechuan province-style food for about eight months, in what they believe to be the first Szechuan restaurant in Johannesburg, perhaps the whole of South Africa. As proof, Steven Ma brings out a list of Chinese restaurants compiled by the South African Chinese Restaurant and Catering Association, and indeed the Shi Chuan Chinese Restaurant on Derrick Avenue is the only one on the list.
His patrons – 60% of whom he says are not Chinese – come from the farthest corners of Gauteng, and at the weekend when it’s busy, they can wait up to an hour for a table.
”I tell them to go and eat at another restaurant,” he says, ”and they say they will wait for this food. They can’t get it anywhere else. They tell me it’s delicious.
”In mainland China, Szechuan food is number one,” he explains. All the cooks, including Maria Ma, are from the Szechuan province in the south-west of China, but Steven Ma comes from Beijing.
The Mas came to South Africa five-and-a-half years ago, leaving their two sons, now seven and 11, with grandparents. Until last year they ran a shop near the Carlton Centre selling jewellery, crystal and shoes. Business was not good.
”Johannesburg town is dangerous,” he says. ”On Saturday after you close the shop, you can’t sleep nice because the town is empty. You come back on Monday and everything is broken.”
Ma says he knows many people in Commissioner Street who want to move to Derrick Avenue. Such talk makes the non-Chinese storeowners nervous. Zorro, of the Portuguese-style chicken outlet, Carioca, has been watching the Chinese inflow with a leery eye. He has seen Chinese people buy buildings around him and then kick out tenants. For now his landlord is not selling. But who knows how long Zorro will hold out. Already he feels his business is suffering.
With all the restaurants, none of which have parking on the premises, everyone relies on the municipal parking on the street. Passing customers who just want to grab take-away chicken at Zorro’s shop are not prepared to park kilometres away.
Still, he is moving with the times and has a copy of his menu in Chinese, even though the only Chinese people who venture in are teenagers, for chicken burgers, and very rarely at that.
Perhaps as an indication that this is the new home of Chinese culture in Johannesburg, there are other stores catering for other needs – a jeweller, a couple of seafood merchants, a travel agent, two bottle stores, an acupuncturist, a beauty parlour, a tearoom, a ”Chinese doctor”, a curio shop and five supermarkets. Even some houses along Marcia Avenue are sprouting Chinese signs.
Chinese people have lived in Johannesburg for more than 100 years. In the past 10 years there has been an influx from Singapore and Hong Kong, while more recently, immigrants have come from mainland China.
No one knows exactly how many Chinese there are in South Africa. The Overseas Chinese Gazette, a daily newspaper that has been published out of Johannesburg since 1931, estimates that there are 20 000, while the three-year-old China Express says the figure is between 30 000 and 40 000.
The Gazette sells 2 000 copies from Tuesday to Saturday, while the Express sells 4 500 twice a week. Some of the papers go to subscribers in neighbouring countries.
Andrew Huang, the Gazette’s director, says the paper covers socio-political issues, international news, local community news, news from Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan, entertainment and sports.
”We may have different political systems,” he says, ” but we are the same. And wherever Chinese people go, you will find a Chinatown.”
This new Chinatown in Cyrildene is well placed, just up the road from the tourist hordes that flock to Bruma Lake and the shoppers’ paradise, Eastgate.
At Da Sung Hung supermarket, a man pops in to buy the Gazette and the Express on his way home.
”People who live in Soweto read the Sowetan,” he quips. ”Chinese people read Chinese papers. You see?”
Very clearly.