The Not-So-Chinese Future of Europe’s Chinese Eateries

Chen Xiaoying wrote

In the Netherlands, just like in other parts of the world, running a Chinese restaurant has provided a livelihood to generations of Chinese immigrants. During their heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, many of these establishments branded themselves as Chinese-Indonesian restaurants and served a mix of the two cuisines. Then, in the 1980s, Dutch-Chinese restaurants gradually adopted fresher, more authentic and specifically Chinese ingredients, offering the country’s growing Chinese community regional dishes from Beijing, Shanghai, and Sichuan.

But there are signs that the Chinese restaurant business is not as appealing as it once was. Beginning in the 1990s, a handful of Dutch-Chinese began taking over local chip shops — restaurants serving quick and simple Western fare like fries, hamburgers, hot dogs, and sandwiches. Since the early 2000s, and especially after the 2008 financial crisis, the shift from “authentic” Chinese restaurants to Western-style chip shops among the local Chinese restaurateur community has picked up speed.

According to a survey by a major industry association, there were roughly 2,000 Chinese-operated chip shops in the Netherlands in 2018. Another survey found that the number of “Chinese-Indonesian” restaurants in the country had dropped from 1,900 to 1,600 between 2014 and 2019, a decline of roughly 13%.

Chinese chip shops are not a phenomenon unique to the Netherlands. Similar trends are taking place in Italy, where a growing number of coffee shops are Chinese-run, and Spain, where Chinese restaurateurs are increasingly opening bars. Although it may seem strange at first, for many Chinese restaurant operators, the shift to local cuisine simply makes sense. To start, since the 1980s, the Netherlands has implemented immigration policies that limit the employment of workers from outside the European Union, resulting in a shortage of qualified Chinese chefs. Although these policies have been adjusted in the decades since, the requirements for non-EU chefs remain high. Meanwhile, consumer expectations have risen as more and more diners have grown accustomed to the kind of high-quality Chinese cuisine that only skilled chefs can make.

Compounding the issue is the increasingly competitive dining industry landscape. Chinese restaurants must compete directly with other Asian cuisines like Japanese, Thai, and Korean for a relatively limited market share, all while being squeezed by the rise of fast food chains and even frozen options at the grocery store.

By contrast, the requirements for running a chip shop are quite low. Chip shops in the Netherlands require only a sanitation license to operate, making them appealing to newly arrived immigrants. The industry is also far less competitive. Fries are something of a national snack in the Netherlands and equally popular with tourists. Chip shops are cheap to operate, require comparatively little investment, and have low labor overhead. “Traditional Chinese restaurants are difficult to run these days,” one of my research participants explained. “Compared to that, buying and running a chip shop is very simple. The chips are all half-prepared, so you only need to fry them, which saves on labor.”

But the real driver of the chip shop trend may be generational change, both among the Dutch-Chinese restaurateur community and their chip shop-owning counterparts.

Many Chinese restaurants are family owned, but the younger generation is not necessarily willing or even able to take them over. Often highly educated — one report found that 85% of second-generation Dutch-Chinese had higher education qualifications — they are often uninterested in the catering industry. Those that are frequently don’t want to run Chinese restaurants. In my fieldwork, I found that second-generation Dutch-Chinese tend to be less influenced by their Chinese heritage; in many cases, their Chinese language and Chinese culinary abilities are also limited. This makes it harder for them to communicate with their largely Chinese chefs and leaves them reliant on their parents.

A Chinese restaurant owner in Delft I spoke to was insistent that his eldest son, who had worked for a Dutch hotel for many years and was skilled in cooking Western cuisine, should quit his job for a position at the family’s Chinese restaurant. But even he had to acknowledge that the son was only qualified to be an assistant. “He can only help out — he can’t take over a Chinese restaurant,” the man told me. “He speaks Dutch and English, and only understands a little Chinese. With his language like that, he can’t communicate with the kitchen at all. Also, the chef will gauge him — if he measures up, the chef will listen to him. But is he more proficient than the chef?”

However, if they do decide to take over a chip shop, young Dutch-Chinese enjoy distinct advantages over their parents in linguistic ability, social networks, and cultural familiarity. And making the switch has only gotten easier as chip shops face their own intergenerational crisis: Beginning at the turn of the millennium, a wave of Dutch chip shop owners hit peak retirement age, while their kids and younger relatives balked at the work involved in taking over their parents’ restaurants.

It’s worth noting that the line between Chinese restaurant and chip shop is blurring as more Dutch-Chinese take over the latter. Although traditional chip shops offer very limited menus, many Chinese owners have found success by offering new items and adopting practices from the Chinese restaurant industry, including longer hours. One interviewee said his profits had increased by over 200% after he decided to keep the shop open seven days a week and began selling classic Chinese snack foods like spring rolls and fried rice alongside chips and skewers.

Ultimately, the shift from Chinese restaurants to chip shops is simply the most pragmatic and rational choice for the current generation of Dutch-Chinese. They are immigrants, and their goal is not simply to transplant or maintain their own cultural traditions, but to adapt them to the institutional, cultural, and market realities of their new homes.

Source: Sixth Tone

 

 

 

 

7 Things to Know about How Stroke Is Different for Women

Michael Merschel wrote . . . . . . . . .

Stroke can be devastating for anyone. But the risks and symptoms of a stroke are not always the same in women and men.

American Heart Association News asked experts to explain a few of the most significant differences – and what women can do to protect themselves.

Women have more risk from high blood pressure

Women and men share many classic risk factors for stroke, said Dr. Tracy Madsen, an associate professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Such factors include high blood pressure, diabetes and a type of irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation.

Of all factors, high blood pressure influences stroke risk the most. And “for a given level of high blood pressure, the risk of stroke may be actually higher for women than men,” Madsen said.

Guidelines from the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology define high blood pressure as a systolic (top number) of 130 or higher or a diastolic (bottom number) of 80 or higher. A reading of less than 120/80 is considered normal.

Research has shown that a woman with a systolic blood pressure of 120 to 129 – a range defined as elevated blood pressure – has the same risk of stroke as a man with a systolic reading of 140 to 149, said Dr. Cheryl Bushnell, a professor of neurology and vice chair of research at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“I think that brings up a lot of questions, obviously, about how whether men and women should be treated” differently for elevated blood pressure, she said.

Pregnancy complications can pose a lifelong risk

Some risk factors affect only women. “Probably one of the most important is pregnancy,” Bushnell said.

Pregnancy is often likened to a stress test for the heart. Blood volume and the heart’s output increase by about 45% compared with pre-pregnancy levels.

Complications during pregnancy can raise the risk of stroke. Preeclampsia, a condition that causes high blood pressure and can cause organs to not function normally, can lead to an immediate stroke. It also raises a woman’s lifelong stroke risk.

As many as 1 in 5 pregnant women have problems such as premature labor, gestational diabetes and other conditions that are labeled as adverse pregnancy outcomes. All those conditions can lead to an increased risk of stroke later in life. That includes ischemic stroke, where a clot blocks blood flow to the brain, or hemorrhagic stroke, where a vessel in the brain ruptures and bleeds.

Early menopause is another risk unique to women, Bushnell said. A woman who stops having periods before age of 45, and especially before 40, has a higher stroke risk than a woman who has menopause at the usual age of 50 to 54.

A 2020 study in the journal Stroke suggests that stroke risk is higher among young women ages 25 to 44 than their male peers. “It’s certainly not lower,” said Madsen, a co-author of the study. To her, the bottom line is “strokes do happen in that age group, and people should be aware of their own risk factors and the warning signs.”

Stroke can look different in women

Traditional stroke symptoms are the same for women and men and can be remembered through the acronym FAST: “F” for face drooping; “A” for arm weakness; “S” for speech difficulty; and “T” for time to call 911.

But women are more likely to have additional symptoms, including nausea, loss of consciousness or appearing confused.

Women also are more likely to have migraines, which can double their risk of clot-caused strokes, according to a 2023 review of research in the Journal of Stroke co-authored by Bushnell. She said migraines with aura are particularly associated with increased stroke risk and can include flashing lights or even a loss of vision.

Such symptoms of migraine with aura, along with numbness or weakness, can overlap with stroke, Madsen said, which “can make the diagnosis more challenging and lead to possible delays in diagnosis.”

Ethnic and racial comparisons

Among most racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., the death rate for stroke is similar between men and women, according to AHA statistics. Black women, however, have a notably lower death rate than Black men. But even so, the death rate for both was significantly higher than for other races and ethnicities.

Disparities also exist between women. For example, Black women are twice as likely to have a stroke as non-Hispanic white women, says the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Bushnell said Black women also have higher rates of pregnancy complications related to high blood pressure compared to Hispanic and non-Hispanic white women.

Such issues, Madsen said, reflect problems with access to health care and other social factors that influence health.

What happens after a stroke

According to the latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics, stroke ranked fourth among the leading causes of death for women in 2021. Among men, it was fifth.

Because women live longer than men, they are more likely to have a stroke during their lives. “Women tend to be somewhere around six years older at the time that they have their first stroke compared to the men,” Madsen said. “That might be part of why stroke tends to be more debilitating in women.”

Studies have found that after a stroke, women have a lower quality of life than men and are less likely to recover full abilities.

How women can protect themselves

Women need to know their blood pressure and, if it’s high, make sure they’re working with a doctor to manage it, Madsen said.

She and Bushnell both said the best way to prevent a stroke is to follow Life’s Essential 8 – a checklist from the AHA that encourages not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, staying physically active, eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep and maintaining blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol levels within the normal range.

Pregnant women should be especially aware of the risks of high blood pressure, Bushnell said, and work with their OB-GYN to monitor and, if necessary, treat it.

“Some women may be reluctant to take medications because of fear for the baby, which I totally understand,” she said. “But there are safe medications.” And, Bushnell emphasized, the risks of high blood pressure related to pregnancy don’t end when the pregnancy does.

‘There’s a lot that we don’t know’

Women have been underrepresented in studies about stroke, Bushnell said, but researchers are working to remedy that.

“There’s a lot of active work going on trying to understand the reasons for some of these sex differences,” Madsen said, such as the role of hormones in stroke risk. “There’s a lot that we don’t know. But the community of stroke researchers are working very hard.”

Source: American Heart Association

 

 

 

 

Browned Butter Pecan Crisp

Ingredients

Topping

5 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons canola oil
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Filling

3 pounds peaches, sliced (about 6 cups)
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1-1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
cooking spray

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. To prepare topping, place butter in a small saucepan; cook over medium heat 3 minutes or until browned and very toasty-fragrant. Remove from heat; stir in oil and vanilla. Cool slightly.
3. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour, oats, 1-1/2 cup sugar, and salt in a medium bowl; drizzle with butter mixture. Toss well to completely incorporate so there are no floury bits left.
4. To prepare filling, place peaches in a large bowl. Combine 1-1/2 cup sugar and cornstarch, stirring well; sprinkle over peaches. Toss well to combine. Spoon peach mixture into a 2-quart glass or ceramic baking dish coated with cooking spray. Top with topping. Bake at 375°F for 40 minutes or until topping is lightly browned and filling is bubbly. Serve warm.

Makes 9 servings.

Source: Everyday Whole Grain

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