The Vietnamese community in Berlin’s Dong Xuan Centre

The Centre, often called Berlin’s Vietnamese Mall, lies at the commercial heart of Berlin’s 60,000-strong and growing Vietnamese community. It is a recommended Berlin destination replete with guided tour groups.

In the 1970s, following the end of the war with the US, Vietnamese migrated to both East and West Germany in large numbers, with the majority relegated to work at menial jobs in state-run industries.

Thousands of migrants flowed into West Germany to power its economy, while on the eastern side, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), sought to bolster its workforce with unskilled Gastarbeiter, or ‘guest workers’, to help build socialism.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, thousands of Vietnamese guest workers lost their jobs during the sell-off of the GDR’s industrial base and returned to Vietnam, aided by a policy of the newly-reunified German government offering free airfare.

But the majority of Vietnamese migrants chose to remain and many flocked from the former manufacturing centres of Leipzig, Rostock and Chemnitz to Berlin’s eastern neighbourhoods like Lichtenberg and Marzahn.

People with Vietnamese backgrounds now comprise 10% of the inhabitants in the borough of Marzahn-Hellendorf and are represented in strong numbers in neighbouring districts.

Those who stayed have taken to capitalism with gusto. In the Centre, wholesale outlets sell everything needed to furbish a restaurant, bubble tea stand or nail bar – industries that Berlin’s Vietnamese dominate.

However, the food is the main attraction.

Berlin has many outstanding Vietnamese restaurants, from the trendy Monsieur Vuong in Mitte’s upmarket Alte Schönhauser Strasse, to the inexpensive and cheerful Hamy Café on the Hermannplatz.

However, the dishes have been toned down a bit to suit German tastes and lack the real aroma of Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. At the Centre, frequented by students and bargain hunters, the lunchtime diners serve primarily north Vietnamese fare.

There are classic dishes that can be found all over Berlin – steaming bowls of Pho beef noodle soup and Bun Cha, sliced grilled pork in fish sauce, served with rice noodles and fresh herbs – but the dishes here are saltier, spicier and more flavourful.

There are also rarer specialties like Banh Ran, rice balls rolled in sesame seeds and filled with sweetened mung bean paste, and seafood options including squid, crab and grilled eel. Three courses can set you back as little as US$14.

For the Centre as a whole, business is booming. The first hall opened its doors in 2005, and it has been expanding steadily since; there are now nine buildings and more are planned.

In 2010, Nguyen van Hien, the director of the Centre, told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper that its role models were the great Chinatowns of the US, Canada and Australia.

The Centre is distinctly un-German like. Its success reflects the wider success of Berlin’s Vietnamese, whose numbers now reach approximately 60,000, the capital’s largest Asian population.

In the last two decades, the former negative image of the Vietnamese community has been erased, with the Centre having played a crucial role in bringing about the change— and reminding everyone that Vietnamese are truly an international people.