No ‘auf wiedersehen,’ this family staying put
Print Edition
AT a reception in 1987, German diplomat Wolfgang Roehr and a researcher named Silvia Kettelhut met in Beijing for the first time, little knowing that their subsequent married life would play out against the backdrop of a grand transformation in China.
“In our foreign service, you can choose to apply for vacancies available around the world, and I chose to come back to China whenever possible,” Roehr tells Shanghai Daily at his house just down the street from the German Consulate-General in Shanghai on Yongfu Road.
The former consul general and his family have been living there on and off for more than 10 years.
After he left Beijing, Roehr returned to China on three separate assignments. He has been consul general of Germany in Shanghai twice, for a total of nine years.
When he retired three years ago, the family chose to remain in the city.
“Every time we come back, it is like homecoming for us,” he says. “We slip back into a familiar environment, with the same staff and same neighborhood. Yet the city is always changing.”
His daughter Sophia came to Shanghai at the tender age of seven weeks.
“One of my first memories of life here is sitting on the swing at the kindergarten just down the street, not wanting to go in the mornings and not wanting to leave in the afternoons,” says Sophia, now an eighth-grader, unconsciously slipping into Chinese phrases every now and then.
“Shanghai is my home,” she adds. “I speak Mandarin. I can maybe also say a few lines in Shanghainese. I love the local food, like xiaolongbao (steamed dumplings). I never feel like an outsider here, except maybe when people compliment my Chinese too much.”
Local residents of Shanghai are used to foreigners in their midst, but a foreign teenager who speaks Chinese fluently catches their attention. Sophia recently won third prize in a Shanghai Library writing and photography contest for a Chinese story she wrote entitled “Uncle Cat of Shanghai.”
Kettelhut is also a fluent Chinese speaker and has translated some of her favorite Chinese novels into German. An East Asian studies major, she went to Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, to study Chinese for a year in 1986. She does a lot of research on the history of China-Germany relations.
Change in heritage awareness
Kettelhut co-founded the monthly forum “Explore Shanghai Heritage” in 2002 to discuss and raise awareness of local heritage. The forum has gone beyond its original expatriate focus to include local participants and a wide range of cultural activities.
“When we first started in 2002, there were still many old shikumen (stone-gate) houses in the city, but people didn’t really care about the history or heritage then,” says Kettelhut. “Many of the houses were subsequently demolished. Now that has completely changed. Many people, especially younger Chinese, want to protect their heritage.
“In the early days, I bought every book I could find about Shanghai architecture because there were so few of them. Now, it is impossible because there are so many.”
When Roehr returned to Beijing in 1996, some colleagues asked him “Why China again?” He replied that they clearly failed to grasp its future significance. Now China has become Germany’s most important trading partner, with tens of thousands of visas issued every month.
When the Roehrs decided to stay on in Shanghai after he retired, everyone just took it for granted. The former diplomat now makes good use of his years of diplomatic experience by teaching. He is a senior research fellow in the German Studies Center at Shanghai Tongji University.
“Between my two postings in 2002 and 2010 and now, German influence has certainly grown steadily,” he says. “We have around 3,000 German companies in and around the area doing all sorts of businesses. We have many more visas to issue every year, and more cultural and academic projects and exchange programs.”
The changes never cease to amaze.
“Shanghai has always seemed to me a convenient place to live in since my first visit in 1996, and it has become even more so with great progress in public transportation and technology,” he says.
Sophia is the one in charge of the new technology at home. She expertly uses mobile apps to order goods and teaches her parents every new development in areas such as carpooling apps.
“It is so convenient to live here,” she says. “You can order everything, and it sometimes feels like you don’t have to leave home at all.”
She and her mother have watched the evolution from a bicycle to an automobile society, and now they see a return of cycling. “I first visited Shanghai in 1986,” says Kettelhut, “and there were only buses and bikes. The lanes for bikes were very wide. Then people started to buy cars and the streets got congested. Now, with a new age of environmental awareness, bikes are back again. History is like a spiral going forward.”
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