About

When Yimu moved to Berlin in 2014, fresh off the plane and missing a piece of home, he did what anyone in a new city does: he typed "Chinese language and culture meetup Berlin" into Google. The results page was, embarrassingly for the German capital, almost empty. He stared at the screen and thought, "well - why not start one myself?"

A few weeks later, in a smoky Berlin bar (a Berlin classic), he ran into Xuedi. Hamburger by passport, Beijinger at heart - Xuedi will happily talk you into believing he is more Chinese than half of Beijing, and he has the seven years he spent there to back it up. Five, six, maybe seven beers later, the napkin sketch of a small Chinese-German language and culture meetup had become a real plan.

The idea was simple, almost stubbornly so: get people from everywhere into one room, let them speak Chinese, German, or whatever language they brought along, and see what happens. Whether you are studying Mandarin, brushing up your German, or just curious about another culture - you are welcome at the table.

That first night turned into a regular biweekly rhythm, and the rhythm turned into a community. Since 2015, every other Thursday, somebody walks into the meetup not knowing a single person and walks out with two or three new friends. Tandem partners were paired up, dumpling recipes were exchanged, beers and tea were poured, languages were practiced, butchered, laughed at, and re-practiced - and slowly, all of that became the texture of an actual community.

Ten years on, the group is still going strong. We have moved away from the Meetup platform - too expensive, too rigid, too little of what we actually needed - and onto our own home here at dragon-descendants.de, where we set the rules and pay nobody a per-head fee for our friendships. The community itself, though, is as warm as it was on day one.

有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎？
A friend comes from afar - is that not a reason to celebrate?
-- Confucius

Ten years later, it still very much is.

Yimu & Xuedi