A Romantic Comedy
Romantic Comedy · Bavaria Meets China
Dumpling and Bavarian Radish
She’s buying the company. The groom she picked out for her sister.
Shenzhen, the 68th floor, three in the morning. Lin Meiling, known in the West as Clara, is twenty-eight and runs a chip company. She is missing exactly one process, and it belongs to a small optics firm in a Bavarian village by a lake. Old Mr Brenner is even willing to sell. But the company charter of 1954 contains a sentence no lawyer can get rid of: the firm stays in the family. Whoever wants it has to marry in.
To Clara, that is a problem with a solution. She has a younger sister: Miriam, twenty-two, competitive gamer, techno until sunrise. And the Brenners have an eldest son: Jack, thirty-four, professor of literature, specialist in Romanticism, and a writer of romance novels on the side. Clara plans the engagement like a takeover, with milestones, a deadline and clear responsibilities.
The plan has weak points. Miriam thinks Jack is a great friend and nothing more. Jack’s little brother Rudi looks at Miriam once and is lost. And Jack, who dazzles a full lecture hall, says exactly the wrong thing, calmly and with total conviction, whenever Clara is in the room.
Between beer tent and banquet, dirndl bows and baijiu, sauna rituals and red envelopes, every prejudice Germans ever held about the Chinese collides with every prejudice the Chinese ever held about Germans. The village innkeeper adds his own contribution to international understanding: dumplings filled with radish. They taste terrible.
A romantic comedy about a woman who wins every negotiation, and a man who loses his words with her of all people.