The People’s Republic of Desire

61 Culture, with a Bitter Aftertaste

Sue is puzzled by another phenomenon in China: a bowl of noodles costs only six yuan, whereas a cup of coffee costs thirty yuan or more. Sue asks me, "Why has coffee become so expensive in China? It's virtually a luxury item. You actually have to make a thoughtful decision before sitting down to have a cup."

My answer is simple: coffee is culture, coffee is fashion, and drinking coffee is a symbol of status. You pay thirty or forty yuan not just for the coffee but also for the background music, the candlelight on the table, and the yuppie ambience in a coffee shop.

"It sounds like coffee carries a deeper meaning here!" Sue comments.

"Yes, indeed." I nod, and tell Sue the story of my friend Fu and his coffee religion.

In the 1980s, when Nestles instant coffee was first intro duced to China, Fu was one of the first to try it. But he didn't fall in love with the taste of coffee. It reminded him of the taste of banlangen, the bitter Chinese medicine his mother gave him every time he was sick.

Soon he learned that instant coffee didn't taste as good as regular coffee. He decided to buy regular coffee. At that time, the Chinese didn't have access to regular ground coffee, much less coffee beans. With the help of my mother, he got a jar of Columbia coffee at the Beijing Friendship Store.

How to make coffee? He didn't know of the existence of coffee makers. But from the TV advertisements, he learned that coffee needed to be boiled. He put the coffee into a wok that was filled with water. When it was boiled, he drank it along with the residue, thinking it was part of the coffee-drinking experience, just like drinking the tea leaves in the bottom of a cup of tea.

The taste was awful. It ended his passion for coffee until Starbucks came into China almost twenty years later.

Fu discovered that among his wide circle of fashionable friends, all of a sudden "espresso," "latte," and "cappuccino" became cool words to toss around during conversations. His coworkers always brought a cup of Starbucks coffee back to the office after lunch. In order to be fashionable, he turned the Starbucks on the corner into his classroom of culture. He gave himself a crash course on words like "mocha" and "grande," "tall" and "short."

Although the taste of coffee still didn't appeal to him, whenever he was in a restaurant with friends, he always ordered coffee, not tea.

The taste of status was much more appealing than the taste of coffee itself.

At one time, Fu dated a girl named Yao. On their second date, he chose to meet at Starbucks and ordered black coffee for himself and cappuccino for Yao.

Yao had never had a cappuccino in her life. She drank the coffee with the small spoon still in the cup. The spoon, of course, fell to the floor. Fu was displeased and attempted to educate Yao. "You should use the spoon to stir the coffee and then put it down before you drink the coffee."

Yao was humiliated by Fu's condescending tone, "It's not a big deal. I like to drink coffee any way I want."

"Culture is culture," Fu retorted. "If you don't bother to learn about culture, what do we have in common?"

Evidently, they didn't have much in common anyway, as the girl stood up and said, "Stir this," then stormed away angrily.

After hearing the story, Sue is shocked, "So your friend lost his date just like that?"

"Yes!" I say.

"What does he do now, I wonder," Sue asks.

"A few years ago, seeing that Starbucks makes so much money by charging twenty-eight yuan for a cup of coffee, he decided to get himself a share of this lucrative business. So he opened his own independent coffee shop. He charges people thirty-five yuan per cup," I say.

"But in the States, Starbucks is the one that charges more than the independent coffee shops," says Sue, a bit confused.

"I know. For luxury products, here in China, the more expensive it is, the better people think it is. I've heard he is opening his thirteenth coffee shop and is being romanced by investment bankers. He plans to go public and sell shares!"