The Search for the Perfect Coffee Shop

It seems odd that finding a decent café in Beijing, a city nearing 20 million, would be so hard.  And in 90 degree summer heat, it’s not just hard, it’s downright impossible and a painfully grueling task at that.  Taking a stroll around the Peking University (or Beida) area a few days into the semester, I came upon a few of those elements in Chinese culture that reflect its peoples’ deep-rooted appreciation for all things traditional.

Ironically, beyond the gates of the Peking University campus are skyscrapers upon skyscrapers, buildings of vast magnitudes with the occasional Buddhist temple squeezed in between.  The streets are lined with Carrefour supermarkets, mall complexes, and hotels, street food and cell phone part vendors, KTV, and banks.  However, while the area seems developed and modern, I was surprised that being a college neighborhood there wasn’t much else going on.  Even inside the campus there seems to be a shortage of student-run cafes, organizations and clubs.  Cafeterias and small food shops are ample (this is always the case in Asian countries), classroom buildings are jam-packed with students at all hours of the day and the library, of course, is of gargantuan proportions and stands directly in front of the university’s main entrance, naturally, that being the East entrance.

Soon, the start of classes forced me into looking for a suitable study spot—a café of some sort, perhaps, where I could escape my dorm room and interact with local students while enjoying a foamy latte.  I searched—on campus and off—and the best solution I found to my study spot snag was Starbucks.  I was dumbfounded, slightly annoyed and hugely disturbed.  How could this be?  I am living in a prime college student neighborhood and yet I can’t find anything better than the much-overpriced American imported coffee shop?   I soon realized that my perspective of Beijing and Beida was crafted in relation to my summer experience in Taipei, where I spent the last three months studying Chinese.  The bustling college neighborhood I lived in while in Taipei was abuzz with student-run activities and nightlife, and it never took more than a few minutes to find a fun and interesting concert or event to attend, no matter what hour of the day it was.  I was accustomed to frequenting student hotspots where up-and-coming Taiwanese bands or young artists would perform or exhibit their work.  Students had full control of the entire university area—it was hectic and lively.  Certain sectors even brought to mind the cobbled streets of Paris or the quaintness of Georgetown.  Beida, however, seemed more or less, well, dead to me.  Clearly, the mainland has a different plan for its own students, as it takes a 15-minute car ride to get to the nearest student hangout neighborhood.

Walking through the Beida neighborhood, I understood the area’s lack of cafes as being in direct relation to the city’s continued respect for tradition while also portraying a resistance to Western influence.  Obviously, the absolute lack of coffee shops in Beijing is not a government ploy for resisting the influx of Western thought, but coupled with other facts about Beijing, the peoples’ profound deference to tradition seems to make sense, in a way at least.

For instance, I immediately noticed that most Beijingers seem to have been plucked out of an 80s or 90s movie—tight-fitting trousers with denim button-down shirts, dull pastel colors, oversized sweaters, T-shirts and leggings.  In comparison to Taipei, where it seems both men and women live for fashion, people in Beijing are still 20 years in the past, at least in terms of style.  Or like how roads in Beijing are in one of the four compass directions—portraying the traditional culture of Chinese people for aligning buildings in an axis way.  Or, as my uncle who lives in Beijing pointed out, how streets retain their original names, such as Benevolent Cloud Temple, or Safe Stable Gate, or South Little Street, even while the Temple has disappeared, the Gate is no longer there and the Little Street is now a highway.  Instead, I thought one day while walking down the Sweet Water Garden Street, this road should be called Over-priced Strip Mall Street.  That is definitely much more descriptive of what it looks like today.

Looking back on my first few weeks in Beijing—including the airport rush, registration at Peking University, and my walks around the Beida area, it all now seems like a blur of densely packed crowds, renewed tonal deafness, and skies of varied shades of smoky grey.  Beijing is a super compact city—people, buses, crying children, lights and horns, everywhere you look there is an activity or movement of some sort that screams, or honks, for attention.  Different from Taipei? Yes.  Better? No.  Worse? No again.  In Beijing, ancient meets modern, fast meets slow, and progress meets tradition, all in a single moment.  And that is its charm.  Obviously, since the dimensions of Beijing are tenfold those of Taipei, it will take me ten times the time to get to know it well.  Sure, I haven’t had good coffee since coming here and studying in my room or at Starbucks isn’t what I had hoped for, but with China’s first-rate teachers and Beijing’s largest library at my disposal, I don’t worry.  I know I’ll find out what the real Beijing’s all about, even without my foamy fat-free latte.