For All The Coffee In China

Had your first cup of Joe this morning?  Me too.  Love the stuff.  But, I'm in China.  Moreover, Western China, and here, it's truly difficult to locate an establishment that offers a decent cup of brew.  No Starbucks.  Not yet, anyway.

My morning starts with a cup of Nescafe Instant.  Don't laugh, it's better than the so called 'coffee' offered to unsuspecting customers at Mickey D's.  THAT stuff is awful.  A spoonful of Coffee-Mate to help Nescafe render a taste that I find palatable.

As I said at the beginning, it is nearly impossible to find a good cup of java (here).  If you are lucky, and find a good coffee shop, its likely it won't be open when you just have to have your first cup for the day. If you are fortunate and run across a decent shop, and it is open,  the price, without exception, will be  exorbitant.  Price notwithstanding, I will 'spring' for an expensive cup on rare occasion, when, and if, the opportunity presents itself.

This is because THE CHINESE DON' HAVE COFFEE CULTURE!  Right?  Well, maybe. But:

Coffee and Toys and China

Slate’s Daniel Gross has made a couple of lazy and incorrect assumptions in his recent column about real estate in China:

In Shanghai, which is China’s New York, locals and expats are doing their best to foist American-style consumerism onto China’s rising masses—with mixed results. Starbucks has opened several hundred stores, even though China has no coffee-drinking culture to speak of. As it spreads into China, Toys “R” Us is trying to convince higher-income Chinese parents that toys are a part of a childhood, not a distraction from preparation for the all-important national college entrance exams.'

snip

What’s more interesting is the extent that coffee culture differs in China from the West. Few shops serving coffee are open very early, and for the most part Chinese people seem to enjoy their coffee during the late afternoons and evenings. The culture of jamming cups of Joe down in order to satisfy a morning caffeine fix- a culture I wholeheartedly subscribe to- doesn’t really exist. But the popularity of coffee houses throughout the country attests to the rising growth of the number of coffee drinkers in China.

Run on over to Matt Schiavenza's, A China Journal, and finish the article, interesting.

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A good blog - great writing........MATT SCHIAVENZA's, A China Journal.