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!"
62 Class Differences in Communist China
Being called xiaozi, or petit bourgeois, was dangerous during the Cultural Revolution. Although not as bad as being labeled counterrevolutionary, the petit bourgeois were condemned and assaulted by Red Guards if they so much as wore high-heeled shoes, permed their hair, or committed some other "offense" against the People's Fashion.
Gone are the days when beauty and fashion are deemed counterrevolutionary. Today, xiaozi is one of the most glorious words in the Chinese lexicon, representing an emerging army of cool people. They read the Chinese versions of Elle and Cosmopolitan instead of the Peoples Daily and take pride in drinking coffee rather than tea. They may not be rich enough to own cars or condos, but they own taste. They don't hesitate to spend a third of their monthly salary on a Luciano Pavarotti concert.
Lulu proudly calls herself a xiaozi. During a break in our weight-loss class, Lulu chats with Beibei and me about the new class concepts in China. "Because China is changing so fast, the society has become more segmented than ever," Lulu lectures. "Everybody is looking for a new label. Our magazine has to constantly study demographics to get a handle on our readers. Results show that our magazine serves xiaozi people like me, but not people like Beibei."
"I'm not a petit bourgeois?" asks Beibei.
"Of course not," Lulu replies, as if it was obvious. "You're a xingui, a member of the new elite who reads Fortune magazine or BusinessWeek. "
"What makes me a member of the new elite?" asks Beibei.
I interject: "Your income and your lifestyle. You drive a BMW. You have lovers. You attend banquets every week."
"Who are we?" Beibei wonders.
Lulu explains: "You're the group that has benefited most from the open-door policy. You can be Communists or Capitalists, but often the combination of the two are the big gest winners."
I ask, "What type of people are both communists and capitalists? I read Karl Marx's Capital. They are certainly not in there."
Lulu explains: "They are the kids who grew up in upper-class families in Beijing or Shanghai, then received an education in the West, and later work for multinational investment banks or Fortune 500 companies. Chief executives and presidents of privatized companies that were formerly state-owned. Popular singers, actors…"
Beibei asks Lulu: "What about Niuniu? Which group does she belong to?"
"I'm definitely an antielitist. I'd never drive a BMW to show off," I say to Beibei.
"Niuniu, you're a bobo!" Lulu says, as if she is a scientist classifying rare animals.
"A bobo?" I laugh.
"Yes," says Lulu, "the most fashionable group, better sounding than the middle class or the petite bourgeoisie. The bobo concept, of course, comes from an American book called Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. "
"What does it mean?" I ask, not having read the book.
"Bourgeois bohemians," Lulu explains. "The next issue of my magazine is a special issue about the bobos. I know everything about this group."
"Bourgeois bohemians. I love the sound of it. So what makes me a bobo?" I ask.
"You drive an SUV," says Lulu.
"Yes. I love camping." I nod.
"You read Time magazine. Your English is perfect. You love to travel and toss around words like Tibet, Bali, and Shangri-la. You're almost a vegetarian. You have more than fifteen years of education. You sleep under down quilts. You are often seen with a Sony or an Apple laptop at Starbucks. You have an iPod. You listen to new age music and do yoga. You're no different from those bobos in New York except that you carry the latest cell phone model and they don't really care much about cell phones. You pay less for manicures and derm-abrasion and rentals than they do. The whole point is that among the Chinese, bobos are the most cosmopolitan group."
I say: "It does sound like me. But I don't like stereotypes."
"You even sound boboistic!" Lulu says, smiling at me, proud of the word she has just coined. "You believe in individualism and refuse to be categorized. But you should feel lucky to be categorized in the bobo class. You might have been born into the hobo class, like the migrant workers who live in the south of the city."
I reply: "Communism's goal is to eliminate class differences. But now Chinese people seem to enjoy classifying themselves."