Starbucks with Chinese Characteristics
“I can’t today,” I tell Valerie at the entryway of Starbucks, or 星巴克。
“Just wait, it will quiet down in an hour or two,” she urges me inside and we order our Cold Brews, elbowing past a grandmother chasing her tantrum-throwing grandson into the coffee shop.
“过来， 过来!” she yells for him. “Come back!”
The little boy is sobbing and infuriated. She grabs his arm, but he jumps around and slaps her, hard, in the face, his four year old palm making a biting sound against her flesh. She seems unable to move, completely flabbergasted and unprepared for this modern incarnation of filial being. The screaming child throws himself to the ground before rising again to pummel her thighs and arms, reaching up to pull her hair and scratch her face. She is stone solid, only moving to defend herself agains the little boy’s blows. It is a horrifying scene.
People are staring, expressionless, but mostly just stepping around them to enter the Starbucks. The lanky gothic barista, English name Milk, passes out free samples of the new Java Chip Green Tea Frappuccino in tiny cups, gingerly pulling attention away from the screaming child. The whipped cream has been dusted with maca powder. Every cup has a tiny green straw.
Valerie and I find a table in the corner and pull our laptops from our bags. At a glance, I spy 11 iPhones, 4 MacBook Airs, and an iPad. Every seat is taken and three little boys run shoeless back and forth across the scrubbed granite floor, shrieking and trying to catch one another. A businessman, shirt unbuttoned to the last, has just lit a cigarette.
“Waiter!” yells a woman from the corner table.
“Waiter! Waiter! Waiter!” But no one responds and she leaves after using the bathroom.
Then, a flurry of people all rush out together, like a school of fish. The smoothie machine has been buzzing in the background this entire time, I realize. The tantrum-throwing boyhas escaped from the Starbucks and run into the Haagen Dazs ice cream store.
The store goes quiet. Dave Brubeck comes on the stereo. Through the wall of glass, we in Starbucks can see him violently pushing empty chairs onto the ground in Haagen Dasz.
“I love this song,” the girl with the Keds murmers to her boyfriend, putting her hand on his leg as she scrolls through a Korean beauty blog.
A toothless old man in homemade wicker sandals stops to rest inside the store, enjoying the air conditioning. He looks around him at the wrought iron ceiling molding. At the tiny macaroons on display for USD $4/piece. He looks at the young Chinese woman in her Keds, with her gel manicures and Michael Kors watch. He looks at all of this and goes away again.
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Later that night, Valerie and I meet her colleague, a professor of gender studies at a local university for dinner. The professor, English Name Elaine, has brought her friend, English Name Also Valerie (“beautiful name!” jokes American Valerie).
Elaine left Xi’an for a Ph.D. in the US in 1999 and returned ten years later.
“It was a new city, a new country, when I returned. I couldn’t even find the main university gate when I got back.”
“So,” Elaine asks me, “where do you live?”
“Chang’an, with Valerie” I say.
“Oh, I live there as well,” says English Name Valerie.
We order food, each choosing a dish for the table. I choose a thick, milky Shaanxi-style soup with lotus root and red berries, thick boiled tofu slices and delicate glass noodles.
Elaine and English Name Valerie are both in their late 50’s, both married, both female Chinese academics, identifiable to the trained naked eye. They met in 1987 while studying English at university and have been friends ever since.
Valerie asks about their home villages, the places they grew up.
“Oh, you know, this all used to be villages when we were girls, all family farms” says English Name Valerie, sweeping her hand through the airspace.
“That place, my village, only exists in my memory now,” she says quietly.
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The next morning, Valerie and I find ourselves at the Starbucks in Sunshine Paradise mall once again. I see the same grandmother with her grandson, placated by a McDonalds milkshake, and suddenly, I feel claustrophobic. I tell Valerie I’m taking a walk and wander away from the mall, southwards, away from the city.
Chang’an is south of Xi’an proper, the closest thing China has to a suburb. I walk past the Dior and Versace, the Louis Vuitton. I walk for ten minutes, across two intersections. Motorbike drivers yell out to me, my blonde hair a sticky net for anyone selling anything.
The roads get smaller. The stores, closer together. Noodle shops replace fast food stores. Small clothing boutiques, then quickly fruit stands and hardware stores, line the road. People are staring now, unused to me entirely, so I throw my scarf over my head. With sunglasses on, I almost look like a normal urban Chinese woman.
I turn the corner down a small alley and find myself on a private dirt road. In front of me is a traditional family home. A crumbling brick wall surrounds the compound, but I can see through the entryway. There are just a few apple trees on the property, and bok choi growing in a plot next to the house. A little girl, maybe five or six, plays with her dolls outside. There are a few chickens pecking lazily around her feet.
Her grandmother is weeding the little patch of bok choi, her wicker sandals sinking in to the dirt. The girl packs her dolls into a green canvas bag and moves inside the house. It is a Starbucks bag.
It’s getting late. The light is dusty and pink. I silently turn back, scanning the cityscape for the steeple of Sunshine Paradise. Yes, there she is: the Starbucks Siren, just close enough to lead me back again.