A Storm in a Coffee Cup
Back in 2000 the Forbidden City management leased a small space to the ubiquitous coffee chain Starbucks. Following adverse comment a few years later the company reduced its signage to make its presence a little more discreet.
The Forbidden City had been awash in commercialism for more than a decade, with tawdry souvenir stalls and second-rate snack outlets at every turn, so although the presence of the famous foreign brand struck some visitors as incongruous, it was more or less lost among a sea of other tackiness. Many foreign visitors in particular were happy to acquire a familiar beverage if not of good at least of known quality during what can sometimes seem a voyage through an endless sea of flagstones.
For more than six years Starbucks happily carried on doing business, and the Forbidden City management was happy to pocket the rent.
But in early 2007 a self-important anchor-man for CCTV’s English propaganda service called Ruì Chénggāng (芮城钢) made an entry on his blog complaining about Starbucks’ presence in the Forbidden City, describing it as an erosion or trashing of Chinese culture, and claiming to fret about the mixed reactions of foreign visitors. He reported that he had personally told the CEO of Starbucks that the company should move out.
The post was featured on the home page of one of China’s most popular Internet portals, then published in English by a Hong Kong blogger whose torrent of translations from Chinese domestic media often drove the direction of foreign commentary on the country. When the foreign press then picked up the story this caused further comment in the Chinese media, which then drove readers to sign Ruì’s online petition against Starbucks.
There was much trumpeting of the power of ‘citizen blogging’, which must have pleased authorities more used to scathing criticism that the Internet in China is heavily controlled and thoroughly censored, and which tickled the self-importance of the bloggers themselves. Since Ruì, a local media star and globe-trotter with a correspondingly large audience, was anything but an ordinary ‘citizen blogger’, this amounted to nothing more than hubris, although some foreign media were foolish enough to run stories that ridiculously overestimated the power of Chinese bloggers.
Many commenting on Chinese blogs displayed the aggressive and ill-informed nationalism taught in both schoolbooks and the media in China. Others showed a distressing xenophobia particularly common among fènqīng (愤青) or ‘angry youth’, to such a degree that Ruì felt compelled to backpedal and to state that he wished merely to complain about commercialism at national monuments.
Some foreign commentators rather naively supported this self-assessment, although it was belied both by the tone and content of his original statements and by other posts on his blog revealing an obsession with events ‘humiliating’ China up to 150 years in the past (see ‘Old’ Summer Palace). He effectively provided a button marked, ‘If you don’t like foreigners, click here,’ to which jingoistic media coverage drove hundreds of thousands who would previously have had no opinion whatsoever on Starbucks’ Forbidden City presence.
Starbucks’ vice-president for greater China, one Eden Woon, told the Reuters news agency that ‘Starbucks appreciates the deep history and culture of the Forbidden City and has operated in a respectful manner that fits within the environment,’ a statement also rather economical with the truth, since the company had originally demonstrated a lack of tact with its overly prominent signage and been forced to reduce it.
The Forbidden City authorities were reported to have taken fright, although since no Chinese institution willingly pays any attention to public opinion, that seemed unlikely. It asked Starbucks to consider selling its products under a different brand, which the company declined to do. No doubt with more than 200 existing stores in mind, rising to over 1500 at the present day, Woon made emollient noises. Denials of any plans to leave turned overnight into a respectful withdrawal and the kind of compromise kow-tow and cutting of losses that many foreign companies in China feel compelled to swallow when ‘taking the long-term view’.
Ruì succeeded in garnering publicity for himself and triumphed in his petty victory as Starbucks was replaced with suspicious swiftness by a wholly Forbidden City-owned company called China Tea (中茶).
Although China Tea sells tea, it also sells coffee in more or less the same range of styles as Starbucks sans some of that company’s more gooey and only distantly coffee-related inventions, and it’s these, not tea, that lead its menu. How substitution of one coffee shop for another could be a victory for Ruì’s supposed drive to reduce commercialism at national monuments wasn’t clear.
Ruì felt compelled to comment that non-Forbidden City brands were not being excluded in favour of a monopoly, which inevitably caused even greater suspicion that this was precisely what was happening. Some years ago, to try to drive out the American Acoustiguide company only partway through its contract and replace it with a Chinese system to make more profit, the authorities simply shut down the electricity to the company’s sales points within the palace. Was this coffee coup similarly motivated?
The coffee and the manner in which it is made and sold remain every bit as foreign as in Ruì’s original comment to Starbucks’ CEO and as when Starbucks was in place (although some beans are now bought from Yúnnán Province where, ironically, coffee was first planted in China by the French). But now, of course, all the profits are going to the Forbidden City directly.
As in so many cases in China, a foreign company has introduced a new service and developed a market only to find its products copied and itself manoeuvred out of business. The sight of foreigners making money in China is very often inimical to Chinese peace of mind.
Ruì said his next target would be American Express, complaining about the appearance of the banking company’s logos on signage it has sponsored within the palace. In remarks to The Guardian newspaper he compared these to labelling the Mona Lisa as ‘sponsored by the Bank of China.’
But setting aside that the real parallel would be if the Chinese bank sponsored a sign explaining something useful about the Mona Lisa, no one in the West would turn a hair at such a thing, and such sponsorship would be as welcome as that from a bank of any other nationality.
Although Ruì says Chinese pride is hurt when foreign companies have a presence in the Forbidden City, no one would feel reduced pride in their European heritage if the reverse were true. This is a point the xenophobic Ruì was unable to appreciate, and before ramming his foot even deeper into his mouth, he might have noted that the Louvre not only has the Mona Lisa but a Starbucks, too.
Furthermore, if word leaked out that a Chinese-run tea concession was being kicked out of the Louvre because it wasn’t French and so that the French themselves could sell the very same product, the same fènqīng would be expressing outrage (and likely some of them hacking the museum’s web pages and launching denial of service attacks). And the shouting from the West in defence of the Chinese tea operation would probably be louder still.
The World Monuments Fund has organised principally American funding for a 12-year major restoration of the Qiánlóng emperor’s garden, now partly completed. Would Ruì care to object to that, and find Chinese sources for the US$18 million of sponsorship instead? Or is it fine as long as there are no signs pointing out the origin of the funding?
What truly ‘undermines the solemnity’ of the Forbidden City is seeing air-conditioners studding ancient buildings now converted into gift shops, and seeing visitors beckoned into one with the promise of access to a bed used by the Qiánlóng emperor if they spend enough on overpriced trinkets.
Under the circumstances the coffee from China Tea has something of a bitter aftertaste. Would you like some hazelnut syrup with that? Or perhaps a large dollop of humbug?
One night in July 2014 Ruì was seen to be missing from his anchorman’s chair, arrested on unspecified corruption charges. He has yet to reappear. Perhaps the police are wondering who sponsored his Jaguar and expensive tailoring. In 2017 reports surfaced in the Chinese press that he had been jailed for six years, but these were swiftly deleted, as were tweets and other comments.
Return to The Palace Museum or ‘Forbidden City’.
See other Forbidden City stories:
Monumental Mismanagement
The Two Palace Museums
Where are They Now?
The End of the Emperors
The Last Occupant of the Forbidden City
Pride and a Fall
The Ends of the Eunuchs
Links to neighbouring sights around the Imperial City and Tiān’ān Mén Square. Or see Main Index to A Better Guide to Běijīng.
