Shanghai’s
Passion for Coffee Grow Steadily
April 1 - 2021
Coffee Geography Magazine
Shanghainese
absorbed the daily coffee habit slowly over the last century and become a part
of the city’s culture.
Records
show the earliest import of coffee in Shanghai can be traced back to 1844.
China now has its own famous coffee from southwestern Yunnan Province.The
city’s first “coffee room” in 1860 was in Astor House, the renovated and
rebranded Richard’s Hotel and Restaurant near the Bund.
The
popularity of coffee can be found in Chinese literature and movies in 1920s and
1930s, which depicted the emergence of cafes as a trend. Drinking a cup of
coffee then became a fashion of the Shanghainese and the smell of coffee
accompanied many grandpas and grandmas in Shanghai during their childhood.The
latest report by local business media Yicai on coffee consumption shows that
the city now has nearly 7,000 coffee shops, ranking it No. 1 in the world.
The
two most popular streets are Huaihai Road M. and Nanjing Road W. with dozens of
coffee shops.
Almost
56 percent of the cafes in Shanghai are boutique or independent, while 43
percent are chains.
People
come to a cafe not just for a drink, but enjoy a time with their friends and
family.
“A
cafe provides them a room of comfort,” a café owner says.
Her
cafe has inside and outdoor space. Business people do their work on laptops
inside, others walking their dogs sit in the yard.
She shared
her story that when she was younger, she tasted Indonesian Mandheling coffee
from the island of Sumatra during her trip.
“I automatically
love the taste Mandheling.”
In
2016, she resigned from her company and opened a cafe.
Her
father loves Harley Davidson motorcycles and found the riders group who are
serious coffee drinkers in the city.
Power
Point Coffee is a local “pet-friendly” cafe on Jiashan Road in Xuhui District.
It also promotes the adoption of strays and cooperates with an animal charity —
there is always a special event on April 10.
Second
home
Claire
Huang, owner of a Golden Retriever called Seven, is a frequent customer at
Pawer Point.
Every
morning when she walks Seven, the first stop is the cafe, where people there
often have fruits and snacks for the fur kids.
“The
cafe is our second home,” said Huang.
“I
love drinking coffee and have visited lots of cafes. Although some of them
accept pets, there are still problems, like not enough room for the dog and
some customers are reluctant to drink coffee with dog nearby.
“But
at Pawer Point Coffee, all the people there like pets and Seven and I always
have a good time there.”
At
the booth of local cafe Dan, which operated for a decade in Tianzifang but now
has moved online, two Japanese “Ojisan” (uncles) are making coffee for visitors
to the coffee festival.
Niuya
Takayuki, 67, said he used to be a clerk working in semiconductors industry in
Japan who needed to fly to all over the world. He likes drinking coffee and
once he travelled to Shanghai in 2007 and visited Tianzifang, he found it’s a
good place for opening a cafe and living his dream.
In
those years, there are not much authentic Japanese coffee in Shanghai. So he
decided to bring the taste of traditional Japanese “Matsuyashiki” hand drip
coffee to Shanghai and created his own ways of coffee making to give strong and
pure flavor.
His
wife said that it’s good to have more and more coffee shops with innovative
ideas to have coffee mixed with other drinks.
Visitors
at the festival also have their own memories and views.
Candice
Ding, a young woman who had been living overseas for more than 10 years, is a
coffee lover.
Ding
said she enjoys ordering coffees like latte and Americano at the office. “But
here I find many new types which are more to younger tastes. For instance, the
blend of coffee with milk tea or beer.”
“Now
coffee is more like a bridge for young people to communicate and exchange new
ideas with each other,” said Ding. She thought the boom of independent cafes is
good for young people to create their own business modes on coffee and
introduce more coffee types which are less known to the public in China.
“After
I returned to China, I noticed that there are more large cafe chains like
Starbucks than small individual ones, which can be easy to find in countries
like Italy and the US. So I really want to see more special personalized coffee
shops and products.”
Shanghai
is a city with creating ideas where coffee brewing becomes art and science.