Coffee and Shanghai: Three Ways of Mutual Accomplishment - 2022-08-26
In terms of both quantity and quality, Shanghai's coffee market truly lives up to its “world-class” status. In 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, the first-choice drink which local citizens chose to give in support of medical workers fighting at the forefront was coffee. As epidemic prevention and control becomes a normal, all kinds of coffee shops have sprung up in Shanghai, constantly keeping the total number of cafes in the city on the increase. In a way, it stands as a signal of strong economic recovery. In Shanghai, coffee culture has generated an urban cultural impetus characterized by proactive exploration and creativity, positive thinking and empowerment, and strong cohesion, as manifested in various dimensions and at different levels of expression. From the past to the present and then to the future, from the people to the city and then to the culture, and from red culture to Shanghai culture and then to southern culture, coffee culture per se has been internalized into a starting point for Shanghai to pursue content innovation, scenario provision and development upgrading and build itself into a city of innovation, a city of culture and a city of ecology. In the process, three paths have evolved for the integration of coffee culture and city character.
Creating a world-class coffee market with well-developed creative culture
Before a cup of creative coffee is served, milk bubbles are used to create "love", "swan" and other patterns. After the coffee is served, leaves, petals and oats appear at the bottom of the cup. --- This is one crystallization of the wisdom contributed by baristas in Shanghai after their painstaking exploratory efforts. It is also the soul of Shanghai as a world-class coffee market. If "openness" is the "secret traffic code” behind the continuous influx of major brands into Shanghai's coffee market, then "creativity" is the source of strength for Shanghai to join the ranks of world-class coffee markets. The remarkably creative collages created by coffee shops in Shanghai reflect the sparkling splendor of a coffee city: M stand has brought Starbucks’ concept of "third space" to the ultimate height, making the interior decorations like an art museum; MANNER and LI BRE advocate the use of fewer seats, so as to provide customers with more opportunities to interact with baristas and transform the original "you-to-you" communication in the "third space" into "you-to-me" communication. Seesaw has put forward the idea of "creative coffee" and brought the thinking of creating internet-popular milk tea into the coffee domain. By adding food ingredients, fruit juice or bubble water into coffee, it has developed more innovative tastes and blended a Shanghai-style coffee that immensely stimulates the taste buds and inspires wild imaginations. The Missing Gallery, which is hidden in a stretch of old Western-style houses, has no logo at its entrance. It is a cafe and sells paintings during the day, but turns into a small bar for cocktails at night. Its coffee beans are provided by Ashidaya, a well-known cafe in Shanghai, and its coffee is made by fermenting the coffee beans in rum barrels of Panamanian and Colombian origin and mixing with Aricha. COFFEE IS, one of the veteran community cafes, uses SOE Hambella beans to make Dirty coffee. With the sweetness of floral honey beautifully blended with the slightly salty Eisbock, drinking coffee at this time-honored cafe is like tasting sea salt cheesecake..... Openness and creativity are both important hallmarks of Shanghai’s cultural and city character, as well as the secret behind how "happy coffee water" is created by cafes in Shanghai. From the creation of an atmosphere that greatly appeals to consumers to the blending of a "happy coffee water" flavor that goes right to the taste buds, Shanghainese coffee ships spare no effort to inject coffee magic that is full of surprises.
There are two key aspects in Shanghai’s endeavor to use coffee as a carrier to build itself into a creative city incubator with charming characters. One is to determine modes of innovation and creativity by taking coffee and coffee culture as the carriers and putting them into practice in the city, such as establishing an industrial chain, hosting world-class competitions, and staging influential industrial events, while the other is to feed back the connotations of a creative city through the former. The first key aspect is well underway in Shanghai. On April 29, 2021, the opening ceremony of Hongqiao International Coffee Harbour was held. It was announced that the harbour would set itself to three major business roles: a coffee trading port operating across the entire industrial chain "from seed to cup"; a coffee culture port integrating coffee education, research, certification and tournament into one body; and a coffee ecosystem port combining coffee exhibition, experience, evaluation and trading altogether. The great "ambitions" of Hongqiao International Coffee Harbour are vividly revealed on the paper: it aspires to become the largest coffee culture museum in China, the most authoritative training and certification center in the world, the most professional training classroom in China, and a base of world-class expert organizing committees, while staging internationally authorized and domestically most influential competitions, hosting the largest coffee culture exhibition in China and organizing other events are all on its blueprint. An incubator in the traditional sense generally has four basic characteristics, which include incubation venue, public facilities, incubation service provision, and opening to specific service targets. As a creative incubator with its own city character and charms, Shanghai has more space for creative imagination: set up the Internet service platform of the "Shanghai Coffee Growth Center" to provide "customized" government service and support for coffee shop owners; and formulate a coffee-only financial program to focus on enhancing the role of micro and small and cafes in supplementing and boosting Shanghai’s coffee market, and cultivate coffee talents by establishing a multi-level and all-round coffee education mechanism.
Creating super coffee IPs with distinctive Shanghai style
IP is a "hot cyber word" that has been extended from the concept of "cultural knowledge copyright". City IPs can help a city to quickly improve its public awareness, showcase its cultural charm, and gather popularity. In combination with coffee elements, a city IP can assume local cultural characteristics and extend the "multi-dimensional value" of the coffee industry. One example is the recently opened Second Shanghai Coffee Culture Week with the theme of "Taste Shanghai, Live Up To the Love". During the week, more than 1,000 coffee shops in Shanghai have distributed 1.5 million special coffee cup sets in 25 styles, while Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, BiliBili and other leading platforms all run exclusive topics and related events about the coffee culture week. Manner Coffee, NOWWA Coffee, COFE+ and Ele.me have organized various forms of free coffee drinking events or made other special offers. The Shanghai Books and Periodicals Distribution Association has released a list of 20+ new books during "The 2022 Shanghai Coffee Culture Week – The Aroma of Coffee and Books Permeates Shanghai" event, and worked with 75 brand bookstores in the city to exhibit books on coffee culture. Along with the grand coffee feast across the city, an all-new coffee concept and a series of rich and diversified coffee culture events have been successively launched, giving rise to the emergence of a "multi-dimensional value". From a macro perspective, this is an exclusive Shanghai-style coffee festival created by Shanghai for its coffee lovers. It is also an important and effective way to turn "Shanghai Coffee Culture Week" into an IP. In fact, Shanghai's coffee culture has always been a "meeting point" for the city and coffee.
Since Shanghai launched the “Stories of Shanghai Architecture” event in 2018, various sectors of society have proactively responded to it, and the "coffee community" has also worked hard, determined not to be outdone. The Wukang Building Post Office, which is close to the famous historical and cultural landmark Wukang Building, is the first post office in Shanghai to sell coffee. In collaboration with Qiaojiashan's crossover brand "QIAOCOFFEE", the post office has opened a mini coffee shop on its premises, serving a dozen kinds of drinks. The “old building x coffee” model with historical buildings as the space carrier and coffee as the content carrier is emerging in various parts of Shanghai. On the occasion of Shanghai Urban Space Art Season 2019, the 90-year-old Shanghai Soap Factory transformed its former workshop into a cafe called "White Seven Coffee" and opened it to the public. The words “White” (“白” in Chinese) and “Seven” (“七” in Chinese) in the name of the shop are precisely taken from the upper and lower structural glyphs of "soap" (“皂” in Chinese). The signature "White Seven Coffee" and its signature dessert "Shanghai Soap" are also a tribute to the former "largest soap company in the Far East". In addition to crossover business expansion to urban utilities (post office) and old urban buildings (soap factory), Shanghai's "coffee community" has also played the role of a "time traveler". In 2019, East Sea Coffee, once known as the "most popular cafe in Shanghai", returned to the Bund and instantly became a "holy land" for old Shanghainese to recall their Shanghainese feelings. The "entry" of coffee into the field of historical and cultural architecture is only an epitome of the integration of coffee culture into the city of Shanghai. While coffee is being “Shanghainesized”, Shanghai has also become more “IP-oriented” through the coffee carrier.
Apart from the proactive mutual pursuit of "symbiosis, common prosperity and coordinated development" between Shanghai and coffee, Shanghainese coffee IPs are also created out of a "self-evident" tacit understanding between the two at the level of cultural connotations. To include the "colorful night scenes of Shanghai" in coffee, an “Echoes of Old Shanghai" image show was staged in Shanghai Cafe located inside the Oriental Pearl Radio and TV Tower - the representative people, feelings and things of old Shanghai were integrated into the dreamlike pictures and presented on the various folded architectural surfaces of the cafe, along with the provision of immersive visual and auditory experience. Efforts to incorporate Shanghai’s traditional culture into coffee have given birth to Shanghai Museum’s coffee IP “Museum Cafe”, whose Chinese name “博观悦取” is taken from the words of Su Shi of the Northern Song Dynasty who once said “Read extensively, use concisely and prudently, accumulate and improve”. The seal pattern of the same Chinese characters created on the milk bubbles of the coffees served at the cafe uses the font from the Qing rubbings of Shi Tai Xiao Jing (The Book of Filial Piety Inscribed on Stone Tablet) collected by Shanghai Museum. Breaking through the museum boundary and located in the commercial hub Xintiandi, Museum Cafe also draws inspiration from the cultural relics collected by Shanghai Museum to integrate blue and white porcelain, flowers and birds in Kesi-style silk embroidery, flowers, insects and fish in Gu embroidery, and other elements into the drink and food that it serves. Grand Hyatt Shanghai has created a series of Chinese and Western pastries co-branded with the museum, so that citizens can taste and enjoy coffee in a space full of the Shanghai breathe and southern elegance and experience the unique charms unrelished from a combination of Shanghai’s museum culture and coffee culture. The coffee IPs with unique Shanghai styles represent not only the fruition of the two-way inclusiveness and assimilation between the city and coffee, but also the achievements of mutual empowerment between the value of city culture and the industrial value of coffee in the new wave of consumption. As coffee becomes a super IP of Shanghai's urban culture, the city's understanding and cognition of coffee will break through the original cultural and industrial circles. In the process of continuous in-depth tapping, renewal and integration, the coffee IPs will also become an important support for Shanghai’s temperament and character as an international cultural metropolis.
Forging strong cultural ties through distinctive coffee identity
From Hongqiao International Coffee Harbour which aspires to build "industrial + cultural + ecological chains to Shanghai Coffee Culture Week which has its exclusive super IPs, Starbucks Reserve Shanghai Roastery which offers the ultimate experience for consumers and HINICHIJOU which showcases Shanghai’s warmth as a city, the coffee community in Shanghai has made great strides. As the old proverb puts it, "food is the most important thing for the people". Every city has its own "delicacy" -- Beijing is known for its roast duck, which overflows with meaty fragrance through the crispy duck skin; and Guangzhou is famous for its king prawn dumplings, which are rinsed in pleasant tea aroma. For Shanghai, it is a cup of strong and mellow coffee, which offers enduring enjoyment. Shanghai’s city culture has gradually formed on the basis of traditional southern culture and with an integration of the modern industrial civilization originating from Europe and the United States after the city was opened as a port. This gives the Shanghai-style culture both the classical and elegant characteristics of southern culture and the modernistic and trendy features of an international metropolis. Possessing the same cultural character as that of Shanghai, “coffee” has become an indispensable part of Shanghai's soft cultural power. At the same time, Shanghai’s coffee IPs have gradually become business brands’ cognition and imagination of Shanghai’s urban culture. At 2021 AUTO SHANGHAI, Great Wall Motors used "coffee" to promote its high-end SUV brand WEY. When the WEY brand first launched "Mocha" cars, netizens bantered whether it would continue to launch models named after coffee. It did, and "Macchiato" and "Latte" cars successively hit the market. By launching the "coffee" series of cars that symbolize Shanghai's urban culture on the soil of Shanghai, the WEY brand has given painstaking thought to it all: it has not only rendered the connotations of the car series through "coffee" - high-end positioning, outstanding appearance, exquisite design, and competitive price, but also linked consumers' recognition of car quality, coffee culture and Shanghai's city character together and made "coffee" an important cultural label to stimulate automobile consumption.
The Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eleventh CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee has called for "cultivating the city spirit, showcasing the city character, and comprehensively enhancing the soft city power of Shanghai", while placing an important perspective on the “human” dimension, namely "always taking the people's feelings as the most fundamental yardstick to shape a humanistic city, a human-centered cultural atmosphere, and lives full of the human touch". Coffee shops in Shanghai have long carried great human warmth, and the "city-coffee-people" integration has led to more and more coffee shops in the city providing employment opportunities for the disabled or devoting themselves to the public charity cause. They pour their kindness and care into their coffee products, showcase the great city warmth of Shanghai, and give everyone a chance to shine. The melodious rhythms from the perfect blend of “city warmth", "coffee tenderness" and "human touch" are also playing beautifully out across this vast land deeply nourished by the rich southern culture – caring cafes in Suzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo and other cities in the Yangtze River Delta region also convey the goodwill of the "city-coffee-people" linkage. Utopia Coffee Shop in Ningbo is managed and staffed by hearing-impaired people. Each day, they clean up their shop and deliver cup after cup of aromatic coffee to customers amidst soothing background music. Even though the store manager and staff cannot hear the music, it is their way to show how they understand and respect coffee.
The strong resilience of the cultural identity bond forged by coffee is also reflected in red culture. The People's Coffee Shop inside Shanghai Sihang Warehouse Battle Memorial has meticulously customized its coffee cup covers by printing the words "Serve The People" on them. Moreover, the cup covers are made of thermally sensitive paper material which will, upon meeting with heat, slowly show the most representative gray bullet-holed wall patterns of Sihang Warehouse, which was once a fierce battleground against the Japanese invaders. These cup covers make people boil with indignation at foreign aggression. Coffee shops in Shanghai have proactively shouldered the responsibility of disseminating the red culture, making it possible for Shanghai’s coffee cultural identity bond to inspire stronger cohesion in the blending of red culture, Shanghai-style culture and southern culture.
Cafes in Shanghai not only care about the city and its people today, but also link the sustainable development of the city with the promotion of coffee and environment-friendly cultures, so as to help the future development of Shanghai’s coffee culture. As a bridge between coffee producers and processors and end consumers, coffee shops in Shanghai have always proactively explored feasible paths. For example, regarding the use of coffee grounds, some cafes recycle all their coffee grounds as plant fertilizers and provide them for use in suburban farms and shopping mall gardens after composting. Some coffee shops provide coffee grounds to customers for home use free of charge, or make them into fertilizers, or use them to absorb air odor. Some creative studios have ingeniously made bowls, plates and other decorative ware by combining coffee grounds, natural plant fibers and traditional glues with wood chips, paper scraps, edible pigments and other materials. Because dissolved coffee grounds have relatively even textures, the works made of them have high permeability and layered coverage, and can produce better 3D effects.
Howard Schultz, Founder of Starbucks, once said: coffee is like music in that it offers multiple possibilities. Different scenarios, different drinking modes and different preferences all reflect the diversity of coffee consumption. Coffee invisibly connects the living circles, time and space of the people. In a sense, Shanghai’s coffee culture is a characteristic urban culture, which means that people within the sphere of this city can get cultural nourishment from it. For cities which are international consumption centers, it is perhaps the shouldering of their responsibility and the forging of their cultural self-awareness to establish a strong coffee identity through cultural ties, regard the delight of life and mental health of their citizens as an integral part of their "culture", and turn themselves into culturally “pleasant” "livable" and "comfortable" places. This is also the most exciting and inspiring power of Shanghai's city character.
Source: Wenhui Daily
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