Houston Community News >> Forbidden City Coffee War
1/21/2007 (From the Shanhaiist
Blog)-- Even though we've long put our public relations days behind us, we can't
help but think what a day in the life of a PR executive at Starbucks must be
like. They must all have been working overtime lately with the Seattle-based
coffee company hitting the headlines like crazy lately. First it was the
landmark victory against Shanghai Xingbake, then there was the trans fat issue.
This week, little known CCTV-9 news anchor Rui Chenggang provoked a massive
outcry by urging Starbucks to vacate the Forbidden City. His blog attracted over
half a million hits within two days. OK, so we told you about this briefly, but
the story begs to be fleshed out in greater detail. It has gone round and round
the world, with newspapers from The Guardian to Baltimore Sun picking up the
story.
According to Rui, 29, having a Starbucks in the Forbidden City, "is not
globalising, but trampling Chinese culture". The coffee chain is "a symbol of
low-end US food culture presence" which "undermines the Forbidden City's
solemnity' and is 'an insult to Chinese civilisation".
In an interview with the Straits Times, Rui says that a campaign "to ignite
nationalistic furore against foreign brands" was the last thing on his mind:
I am not a hot-headed nationalistic jerk. I am not against Starbucks, I am just
against its presence in the Forbidden City... Why? Because the French would
never allow a Chinese teahouse in the Louvre, nor would the Indians allow one in
the Taj Mahal... While Rui's argument does hold some water, we are inclined to
agree with our fellow blogger. Just wave your 5,000 years of Chinese
civilization and pit it against any symbol of "Western capitalism", and voila.
We dug deeper into Rui's blog (in Chinese) and found that despite being a Yale
World Fellow (2005), his worldview is really founded upon a very simplistic
East/West, Us/Them dichotomy. In his latest post, Rui quotes Rudyard Kipling's
"East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet". We particularly
loved the post entitled "Don't let Western trash feel too good about themselves
in China" ("别让西方的垃圾们在中国自我感觉太好") (dated 8 Jan), where Rui related an incident on
the ski slopes of Nanshan of a "white-skinned man" ranting raucously against
China and its systems after being told by staff he was not to let his child play
on the beginner slopes. To cut the long story short, Rui emerged victorious
after screaming at the man, "As a Chinese, I will use what I know to help you
understand Chinese regulations. Any foreigner who does not respect China will
not get the respect of the Chinese!"
(“作为一个中国人，我会动用我所有的能量让你学会遵守中国的规则。一个不尊重中国的外国人也得不到中国人的尊重！”) and staff soon threw
the man and his child out of the ski slopes. Rui continues in his post about the
"foreign trash" who are "losers at home" unable to find partners back home, who
are here in China making a living with their white faces, teaching English,
working as chefs or as security guards, getting themselves Chinese girlfriends,
etc. Just the sort of quality writing and selective use of words you would
expect of any newsman from a respectable TV station!
(Contributed by Shanghaiist)