Journal articles on the topic 'Hangzhou Shi'

The construction of regional ecological security network system can effectively ease urban environmental pollution and enhance the comprehensive competitiveness of the region. This paper, based on Suzhou National New & Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone (SND) as a study case, intends to explore an approach to establish the ecological security pattern for rapid development region. The paper has established an ecological security critical areas composed by Mt. Dayang, Mt. Shu, Mt. Jilong, Mt. Fenghuang and other mountains as well as Tai Lake Wetland Park, three ecological corridors comprising greenbelt along Taihu Avenue, Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and greenbelt along the Canal, Huguang Canal and greenbelt along the Canal, as well as urban parks such as Dabai Marsh, Mt. He, Mt. Shi and Zhengshanlu Park etc. and junctions between roads and rivers etc. to make up the ecological nodes so as to build an ecological security network pattern for SND, which is of great significance for the regions sustainable development.

Zhejiang Sci-Tech University is a famous university of science and engineering in China which locates in Hangzhou of Zhejiang province. This university has more than 100-year history. It was named as Zhejiang Institute of Silk Engineering before which was famous for its textile engineering. In 1897, Lin Qi who was the governor of Hangzhou proposed to found an agricultural education institution in Hangzhou and then he founded the Sericulture Academy which was the predecessor of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. From the Sericulture Academy to Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, textile education in this school gradually developed which was a typical sample of China.

This paper chooses Shanghai Hangzhou Bay north shore as the study area, to analyze the change of landscape pattern from 1994 to 2007, the data adopts 1994 aerial image and remote sensing image with 5m resolution of 2003 and 2007, land is divided into 11 types: urban land, rural land, factory, farm land, undeveloped land, beach, forest, water, fish ponds, road and railway. FragState3.0 is used to select Class Area (CA), Percentage of Landscape (PLAND), Number of Patches (NP), Patch density (PD), Patch Richness (PR), Shannons Diversity Index (SHDI), Shannons Evenness Index (SHEI) and Dominance (D) to analyze the landscape pattern, the research results reveal that: (1) The law of landscape change in Hangzhou Bay during urbanization process is: water and farmland is converted to undeveloped land at first, thereafter the most part of undeveloped land is converted to factory, the dominant landscape is farmland and its CA change also is the most significant from 44.88% to 34.61% with variation amplitude of 10.27%; (2) From 1994 to 2007, except rural and farmland landscape, the NP of other landscapes increased to varying degrees, fragmentation have increased; (3) Landscape-level indices rise steadily, the SHDI values are relatively high, and all show rising trend; SHEI value is close to 1, indicating the various landscape types is evenly distributed.

One of the important ways to improve the transport capacity of China is to reduce time of departure interval, which must be based on the premise that safety is guaranteed. In this paper, based on block section, a safe departure interval (SDI) model is constructed, which focus on technology and management factors in the train operation. Using SDI model, safe departure interval time of Shanghai-Hangzhou railway line is calculated, and sensitivity of some factors are analyzed. The rustles indicate that there is plenty of room for decrease time of departure interval safely.

The development of high-tech industrial parks has transformed the urban landscape in China. However, little is known of the perception of these changes by those affected by their planning and implementation. In order to shed light on this issue, we conducted a study of the Zhejiang Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City, informed by field research on the environmental and socioeconomic status of the area and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (residents, workers and government representatives). The data was collected and analysed using a grounded theory approach and modelled via a structural topic model (STM) to identify the most significant issues that people raised in relation to the development of the high-tech industrial park. The main finding of the study is the clear and shared perception of growing prosperity, associated with the improvements to both economic and social infrastructure and the attendant employment and business opportunities. Stakeholders also highlighted improvements to the area’s landscape quality. Nonetheless, stakeholders also identified a set of concerns centred on the threat to cultural identity, the reduction of agricultural land and the diminishing of diversity and flexibility of pathways to urban development. It is these concerns that, in their view, should serve to frame future phases of the Future Sci-Tech City construction.

Sci-tech parks (STPs), as a key space carrier of urbanization, have transformed into comprehensive parks with mixed urban functions and advanced hi-tech industries. The jobs–housing relationship, which is closely related to the two major urban functions of work and residence, affects the efficiency of urban operation. This study focused on the correlation between the jobs–housing relationship and the innovative development of STPs, adopting the Hangzhou West Hi-Tech Corridor as a case study. Four indicators reflecting the jobs–housing balance index and commuting distance and ten indicators reflecting agglomeration degree, development scale, innovative ability, financial status, and comprehensive development level of enterprises were selected to perform partial least squares regression. The results show that the jobs–housing relationship was correlated with the innovative development of STPs. Relatively short commuting distance may promote the development and agglomeration of sci-tech enterprises. However, short average commuting distance was not necessarily good. The working space and living space needed to be mixed at an appropriate scale and distance—to be close but not too close. This study provides references for the future development of STPs and the application of mixed-use zoning in the urban spatial planning; additionally, it supports for the research and practice of industry–city integration and urbanization.

Innovation is an inevitable way to enhance regional competitiveness, promote urbanization and achieve sustainable development. The sci-tech park is one of the main land use types in the construction of a new town and the critical space carriers of urbanization. This study focuses on the correlation between higher education institutions (HEIs) innovation and sci-tech enterprises (STEs) development, and the Hangzhou West Hi-tech Corridor as a case study. Innovation indicators of HEIs related to teaching staff, talent cultivation, scientific research quality, academic influence, and university-enterprise cooperation, as well as development indicators of STEs related to aggregation degree, development level, and innovation level are selected. The results show that HEI innovation is significantly positively correlated with STE development. The number of senior titled teachers, average number of citations per paper, and number of invested enterprises exhibit a strong positive correlation with STE development indicators. Regarding the correlation between HEI innovation and STE development, academic research HEIs and professional application HEIs are stronger than vocational skill HEIs. This study is conducive to improving land use efficiency and a sustainable development level of urban innovative districts. Suggestions are provided to support the researches and practices of urban innovative spatial planning and advancement of the urbanization process.

Staphylococcal food poisoning is an illness caused by the consumption of food that contains sufficient amounts of one or more enterotoxins. In the present study, a total of 37 S. aureus isolates were recovered from leftover food, swabs from a kitchen environment, and patient feces associated with four foodborne outbreaks that occurred in Hangzhou, southeast China, and were characterized by multilocus sequence typing (MLST), spa typing, pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and antimicrobial susceptibility. Classical enterotoxin and enterotoxin-like genes were profiled by PCR analysis. ST6-t304 was the most common clone (40.54%), followed by ST2315-t11687 (32.43%). Six clusters (A to F) were divided based on PFGE patterns, and Clusters A and C were the most common types, constituting 86.49% of all isolates. Moreover, sea was the most frequently identified enterotoxin gene (81.08%), followed by the combination of seg–sei–selm–seln–sleo–selu and sec–sell (each 48.65%). Five isolates also harbored the exotoxin cluster sed–selj–ser. In addition, resistance to penicillin (97.30%), erythromycin (37.85), tetracycline (32.43%), clindamycin, gentamicin, and sulfamethoxazole (each 10.81%) was observed. Our research demonstrated the link between leftover foods and patients by molecular typing and detecting the profiles of enterotoxin or enterotoxin-like genes in human and food isolates. S. aureus maintains an extensive repertoire of enterotoxins and drug resistance genes that could cause potential health threats to consumers.

Early diagnosis is among the crucial measures to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection. To date, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is the gold standard for COVID-19 testing, but various factors can affect its performance leading to false negative results. Hereby we present a patient with a high clinical suspicion for COVID-19 and had multiple negative RT-PCR results over 5 days. A 22-year-old woman presented with fever, dry cough, nausea, myalgia, headache, and mild dyspnea. Eleven days before, she was in close contact with her father who had tested positive for COVID-19. RT-PCR on nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs were performed on day 8, 9, and 12 of illness which all came back negative even after she started having a worsening dyspnea and showing an increased lung opacity from radiographic findings on day 11 of illness. Interestingly, her rapid antibody test (VivaDiag™ COVID-19 IgM/IgG rapid test by VivaChek Biotech (HangZhou,China) was positive for anti-SARS-CoV-2 Ig M and Ig G. Due to the worsening condition, she was referred to a tertiary hospital where her RT PCR result was positive on day 13 of illness. After 28 days from her first symptom, she was discharged from the hospital with improved symptoms and chest X-ray. As conclusions, in patients with high suspicion of COVID-19, repeat swab tests are mandatory if previous tests were negative. The diagnosis and treatment plan of COVID-19 should not solely be based on RT-PCR, but also consider the patient’s history, symptoms, laboratory result, and radiographic findings.

A complete taxonomic catalogue of the Stick and Leaf-insects (Phasmatodea) recorded or described from the mainland China (excluding Taiwan) is presented. 241 valid species are listed, which are currently attributed to 50 genera, 5 families and 7 subfamilies. Genera and species are listed alphabetically. All available type-data is provided based mainly on literary sources for species described by Chinese workers from 1986 to 2006, including documented depository of typespecimens. The catalogue therefore also provides complete lists of the type-material of Phasmatodea housed in the following Chinese institutions: Administration of Baishuijiang Natural Reserve (ABNR), Beijing Forestry University, Beijing (BFU), China Agricultural University, Beijing (CAU), Geological Museum of China, Beijing (GMC), Inca Science Ltd., Chongqing (INCA), Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (IZCAS), Department of Biology, Nankai University, Tianjin (NKU), Northwest Sci-Tech University of Agriculture and Forestry, Shaanxi (NWAU), Institute of Zoology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an (SNU), Institute of Entomology, Sun Yat-sen University (ICRI), Shanghai Institute of Entomology, Academia Sinica, Shanghai (SIES), Tianjin Natural History Museum, Tianjin (TMNH), Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, Hangzhou (ZMNH). The known distribution of each species, inmeans of provinces is provided as well. 14 species are shown to have been recorded from China in error, several of these based on misidentifications. The “Phasmatodea-like” fossil taxa described from the Late Jurassic Yixian Formation of North Hebei and West Liaoning are listed in a separate section. Two new generic synonyms are recognized: Arthminotus Bi, 1995 synonymised with Lopaphus Westwood, 1859 (n. syn.) and Dianphasma Chen & He, 1997 synonymised with Parasosibia Redtenbacher, 1908 (n. syn.). The genus Linocerus Gray, 1835 (Type-species: Linocerus gracilis Gray, 1835) was erroneously synonymised with the mediterranean Bacillus St. Fargeau & Audinet-Serville, 1825 and is here re-established in Phasmatidae: Pachymorphinae: Gratidiini (rev. stat.). Relationship to Clonaria Stål, 1875 (= Gratidia Stål, 1875, = Paraclonaria Brunner v. Wattenwyl, 1893), Sceptrophasma Brock & Seow-Choen, 2000 and Macellina Uvarov, 1940 is obvious. 21 species are transferred to other genera (new combinations): Asceles dilatatus Chen & He, 2004 and Asceles quadriguttatus Chen & He, 1996 to Pachyscia Redtenbacher, 1908, Arthminotus sinensis Bi, 1995 to Lopaphus Westwood, 1859, Baculum dolichocercatum Bi & Wang, 1998 and Baculum politum Chen & He, 1997 to Medauroidea Zompro, 1999, Dixippus hainanensis Chen & He, 2002, Dixippus huapingensis Bi & Li, 1991, Dixippus nigroantennatus Chen & He, 2002, Dixippus parvus Chen & He, 2002 and Entoria bobaiensis Chen, 1986 to Lonchodes Gray, 1835, Sipyloidea obvius Chen & He, 1995 to Sinophasma Günther, 1940, Paramyronides biconiferus Bi, 1993, Paramyronides leishanensis Bi, 1992, Lonchodes chinensis Brunner v. Wattenwyl, 1907, Lonchodes confucius Westwood, 1859 and Phasgania glabra Günther, 1940 to Phraortes Stål, 1875, Gratidia bituberculata Redtenbacher, 1889 and Leptynia xinganensis Chen & He, 1993 to Sceptrophasma Brock & Seow-Choen, 2002, Prosentoria bannaensis Chen & He, 1997 to Paraentoria Chen & He, 1997, and Mantis squeleton Olivier, 1792 to Phanocloidea Zompro, 2002. Acrophylla sichuanensis Chen & He, 2001 remains of unknown generic assignment, but is shown to be not a member of the Australian genus Acrophylla Gray, 1835. Furthermore, as Baculum Saussure, 1861 is a neotropical genus and most Old World species previously attributed to this genus are now listed in Ramulus Saussure, 1861, all Chinese species described in Baculum Saussure are consequently transferred to Ramulus Saussure. Other changes of specific placements are based on published literature and concern to the following three synonymies not recognized by Chinese workers: Abrosoma Redtenbacher, 1906 (= Prosceles Uvarov, 1940), Necroscia Audinet-Serville, 1838 (= Aruanoidea Redtenbacher, 1908), Lopaphus Westwood, 1859 (= Paramyronides Redtenbacher, 1908). Megalophasma Bi, 1995 is transferred from Necrosciinae to Lonchodinae. Four lectotypes are designated and three new specific synonyms revealed. A lectotype is designated for Rhamphophasma modestus Brunner v. Wattenwyl, 1893, the type-species of Rhamphophasma Brunner v. Wattenwyl, 1893, in order to fix this genus and species. The male paralectotype is shown to be a male of Parapachymorpha nigra Brunner v. Wattenwyl, 1893, the type-species of Parapachymorpha Brunner v. Wattenwyl, 1893. Clitumnus porrectus Brunner v. Wattenwyl, 1907 is synonymised with Bacillus ? artemis Westwood, 1859 and a lectotype designated for the former (n. syn.). A lectotype is designated for Oxyartes lamellatus Kirby, 1904 in order to fix this taxon and confirm the synonymy established by Dohrn, 1910 (= Oxyartes honestus Redtenbacher, 1908, = Oxyartes spinosissimus Carl, 1913). Paracentema stephanus Redtenbacher, 1908 is shown to have been erroneously synonymised with Neohirasea japonica (de Haan, 1842) and here synonymised with Neohirasea maerens (Brunner v. Wattenwyl, 1907) (n. syn.). In order to fix this new synonymy a lectotype is designated for Paracentema stephanus Redtenbacher, 1908. Finally, a biogeographic analysis of the Chinese phasmid fauna is presented. This includes brief background information on the topography and biogeography of China along with maps showing the seven zoogeographical subregions currently recognized as well as the 4 municipalities, 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions and 2 special administrative regions of China. A summary of the taxonomic compilation of the fauna is provided and its relationships with neighbouring regions, of both the Palaearctic and Oriental realms, are discussed. A study is presented on the distribution of the taxa and species densities of each province / autonomous region. Recent ecological studies are summarized and list of the host plants of 42 different species attached. The pest status of certain species which have become of serious importance for agriculture in China is briefly summarized based on literary sources.

Jing Yu. Translating ‘others’ as ‘us’ in Huckleberry Finn: dialect, register and the heterogeneity of standard language. Language and Literature, 26(1); 2017: DOI 10.1177/0963947016674131 The following corrections apply: The author’s affiliation should be: Hangzhou Dianzi University/the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China The author wishes to include the following funding acknowledgement: The authors acknowledge support from Zhejiang Philosophy and Social Science Planning Foundation (浙江省哲学社会科学规划课题) [Grant No.15NDJC035YB], and the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (教育部人文社科课题) [Grant No. 15YJC740124]. The author wishes to correct the ‘Author biography’ section as follows: Jing Yu is an associate professor of English in Hangzhou Dianzi University in China. She completed her PhD thesis on the Chinese translation of literary dialects in British and American fiction at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2016. Her thesis investigates how dialects in Huckleberry Finn, Tess and Pygmalion are translated in China, who did that and why. Currently she is interested in sociological studies on translators of literary dialect.

China-Germany sci-tech cooperation continue to bring more opportunities. Study reveals mechanism behind ginger’s warming effect on body. Doctors in Guangzhou conduct 5G-assisted remote ultrasound scan. China proposes major changes to pharmaceutical regulations. Hangzhou attracts RMB1.5 billion investments in bio-pharmaceutical projects. Genetic testing encouraged to prevent ovarian cancer. New technology enables large-scale production of artemisinin for malaria. Shanghai wants to develop top health innovation zone. New synthetic biology research center launched in Shanghai. Chinese scientists suggest new thoughts in lupus treatment.

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the most important and widely grown crop, covering about 29.9 million ha of total cultivation area in China. In the last decade, spikelet rot disease on rice became much more frequent in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, China. Fusarium proliferatum (Matsush.) Nirenberg ex Gerlach & Nirenberg was reported to be a causal agent of spikelet rot on rice in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province (Huang et al. 2012). In September 2019, a survey was conducted to understand the etiology of the disease in the main rice growing regions of Jinshan District of Shanghai. Symptomatic panicles exhibiting reddish or brown discoloration on the glumes were collected from different rice fields, where disease incidence was estimated to be between 20 to 80%. Diseased glumes were cut into small sections (5 × 5 mm) from the boundary of necrotic and healthy tissues, surface-sterilized with 75% ethanol for 30 s and 3% sodium hypochlorite for 90 s, rinsed twice with sterile distilled water, then placed onto 1/5 strength potato dextrose agar (PDA). After 3 to 5 days of incubation at 28°C in the dark, fungal growth with Fusarium-like colonies were transferred to PDA and purified by the single-spore isolation method. A total of 12 isolates were obtained and colonies showed loosely floccose, white mycelium and pale-yellow pigmentation on PDA. Microconidia were ovoid mostly with 0 to 1 septum, and measured 4.2 to 16.6 × 2.5 to 4.1 μm (n = 50). After 5-7 days of inoculation on carnation leaf agar (CLA), macroconidia produced usually had 3 to 5 septa, slightly curved at the apex, ranging from 15.7 to 39.1 × 3.3 to 5.0 μm (n = 50). Chlamydospores were produced in hyphae, most often solitary in short chains or in clumps, ellipsoidal or subglobose with thick and roughened walls. Molecular identification was performed on the representative isolates (JS3, JS9, and JS21). The rDNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS), translation elongation factor (TEF-1α) and β-tubulin (β-TUB) genes were amplified and sequenced using the paired primers ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990), EF1/EF2 (O’Donnell et al. 1998) and T1/T22 (O’Donnell and Cigelnik 1997), respectively. The obtained sequences were deposited in GenBank under accession numbers MT889972 to MT889974 (ITS), MT895844 to MT895846 (TEF-1α), and MT895841 to MT895843 (β-TUB), respectively. BLASTn search of the sequences revealed 99 to 100% identity with ITS (MF356578), TEF-1α (HM770725) and β-TUB (GQ915444) of Fusarium incarnatum isolates. FUSARIUM-ID (Geiser et al. 2004) analysis showed 99 to 100% similarity with sequences of the F. incarnatum-equiseti species complex (FIESC) (FD_01651 and FD_01628). In addition, a phylogenetic analysis based on the concatenated nucleotide sequences placed the isolates in the F. incarnatum clade at 100% bootstrap support. Thus, both morphological observations and molecular criteria supported identification of the isolates as F. incarnatum (Desm.) Sacc (synonym: Fusarium semitectum) (Leslie and Summerell 2006, Nirenberg 1990). Pathogenicity tests were performed on susceptible rice cultivar ‘Xiushui134’. At pollen cell maturity stage, a 2-ml conidial suspension (5 × 105 macroconidia/ml) of each isolate was injected into 10 rice panicles. Control plants were inoculated with sterile distilled water. Then, the pots were kept in a growth chamber at 28°C, 80% relative humidity, and 12 h/12 h light (10,000 lux)/dark. The experiment was repeated two times for each isolate. Two weeks post-inoculation, all inoculated panicles showed similar symptoms with the original samples, whereas no symptoms were observed on the control. The pathogen was re-isolated from inoculated panicles and identified by the method described above to fulfill Koch's postulates. Previous studies reported that F. incarnatum reproduced perithecia to overwinter on rice stubble as the inoculum of Fusarium head blight of wheat in southern China (Yang et al. 2018). To our knowledge, this is the first report of spikelet rot on rice caused by F. incarnatum in China. Further investigation is needed to gain a better understanding its potential geographic distribution of this new pathogen on rice crop. References: (1) Huang, S. W., et al. 2011. Crop Prot. 30: 10. (2) White, T. J., et al. 1990. Page 315 in: PCR Protocols: A Guide to Methods and Applications. Academic Press, San Diego, CA. (3) O’Donnell, K., et al. 1998. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 95: 2044. (4) O'Donnell, K., Cigelnik, E. 1997. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 7: 103. (5) Geiser, D. M., et al. 2004. Eur. J. Plant Pathol. 110: 473. (6) Leslie, J. F., and Summerell, B. A. 2006. The Fusarium Laboratory Manual. Blackwell, Ames, IA. (7) Nirenberg, H. I. 1990. Stud. Mycol. 32: 91. (8) Yang, M. X., et al. 2018. Toxins. 10: 115. The author(s) declare no conflict of interest. Funding: Funding was provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 31800133), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. LQ18C140005), Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (grant no. 2019C02018), Shanghai Science and Technology for Agriculture Promotion Project (2019-02-08-00-08-F01127), and the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program of China Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS-ASTIP-2013- CNRRI).

IntroductionIn this article, I set out to accomplish two tasks. The first is to map coffee and cafés in Mainland China in different historical periods. The second is to focus on coffee and cafés in the socio-cultural milieu of contemporary China in order to understand the symbolic value of the emerging coffee/café-scape. Cafés, rather than coffee, are at the centre of this current trend in contemporary Chinese cities. With instant coffee dominating as a drink, the Chinese have developed a cultural and social demand for cafés, but have not yet developed coffee palates. Historical Coffee Map In 1901, coffee was served in a restaurant in the city of Tianjin. This restaurant, named Kiessling, was run by a German chef, a former solider who came to China with the eight-nation alliance. At that time, coffee was reserved mostly for foreign politicians and military officials as well as wealthy businessmen—very few ordinary Chinese drank it. (For more history of Kiessling, including pictures and videos, see Kiessling). Another group of coffee consumers were from the cultural elites—the young revolutionary intellectuals and writers with overseas experience. It was almost a fashion among the literary elite to spend time in cafés. However, this was negatively judged as “Western” and “bourgeois.” For example, in 1932, Lu Xun, one of the most important twentieth century Chinese writers, commented on the café fashion during 1920s (133-36), and listed the reasons why he would not visit one. He did not drink coffee because it was “foreigners’ food”, and he was too busy writing for the kind of leisure enjoyed in cafés. Moreover, he did not, he wrote, have the nerve to go to a café, and particularly not the Revolutionary Café that was popular among cultural celebrities at that time. He claimed that the “paradise” of the café was for genius, and for handsome revolutionary writers (who he described as having red lips and white teeth, whereas his teeth were yellow). His final complaint was that even if he went to the Revolutionary Café, he would hesitate going in (Lu Xun 133-36). From Lu Xun’s list, we can recognise his nationalism and resistance to what were identified as Western foods and lifestyles. It is easy to also feel his dissatisfaction with those dilettante revolutionary intellectuals who spent time in cafés, talking and enjoying Western food, rather than working. In contrast to Lu Xun’s resistance to coffee and café culture, another well-known writer, Zhang Ailing, frequented cafés when she lived in Shanghai from the 1920s to 1950s. She wrote about the smell of cakes and bread sold in Kiessling’s branch store located right next to her parents’ house (Yuyue). Born into a wealthy family, exposed to Western culture and food at a very young age, Zhang Ailing liked to spend her social and writing time in cafés, ordering her favourite cakes, hot chocolate, and coffee. When she left Shanghai and immigrated to the USA, coffee was an important part of her writing life: the smell and taste reminding her of old friends and Shanghai (Chunzi). However, during Zhang’s time, it was still a privileged and elite practice to patronise a café when these were located in foreign settlements with foreign chefs, and served mainly foreigners, wealthy businessmen, and cultural celebrities. After 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China, until the late 1970s, there were no coffee shops in Mainland China. It was only when Deng Xiaoping suggested neo-liberalism as a so-called “reform-and-open-up” economic policy that foreign commerce and products were again seen in China. In 1988, ten years after the implementation of Deng Xiaoping’s policy, the Nestlé coffee company made the first inroads into the mainland market, featuring homegrown coffee beans in Yunnan province (China Beverage News; Dong; ITC). Nestlé’s bottled instant coffee found its way into the Chinese market, avoiding a direct challenge to the tea culture. Nestlé packaged its coffee to resemble health food products and marketed it as a holiday gift suitable for friends and relatives. As a symbol of modernity and “the West”, coffee-as-gift meshed with the traditional Chinese cultural custom that values gift giving. It also satisfied a collective desire for foreign products (and contact with foreign cultures) during the economic reform era. Even today, with its competitively low price, instant coffee dominates coffee consumption at home, in the workplace, and on Chinese airlines. While Nestlé aimed their product at native Chinese consumers, the multinational companies who later entered China’s coffee market, such as Sara Lee, mainly targeted international hotels such as IHG, Marriott, and Hyatt. The multinationals also favoured coffee shops like Kommune in Shanghai that offered more sophisticated kinds of coffee to foreign consumers and China’s upper class (Byers). If Nestlé introduced coffee to ordinary Chinese families, it was Starbucks who introduced the coffee-based “third space” to urban life in contemporary China on a signficant scale. Differing from the cafés before 1949, Starbucks stores are accessible to ordinary Chinese citizens. The first in Mainland China opened in Beijing’s China World Trade Center in January 1999, targeting mainly white-collar workers and foreigners. Starbucks coffee shops provide a space for informal business meetings, chatting with friends, and relaxing and, with its 500th store opened in 2011, dominate the field in China. Starbucks are located mainly in the central business districts and airports, and the company plans to have 1,500 sites by 2015 (Starbucks). Despite this massive presence, Starbucks constitutes only part of the café-scape in contemporary Chinese cities. There are two other kinds of cafés. One type is usually located in universities or residential areas and is frequented mainly by students or locals working in cultural professions. A representative of this kind is Sculpting in Time Café. In November 1997, two years before the opening of the first Starbucks in Beijing, two newlywed college graduates opened the first small Sculpting in Time Café near Beijing University’s East Gate. This has been expanded into a chain, and boasts 18 branches on the Mainland. (For more about its history, see Sculpting in Time Café). Interestingly, both Starbucks and Sculpting in Time Café acquired their names from literature, Starbucks from Moby Dick, and Sculpting in Time from the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s film diary of the same name. For Chinese students of literature and the arts, drinking coffee is less about acquiring more energy to accomplish their work, and more about entering a sensual world, where the aroma of coffee mixes with the sounds from the coffee machine and music, as well as the lighting of the space. More importantly, cafés with this ambience become, in themselves, cultural sites associated with literature, films, and music. Owners of this kind of café are often lovers of foreign literatures, films, and cultures, and their cafés host various cultural events, including forums, book clubs, movie screenings, and music clubs. Generally speaking, coffee served in this kind of café is simpler than in the kind discussed below. This third type of café includes those located in tourist and entertainment sites such as art districts, bar areas, and historical sites, and which are frequented by foreign and native tourists, artists and other cultural workers. If Starbucks cultivates a fast-paced business/professional atmosphere, and Sculpting in Time Cafés an artsy and literary atmosphere, this third kind of café is more like an upscale “bar” with trained baristas serving complicated coffees and emphasising their flavour. These coffee shops are more expensive than the other kinds, with an average price three times that of Starbucks. Currently, cafés of this type are found only in “first-tier” cities and usually located in art districts and tourist areas—such as Beijing’s 798 Art District and Nanluo Guxiang, Shanghai’s Tai Kang Road (a.k.a. “the art street”), and Hangzhou’s Westlake area. While Nestlé and Starbucks use coffee beans grown in Yunnan provinces, these “art cafés” are more inclined to use imported coffee beans from suppliers like Sara Lee. Coffee and Cafés in Contemporary China After just ten years, there are hundreds of cafés in Chinese cities. Why has there been such a demand for coffee or, more accurately, cafés, in such a short period of time? The first reason is the lack of “third space” environments in Mainland China. Before cafés appeared in the late 1990s, stores like KFC (which opened its first store in 1987) and McDonald’s (with its first store opened in 1990) filled this role for urban residents, providing locations where customers could experience Western food, meet friends, work, or read. In fact, KFC and McDonald’s were once very popular with college students looking for a place to study. Both stores had relatively clean food environments and good lighting. They also had air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, which are not provided in most Chinese university dormitories. However, since neither chain was set up to be a café and customers occupying seats for long periods while ordering minimal amounts of food or drink affected profits, staff members began to indirectly ask customers to leave after dining. At the same time, as more people were able to afford to eat at KFC and McDonald’s, their fast foods were also becoming more and more popular, especially among young people. As a consequence, both types of chain restaurant were becoming noisy and crowded and, thus, no longer ideal for reading, studying, or meeting with friends. Although tea has been a traditional drink in Chinese culture, traditional teahouses were expensive places more suitable for business meetings or for the cultural or intellectual elite. Since almost every family owns a tea set and can readily purchase tea, friends and family would usually make and consume tea at home. In recent years, however, new kinds of teahouses have emerged, similar in style to cafés, targeting the younger generation with more affordable prices and a wider range of choices, so the lack of a “third space” does not fully explain the café boom. Another factor affecting the popularity of cafés has been the development and uptake of Internet technology, including the increasing use of laptops and wireless Internet in recent years. The Internet has been available in China since the late 1990s, while computers and then laptops entered ordinary Chinese homes in the early twenty-first century. The IT industry has created not only a new field of research and production, but has also fostered new professions and demands. Particularly, in recent years in Mainland China, a new socially acceptable profession—freelancing in such areas as graphic design, photography, writing, film, music, and the fashion industry—has emerged. Most freelancers’ work is computer- and Internet-based. Cafés provide suitable working space, with wireless service, and the bonus of coffee that is, first of all, somatically stimulating. In addition, the emergence of the creative and cultural industries (which are supported by the Chinese government) has created work for these freelancers and, arguably, an increasing demand for café-based third spaces where such people can meet, talk and work. Furthermore, the flourishing of cafés in first-tier cities is part of the “aesthetic economy” (Lloyd 24) that caters to the making and selling of lifestyle experience. Alongside foreign restaurants, bars, galleries, and design firms, cafés contribute to city branding, and link a city to the global urban network. Cafés, like restaurants, galleries and bars, provide a space for the flow of global commodities, as well as for the human flow of tourists, travelling artists, freelancers, and cultural specialists. Finally, cafés provide a type of service that contributes to friendly owner/waiter-customer relations. During the planned-economy era, most stores and hotels in China were State-owned, staff salaries were not related to individual performance, and indifferent (and even unfriendly) service was common. During the economic reform era, privately owned stores and shops began to replace State-owned ones. At the same time, a large number of people from the countryside flowed into the cities seeking opportunities. Most had little if any professional training and so could only find work in factories or in the service industry. However, most café employees are urban, with better educational backgrounds, and many were already familiar with coffee culture. In addition, café owners, particularly those of places like Sculpting in Time Cafe, often invest in creating a positive, community atmosphere, learning about their customers and sharing personal experiences with their regular clients. This leads to my next point—the generation of the 1980s’ need for a social community. Cafés’ Symbolic Value—Community A demand for a sense of community among the generation of the 1980s is a unique socio-cultural phenomenon in China, which paradoxically co-exists with their desire for individualism. Mao Zedong started the “One Child Policy” in 1979 to slow the rapid population growth in China, and the generations born under this policy are often called “the lonely generations,” with both parents working full-time. At the same time, they are “the generation of me,” labelled as spoiled, self-centred, and obsessed with consumption (de Kloet; Liu; Rofel; Wang). The individuals of this generation, now aged in their 20s and 30s, constitute the primary consumers of coffee in China. Whereas individualism is an important value to them, a sense of community is also desirable in order to compensate for their lack of siblings. Furthermore, the 1980s’ generation has also benefitted from the university expansion policy implemented in 1999. Since then, China has witnessed a surge of university students and graduates who not only received scientific and other course-based knowledge, but also had a better chance to be exposed to foreign cultures through their books, music, and movies. With this interesting tension between individualism and collectivism, the atmosphere provided by cafés has fostered a series of curious temporary communities built on cultural and culinary taste. Interestingly, it has become an aspiration of many young college students and graduates to open a community-space style café in a city. One of the best examples is the new Henduoren’s (Many People’s) Café. This was a project initiated by Wen Erniu, a recent college graduate who wanted to open a café in Beijing but did not have sufficient funds to do so. She posted a message on the Internet, asking people to invest a minimum of US$316 to open a café with her. With 78 investors, the café opened in September 2011 in Beijing (see pictures of Henduoren’s Café). In an interview with the China Daily, Wen Erniu stated that, “To open a cafe was a dream of mine, but I could not afford it […] We thought opening a cafe might be many people’s dream […] and we could get together via the Internet to make it come true” (quoted in Liu 2011). Conclusion: Café Culture and (Instant) Coffee in China There is a Chinese saying that, if you hate someone—just persuade him or her to open a coffee shop. Since cafés provide spaces where one can spend a relatively long time for little financial outlay, owners have to increase prices to cover their expenses. This can result in fewer customers. In retaliation, cafés—particularly those with cultural and literary ambience—host cultural events to attract people, and/or they offer food and wine along with coffee. The high prices, however, remain. In fact, the average price of coffee in China is often higher than in Europe and North America. For example, a medium Starbucks’ caffè latte in China averaged around US$4.40 in 2010, according to the price list of a Starbucks outlet in Shanghai—and the prices has recently increased again (Xinhua 2012). This partially explains why instant coffee is still so popular in China. A bag of instant Nestlé coffee cost only some US$0.25 in a Beijing supermarket in 2010, and requires only hot water, which is accessible free almost everywhere in China, in any restaurant, office building, or household. As an habitual, addictive treat, however, coffee has not yet become a customary, let alone necessary, drink for most Chinese. Moreover, while many, especially those of the older generations, could discern the quality and varieties of tea, very few can judge the quality of the coffee served in cafés. As a result, few Mainland Chinese coffee consumers have a purely somatic demand for coffee—craving its smell or taste—and the highly sweetened and creamed instant coffee offered by companies like Nestlé or Maxwell has largely shaped the current Chinese palate for coffee. Ben Highmore has proposed that “food spaces (shops, restaurants and so on) can be seen, for some social agents, as a potential space where new ‘not-me’ worlds are encountered” (396) He continues to expand that “how these potential spaces are negotiated—the various affective registers of experience (joy, aggression, fear)—reflect the multicultural shapes of a culture (its racism, its openness, its acceptance of difference)” (396). Cafés in contemporary China provide spaces where one encounters and constructs new “not-me” worlds, and more importantly, new “with-me” worlds. While café-going communicates an appreciation and desire for new lifestyles and new selves, it can be hoped that in the near future, coffee will also be appreciated for its smell, taste, and other benefits. Of course, it is also necessary that future Chinese coffee consumers also recognise the rich and complex cultural, political, and social issues behind the coffee economy in the era of globalisation. 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