Coffee and Cafes

I really like spending time in cafes, and I love coffee. So the recent proliferation of Chinese cafe culture has made me very happy. Coffee is a foreigner's product.The cafe scene is also mostly full of foreigners, but I see Chinese students also taking advantage of these adorable spaces that offer wifi and comfy seats. You can't find cat/dog/snoopy/hello kitty cafes, but even then all the cafes here are well decorated and comfortable. And some cafes will deliberately have 2-3 cats walking around anyway. One notable difference though is that most cafes in China offer alcohol and regular meals as well (usually Western food), as opposed to just pastries. Aside from that, nothing about these cafes make me feel like I am in China as opposed to anywhere else in the U.S. Unfortunately that includes how much I am paying. Sellers are definitely taking advantage of how much coffee sells globally, so relative to everything else in China, coffee is pretty expensive. But at least I haven't tasted anything too horrible yet.

Photo: I hate liking giant chains, but Costa Coffee is an exception. They are a U.K coffee chain that is as ubiquitous as Starbucks, similarly priced (if not cheaper) but sell much higher quality coffee. Their cups are larger too.