When I'm not at home, I'm at the café; when I'm not at the café, I'm on my way there. This is a classic petty-bourgeois quote, and the café in question is Starbucks. Starbucks is a global chain originating from Seattle, USA. It entered Beijing in 1998, Shanghai in 2001, and on August 29, 2003, Starbucks opened in Guangzhou, where the local media covered the event with full-page reports, no less grand than a celebratory ceremony. That day, I envisioned a scene: on the way to the café, across the world, such a vast and magnificent spectacle.
Starbucks has 6,500 stores globally, meaning every day, tens of millions of cups of coffee, roasted and flavored the same way, enter tens of millions of mouths around the world. The same fashionable background music, the same green logo, the same brown sofas, the same movable coffee tables, the standardized barista demeanor, all repeated potentially tens of thousands of times. This was what Starbucks' coffee patriarch told his employees: if a customer accidentally knocks over their cup, don't rush to clean it up; instead, comfort them first by telling them that you've also spilled your coffee before, so they shouldn't worry, and then proceed to clean up the mess. Service down to the finest detail, yes, and there's also the globalized gaze. On the training manual for the coffee patriarch, it also states that when a guest steps in, the server’s eyes must meet theirs, making the guest feel noticed and cared for. This requires countless quick and lively eyes, but it's not difficult—Starbucks has achieved it.
Indeed, Starbucks' gaze captivated me the moment I walked in. This is a warm Western gaze, even though this attention comes from black eyes, occurring in a southern Chinese city where I live. Such an America, such a Seattle, and such a Guangzhou, overlap in a space called Starbucks. Is the West far away? No, it has completely shattered our imagination.
Because of Starbucks, the whole world is one home.
Starbucks is almost always located in prime real estate in big cities. Walking to Starbucks, setting out from home, in any city, the most conspicuous place will surely have a Starbucks. This is a complex coding system. Space replaces time, the body moves, senses fully open. A person walking to Starbucks experiences a small drama of mood, stepping to the beat of globalization. The eerie aspect of this grand celebration lies in how a very personal action can create a simultaneous resonance illusion. Seattle, London, Paris, Cape Town, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou—all share the same heartbeat. Hierarchical order is abolished, skin color becomes ambiguous, cultural differences are ignored. The great unity of Starbucks' world is gradually arriving.
At the same time, this is also a global lifestyle reader associated with Starbucks. Coffee quotes and coffee romance texts related to Starbucks are being read and recited. Freedom, ease, casualness, elegance, dignity, respect, romance, progress, and culture are woven into this reader. The body as the primary reader causes Starbucks' circulation to skyrocket. The strong face of capital power, after being subtly beautified by cultural essence, becomes incredibly attractive.
Here, political nerves seem excessive. Blind bodies, taking advantage of the situation, sever the dimension of time. The younger generation will tell you nonchalantly: why bring up the past? From birth, the world has been like this.
The body is immersed in the rich aroma of coffee. Who is history? I've never seen it, I don't believe it. No one forced me to drink coffee with cannons. The competition between Chinese tea and American coffee becomes a false issue. Power is no longer so arrogant and naked; it must rely on production and public consumption. On the walls of Starbucks, beautiful images and equally beautiful words tell the legend of coffee. When this legend is copied for the 6,500th time, it becomes truth—Starbucks is the inheritor of coffee culture. This is what we see. The sensations of the body do not deceive us; commensurable experiences enhance the reproductive capacity of capital. Thus, production for consumption and consumption for production lead our era into a pendulum-like hysteria.
At this moment, the death sentence for the past and future is pronounced. We guard a great secret, maintaining silence. No one wants to mention it—that despite the prosperity of coffee shops and the increasing cost of coffee, the farmers who grow coffee are becoming increasingly impoverished. Culture and capital conspire, their magic controlling people's attention, manufacturing interest while neglecting...
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