Coffee Culture comes to the 国子监 street

In an earlier post, put on the blog just before I returned to America for a visit, I wrote about a cool coffee café, “Waiting for Godot,” which is located just west of the Nr. 5 Line Beixinqiao Subway Station. A bit north of this place, on the 国子监街 (rising tone “guo”, falling and rising tone “zi”, and flat tone “jian”) street, are a number of other cool coffee cafés.

The 国子监 is more a wide alley than it is a street, and is one of my favorite places in Beijing. The Confucian Temple, or 孔庙 (falling and rising tone “kong” and “miao”), is located on its east end. Farther down the street are three coffee cafés. One of them, “Crown Coffee”, is shown in the two photos above. The two young ladies were clearly having a nice time relaxing over their lattes or whatever it was they were drinking.

However, my favorite café is the one shown in the photo below. I now go there sometimes for breakfast, as they have bacon, eggs, toast, and one cup of coffee for 30 RMB deal. The café’s interior features some nice art, sky-lights in the roof, exposed beams running below the ceiling, and nice, comfortable couches to sit in and spend an afternoon reading and book and sipping coffee. I definitely intend to spend some more time there.

Readers who know a bit of Mandarin will immediately notice that the English title of this place differs completely from its Chinese title. “喜鹊" (falling and rising tone “xi” and falling tone “que”) of course means “magpie” in Mandarin. I guess they figured that laowai wouldn't want to go into a place called “Magpie Coffee!”

Actually, my Chinese friend, Vivian Wang, has informed me that Magpies are seen as a magical bird here in China. This has to do with an ancient love story in which magpies formed a bridge enabling a pair of lovers to connect with each other. No wonder this place has such a Chinese name (难怪这个地方有这个中文的名字).