No Smoking...in China?

China is known to be a nation of heavy smokers. But you will be taken by surprise when you see this exchange in a beef noodle restaurant in the Cloud Nine (龙之梦) mall by Shanghai’s Zhongshan Park:

Customer: 服务员，烟灰缸！ [Waitress, (bring an) ashtray!]

Waitress: 这里不可以吸烟。 [You can't smoke here.]

Customer: 有吸烟区吗？ [Is there a smoking section?]

Waitress: 没有。 [No.]

Customer: [grumble, grumble]

In case you’re not familiar with China, let me tell you what’s surprising.

1. The guy asked for an ash tray rather than just lighting up.
2. The guy (and the other two men with him) accepted the restaurant’s no smoking policy

I guess I just like to celebrate the tiny little signs of social progress I see around me :D

You will also be noticed a sharp divide between the coffee shops in Shanghai. If you accept that the major chains here are Starbucks (星巴克), Coffee Bean (香啡缤), and UBC (上岛咖啡), they fall on a smoking/no-smoking continuum like so:

Costa Coffee aligns with Starbucks, and, at least in some locations, Cittá has recently joined the “glassed-in smoking section” faction, joining Coffee Bean.

You can see how smoking policies align with these companies’ target markets. UBC, with its dedication to universal smokers’ rights, frequently reeks of smoke, and has quite a few middle-aged Chinese men in there talking business (or something). Starbucks, on the other hand, is full of trendy young Shanghainese, and usually at least a couple foreigners. The interesting thing is that Coffee Bean and its ilk seem to have basically the same types of customers as Starbucks, and you rarely see middle-aged people there, even if they can smoke there. Most of the smokers at Coffee Bean and Cittá are young.

What does all this mean? Well, I’m just hoping that there will be less smoking in China’s future. Maybe UBC will even start to reek less!

Bye-bye,Best Buy

In 2011,Best Buy (百思买) announced that it’s closing its China stores. I normally didn’t pay too much attention to this kind of news, but Best Buy is a little different. Its high quality service is surely suiting to my standards. 

Best Buy is an American chain, and there’s still a huge Best Buy store down the street from where I live. I welcomed the arrival of Best Buy because I hate its domestic competitors, Suning (苏宁) and Gome (国美), which, incidentally, are also just down the street from my apartment. I had high hopes that Best Buy would prove that the most of the citizens of Shanghai, too, are willing to pay for better service and assurance of high quality.

Alas, it was not meant to be. It’s hard to say for sure how much of the equation is price, and how much of it is Best Buy’s failure to live up to the levels of service it upholds in North America. But something didn’t work.

I won’t say any more on the matter, though, because Adam Minter did a much better job than I ever could on his blog, Shanghai Scrap, in a post called Bye-Bye, Best Buy (China): You had it coming.

I especially liked this post because Adam shares a lot of my same sentiments. Adam notes:

…let me note that I would have loved it if Best Buy had succeeded in China. In part, out of Minnesota pride (I’m a native, and still consider it home) but also because I liked being able to shop for electronics in China without having to bargain, worry about buying fakes, or not being able to return items. The laptop upon which I’m writing, right now, was purchased there, as was the printer to my right, the speakers in front of me, and the iPod in my gym bag. I’m as sorry, and as irritated, as anybody that this happened.

Meanwhile, business was booming at the Apple Stores across Shanghai…

     Bye-bye,Best Buy

Big Snow in Shanghai

I say “big snow” because that’s the literally translation of the Chinese word for “heavy snow”: 大雪（da xue）. And what I woke up to that morning in Shanghai was definitely a heavy snow for that part of China!

The Shanghainese aren’t used to the snow. This car, for example, drove out into traffic without even clearing its rear window,lol

Probably the weirdest thing to see, though, is the “snow sweeping”; the use of Chinese straw brooms to clear the snow. No, it’s not very effective, but no one has snow shovels,at least they are trying:D