Happiness Cafe

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 in: News, Travel

Wang Xing, the owner of Happiness Cafe, is in his early 30’s. A young entrepreneur from a long line of entrepreneurs, he owns two Xi’an style noodle shops in the Houhai neighborhood of Beijing, close to where he lives. The cafe, as he says, is 只是玩儿的地方，just a place to play for him. He’s often found sitting on the couch, playing on the computer or messing with new electronic toys. The first day I arrived, he was installing a karaoke machine, and Bill and Adrien were creating playlists for American songs. Every so often I’ll be alone in the cafe with him, and he’ll strike up a conversation. Our first exchange went something like this:

Him: 什么什么什么什么什么
Me: Uh, Ting bu dong 🙁
Him: 啊, *walks away*

Our subsequent exchanges were much more fruitful, as I had clearly been applying myself to my Chinese studies. The second time we talked consisted of me mostly asking him to repeat himself,  furiously scrambling to look up words in my phone. Nevertheless, I was miraculously able to learn everything in the first paragraph of this post, and also that his nephew was living in LA, studying film studio design. Our conversation ended on a rather awkward note, as he noticed that I had been reading a Japanese novel (Children by Isaka Kotaro) and asked me about my Japanese studies, concluding with 我不喜欢日本人, I don’t like Japanese, noting the long history of occupation in the last century. A friend of his came in and they started talking, leaving me hanging just a bit. The Japanese occupation is just something you best not discuss in China: little good can come of it. Besides, my Chinese is nowhere good enough to make a salient point on the matter.

It was a while before we’d talk again; the summer heat made it hard to stay long in a cafe, and the new crowd of classmates were a much more active crowd, much more keen on playing soccer and slacklining at the nearby universities than studying in a coffee shop. Finally I had a quiet day to myself, and decided to head over to Happiness for a spell.

Wang Xing was in his usual spot on the couch, with just a couple other customers sipping drinks upstairs. Shortly after I sat down, he came over and struck up another conversation, excited to have my input about his upcoming overhaul. The cafe was turning into a Xi’an snack shop, and he was going to repaint everything. What colors do I recommend? What do you think of this pattern for the server’s aprons? He showed me some photos from Xi’an so I could get an idea of what a traditional restaurant is like where he’s from. He likes the combination of East and Western influences, he tells me, and he wants to know if I have any suggestions for making the restaurant more appealing to the local foreigner crowd. I’m still lacking in my ability to express myself, but I feel more at ease in the conversation. I tell him I’ll help him later put together a good menu, easy to understand for future generations of students. Wang Xing is a good guy, even if he is a little misguided about Japanese people.

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