Friday, July 07, 2006
The Daily China Picture
Oh, yeah, there are still a great many pictures from our China trip that have not seen the light of day.
There is now a coffee shop inside the Forbidden City, which for almost 500 years was the seat of the Chinese empire. It is entirely unmarked, however, and one knows it is there only because of a detached sign that points in the general direction. Note, however, that the coffee shop staff sport tell-tale green aprons, and on careful inspection a subtle Starbucks logo (click on the picture to enlarge it). I stuck my head in the shop and, sure enough, it was definitely a Starbucks, but when I raised my camera to take a picture the staff got extremely agitated and motioned that photography was forbidden. The Starbucks is the one thing in all the Forbidden City that is, er, forbidden to be photographed. Why? Too American?
All of this reminds me of a thought I had reading the Pew Center's book on global attitudes, America Against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked. That book devotes a lot of space to describe the alleged foreign objections to American "cultural imperialism" and "globalization," meaning particularly the global reach of American consumer brands. The book fails, however, to answer the obvious American counterobjection: nobody forces foreigners to drink Coke, eat at McDonalds, or buy $4 lattes at Starbucks. These brands will retreat behind American borders the instant that non-Americans decide not to buy them. Foreigners buy our brands, and complain that they are hurting their culture or making them fat or wiping out traditional businesses. I suspect that The Forbidden Starbucks reflects this ambivalence. The Chinese want to deny their coffee and drink it too.
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