The "FRIENDS" Syndrome

Sitting in our apartment, sipping on a cuppa Maxwell House instant coffee, reading an article in the China Daily on the growth of coffee consumption in China, I began pondering (hallucinating, I was on my fourth cup) this article. I mean, come on, tea and China are synonymous.








Why would they even consider drinking this black, bitter tasting gunk when some of the best teas in the world are grown here.

But based on my own observations here at HIT, I can concur with this. When we first arrived in Harbin in 2008, there was exactly one coffee house located near the campus. Today, there are at least 10 coffee places within easy walking distance of our apartment and not one, not two but three Starbucks that have recently opened in the city.

The article suggested a number of reasons for this growth and of course, the standard one about how  Chinese youth are suckers for anything western, yadayadayadayada..............









Well into my fifth cup, I began to develop my own reason, one that completely makes sense if you were teaching graduate students in 2008. As we got to know our students then, we began to get a glimmer of understanding in how they came to form their opinions and views of what life in the west was like.




As part of our curriculum, we required the students to prepare and deliver a presentation to the class. They were able to choose their own topic. #1 topic chosen by the students was on the TV show, "Friends". Over two weeks and almost 200 presentations, I learned everything I needed or wanted to know about Joey, Monica, Chandler, Rachel, Phoebe and Ross.

For the graduate students, this was life in the west and it involved spending most of our days, sitting around coffee houses, carrying on conversations filled with  witty repartee. Hence, 2008, coffee houses 1 and 2012, coffee houses 10+.






The article went on to suggest that the Chinese really don't like coffee but enjoy the relaxed atmosphere that can be found in a coffee place. Based on my own research derived from spending a number of hours sitting around the local coffee places filling the air with witty repartee, I observed that tea and  juice based drinks outsold coffee by 10 to 1.