Coffee Culture

Coffee. I guess you could say I’m addicted. Not in a physical sense. Not in one of those creepy, chemical-dependency ways. I don’t get headaches without it. I don’t shake. I don’t need a fix.

But I love the whole experience of drinking coffee. Of sitting in cafes. Taking in the surroundings. Watching the world go by. Maybe writing. Maybe scrolling social media. Maybe just people-watching, letting my eyes drift from face to face, table to table, street to window.

It’s not just the caffeine. Not just the taste of the beans and the milk and the particular alchemy of heat and bitterness and sweetness. It’s simple being there.

Quanzhou. Fujian. China. A city I have spent two weeks in now. But this street—Xiànhòu Jiē—is one I have not been on before. I am looking for a Post Office. I want to send a postcard to my cousin in England. It came from a temple hidden in the hills where a carved effigy of Mani sits serene and timeless. 

My phone has led me here; but the Post Office is elusive. These things always are in Chinese cities. Maybe it moved. Maybe it never existed. But as I walk along Xiànhòu Jiē, I smell coffee. Not the sharp, chemical scent of instant. Not the stale ghost of yesterday’s pot. The real thing: freshly-ground, fresh-brewed, floating out of an open doorway like an invitation.

The cafe is small. It is cute. Brick walls, a high ceiling. The floor is old timber, creaking underfoot. Antiques crowd the corners: an old radio, a rotary phone, a typewriter that has not typed in decades. Musical instruments hang from the walls: a guitar with rusty strings, a valve amplifier, a violin missing its bow, a small upright piano that might still sing if someone remembered the tune. It has a sign on it that reads, in Chinese and English: “NO COMMERCIAL FILMING.” WeChat influencers must frequent this place.

Piles of books. Real books. Paperbacks with cracked spines, hardcovers with faded gold lettering, stacked on tables, stuffed into shelves, leaning against each other like old friends who have run out of things to say but refuse to leave. Very atmospheric. Very intentional, but not in a polished, designed way. More like someone started collecting things they loved, and the collection grew, and eventually it became a cafe, and the cafe became a home.

All the furniture is old. Knocked around. Nothing matches. Wooden chairs with mismatched cushions. A leather sofa held together with duct tape. Metal stools that wobble. Tables that have been scratched and stained and loved half to death.

My blue cup sits on a yellow saucer. The two of them were clearly never meant to be together. But they are somehow perfect in their imperfection.

The woman behind the counter—the barista—speaks a little bit of English. She asks where I am from. 

“New Zealand,” I say. “Xin Xilan.” She smiles, and says she has always wanted to see the mountains there.

I order my coffee in Chinese. 

“Wo xiang kafe ná tiě. Ru. Zai zher. Xièxie.” I would like a latte. Hot. To have here. Thank you.

She is impressed. Or she is being kind. Either way, she smiles again, and I feel, for a moment, that I belong here. In this mismatched chair. At this scratched table. With this blue cup and yellow saucer.

Maybe it’s an introvert thing. To find a corner in a crowded city, a table by a window, a warm cup between my hands, and to feel, in that small, still space, more connected to the world than I ever do in the middle of it. The world is loud; coffee is quiet. And in a cafe, no one expects you to be anywhere but exactly where you are.

The coffee is superb: warm and rich and exactly what I need. The music is soft: something instrumental, something unfamiliar, something that fades into the background without disappearing. 

Outside, the street is ordinary. A scooter putters past. A woman carries groceries. A child runs, laughing, chasing nothing. Inside, I am still. My notebook is open. My pen is in my hand.

This is coffee culture in China. Not the chain stores with their neon and their QR codes and their efficient, identical drinks. This. A brick-walled, mismatched, antique-cluttered, book-stacked, slightly-wobbly cafe where a barista smiled at my Chinese and a blue cup found its home on a yellow saucer.

I am not addicted to caffeine. I am addicted to this.