Students full of beans over rise of coffee shops

The 1898 Coffee House near Peking University is a famous meeting place. Provided to China Daily

A forum for ideas

Cactus was the first coffee house at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing - where 3,000 international students account for 20 percent of the total student body - when it opened in March 2005. In 2013, UIBE had the second-largest international student body in Beijing, according to Shi Jianjun, the university's president.

The founder of Cactus, Wang Quangang, said he started the shop as a place for students to meet, talk and swap ideas. "When I was at college in Shenyang (Liaoning province) back in the 1980s, there was nowhere to meet with friends, except for the student canteen. College students are a group of 'active brains', with the most passionate and wild ideas. Places like coffeehouses are essential for the spread of ideas and theories. They are irreplaceable."

Although the cafe, on the first floor of the international dorm building, originally only attracted foreign students, it's becoming increasingly popular with the Chinese.

"They (international students) have the coffee habit, and we catered solely to their needs at first, but eventually some of the Chinese students started dropping by. Now, professors occasionally host discussion groups here, and students from all over the world hang out," Wang said. "I hope that many years after graduation, the students will say that Cactus provides a faithful snapshot of their college lives, something to look back on fondly."

Waitress Zhang Fang said she's noticed many changes in the five years she has worked at Cactus: "The students call it the 'informal study room' because it's pretty much unregulated and very comfortable. I remember two girls who met in the coffee shop because they both liked to sit near the window. One day, they started talking and went from being complete strangers to best friends very quickly, all because of the coffee shop."

Across town, Katerina Galajdova, who studies at Beijing Language and Culture University, described Harney & Sons as "a place to record wonderful moments". The Czech national said: "It will definitely be one of the top five places I'll miss when I leave Beijing."

That sentiment was echoed by Isabella Greene, the US student, who recalled walking into the shop after a tough day during which she had fallen out with a close friend and also started to feel depressed by the university's intense study program. She said the cafe's ambience and soft music helped calm her down.

"Later, I met a friend, who told me that he'd finally bought a train ticket for a trip during Spring Festival. Tickets are extremely hard to obtain during the holiday rush, so I was quite happy about that piece of good news. Somehow it swept my bad mood away," she said.

Chinese who have studied overseas are also drawn to the coffee shops. Lin Ke, who returned to Beijing from the United Kingdom in February, will shortly take up a post as a lecturer in the education faculty at Beijing Normal University. Having spent seven years as a student at BNU before heading to the UK in 2010, Lin said the biggest change she's noticed at her alma mater is the emergence of the coffee shops.

"I remember there was only one place on campus that served coffee and tea during my undergraduate years. It attracted very few customers, maybe because it was pretty expensive, about 20 yuan ($3.20) for a regular coffee," said Lin, who developed the coffee habit during her time in the UK.

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