Graduates still remember the 'good old days'

When Liu Han thinks of coffee shops, "luxurious" is the word that always springs to mind. "They weren't very popular 10 or 15 years ago, and we spent most of our time talking about Shakespeare and our futures at food stalls or in shabby diners near the campus," she said, recalling her "treasured four years" as a student at Peking University.

In the days before campus coffee shops, students got together at small diners, most them of them featuring shish kebab, or teahouses and snack bars to study, socialize, and organize campus activities.

For generations of Chinese students, these places played the same role as campus coffee bars in the West. From 2000 to 2010, one of the most popular haunts was "West Gate Chicken Wings", or WGCW, the collective name for a row of small diners near the west gates of Peking and Tsinghua Universities that offered barbecued chicken wings.