Can coffee

Mr. Lu Xun once wrote in Revolutionary Cafe: "Imagine the towering foreign-style building, facing the broad street in front, the glass signboard shining with crystal light at the door, the famous people in our literary and artistic circles upstairs, or talking high or pondering, and the front is a large cup of steaming proletarian coffee. It is really an ideal paradise." But Lu Xun himself does not drink coffee, he drinks green tea alone, so "in such a coffee shop, I have not been up."

But a year after the Revolution Cafe was written, Lu Xun still went to the coffee shop near his residence in Shanghai at that time, in order to attend the party preparing for the Left-wing League. He still doesn't drink coffee, just a cup of green tea, and every time he goes, he still just a cup of green tea. Wei Mengke, an old writer, recalled that in terms of "coffee or tea", Lu Xun did not touch a little western custom, others wanted coffee, but he wanted tea, and sometimes Xia Yan accompanied him to drink tea. Although he did not enjoy the signature drinks in the shop, the coffee shop was still famous for Lu Xun's frequent visits. The coffee shop was located near the tram terminal on North Sichuan Road in Shanghai at that time, opposite to Neishan Bookstore. It must not be the earliest coffee shop in Shanghai, nor necessarily the best coffee shop in Shanghai at that time, but because of the Chinese Left Writers Union, it became the "most famous coffee shop in that era" among the later population.

Yang Xianru recalled: "Comrade Yang Hansheng often took us to participate in the activities of left-wing writers in the 1930s, just in the coffee shop on North Sichuan Road. This is a coffee shop run by foreigners. It's safer because the police don't pay much attention to it." In 1934, Xiao Jun and Xiao Hong came to Shanghai from Northeast China with novel manuscripts. They first went to Neishan Bookstore to meet Lu Xun, and then Lu Xun took them to public coffee to chat. Coincidentally, Zhou Yang's wife also recalled that she had asked Zhou Yang to wait in the public coffee, first went to the Neishan Bookstore to find Lu Xun, and then the three together in the small private room on the second floor of the public coffee for a long talk. It can be seen that the literary youth at that time must go through the Neishan Bookstore_Public Coffee Cafe to meet Lu Xun.

In Japan, too, coffee shops became popular among intellectuals first and then among the general public through cultural movements. On April 13, 1888, Japan's first coffee shop opened in Nishikuromon-cho, Ueno, Tokyo (another said that Japan's earliest coffee shop was the "washing sorrow pavilion" opened in Tokyo's Nihonbashi in 1886), and the owner Zheng Yongqing also had a special relationship with China. He was the adopted son of Zheng Yongning, a descendant of Zheng Chenggong's younger brother Tian Chuan Qi Zuo Wei Men. He was born in Nagasaki in 1859. He studied at Yale University in the United States and was proficient in Chinese, English, French and Japanese. As a senior intellectual, Zheng Yongqing pursued the promotion of coffee as a literati spirit. He took the teahouse acceptable to Japanese literati as his signboard and named his cafe "Can Tea House" to sell Westerners 'coffee inside. The Japanese pronunciation of "can" itself is similar to "coffee", and later became a fixed translation of "coffee" in Japanese. As a kind of drink that cultural people first liked, coffee suddenly had a lot of literary translations at that time, in addition to "can", there are "may not","bone","bone","plus" and so on. Some people also named it "Tang tea","fragrant soup" and the like. Zheng Yongqing also complied with this trend, putting all kinds of Japanese and Western books and newspapers in his coffee shop, even the four treasures of the study, in short, trying to blend the book fragrance and coffee fragrance into one. At that time, Japanese intellectuals also had many interesting hobbies when they went to cafes. For example, some people would bring geisha into cafes to accompany them. Some people, like Lu Xun, never drank a cup of coffee although they frequently appeared in cafes. Because in the eyes of people at that time, it was important to sit in front of a high-backed chair in a coffee shop, with a popular literary journal spread out on the table, drinking coffee or green tea or even plain water, it didn't matter.

Zheng Yongqing's "Can Tea House" eventually closed down quietly after four years of opening because of its high style, poor management and successive deficits. However, the coffee culture craze set off by "Can Tea House" has made successors emerge continuously. In 1890, the "Gem Coffee Shop" in Asakusa, Tokyo officially opened. In 1909, Mizuno Mizuno's Café Paulista, a first-generation Brazilian immigrant to Japan, secured free coffee bean sponsorship from Brazil and opened a chain of stores across Japan. The Tokyo branch opened in 1911 and still stands opposite the Ginza Hatchome Museum toy store. The shop's advertising slogan was "Black as a ghost, sweet as love, hot as hell," and the coffee here was cheap and cheap, a cup of coffee for five cents, plus five cents, you can get a doughnut. This attracted many young scholars and students from nearby Keio University. It is said that at that time,"Esperanto Popularization Association" Akita Rain Sparrow, often only buy a cup of coffee, but to occupy ten seats, held a seminar here every week, known as a model of thrift.

When it first opened, the Old St. Paul Cafe had a ladies 'section on the second floor. In 1911, Green, a women's magazine founded by Thunderbird Hiratsuka, often held editorial meetings in the women's guest department, where a group of fashionable famous women gathered together to talk loudly for an afternoon. Blue is a female scholar from the 18th century British "blue stockings"(blue socks), which later became the symbol of the new Japanese woman. Although today's Old St. Paul has abolished the ladies 'section, female guests in blue socks are still treated with special dignity and coffee money can be waived. It has also been heard that Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed in Ginza once and came here for three consecutive nights to drink Paulista Old, which is the shop's signature. This kind of mixed coffee has been on the menu since the beginning of the business. Yoko Ono can be regarded as a new new woman. I don't know if she wore blue socks there at that time.

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