Think back to Connie's Cafe

Windmill jasmine

It is about where Sanxiaokou has been for the past few years. In the early 1990s, it was a cafe called Connie. The name is very foreign. For Hefei at that time, it should be regarded as a new thing. It is said that there is a famous legend in that cafe-the waiters in it are mostly part-time college students, and they all speak foreign languages! I don't know if this oral story is reliable, but we can see that people were full of yearning and awe for the so-called cafe at that time, thinking that it should always be a place for people who can speak a foreign language.

Connie's Cafe had only been to the Cafe twice, and her memory was muddy, and I couldn't remember many details. All I remember was that when I opened the door, my vision suddenly dimmed. Outside was the kind of low sofa, and the tables in front of the sofa were lit with small candles. Inside the sofa were some fashionable men and women who talked in low voices. Go around the corner and there are a lot of face-to-face seats. The lights were dim, there seemed to be foreign-style decorative paintings on the wall, there was music, and the waiters seemed to dress in the same way, and I didn't hear any English conversation. I probably didn't happen to be there when I was there. there are no foreign friends who need to communicate in English-there are these vague fragments in my memory, and I only forget what kind of coffee I was drinking at that time-most of the time, we have been doing silly things like buying food to return pearls.

At that time, there were not many cafes in Hefei. I remember that there was another one on Wuhu Road, called Wuguxiang, whose name was another kind of simple local flavor compared to Connie. Does it have something to do with the grain and oil company? I have had coffee and tasted exquisite pastries there, but now when I think about it, I can only remember three words-- grain fragrance-- which is more suitable to be a salad oil brand.

Colleagues said that Huashang Restaurant also serves coffee and western food, and it is very authentic. My colleagues are emotional people, she said. They usually dress up on Sundays and then go there, which is a very grand family activity. Unfortunately, when I went to the Huashang Restaurant, I mostly lined up on the first floor to buy bean curd cakes packed home, and I would also sit down and drink a bowl of Mao Yuan Tang-you see, in the same place, the activities we engage in have the difference between coffee and green onions.

Then one day, the old Hefei Hotel suddenly changed with the times, and a bunch of soft sofa seats like locomotives appeared-- today, it was nothing, not curvy enough, and the comfort was poor, but at that time, how fresh and interesting it was! Sitting on it is a little bit of performance art, as if it is a tourist who goes far away by train. Moreover, it no longer sells greasy small steamer bun, but sells laminated cakes instead.

Later, there were still fewer cafes, but suddenly there were teahouses everywhere. What impresses me most is the place where Zhang Shunxing's sign is hung on the middle road of the Yangtze River, which is called the Red House Teahouse. Walking on the wooden stairs, the antique decoration, the waiter seems to be wearing printed cloth clothes. Order a pot of colorful fruit tea and look out of the window at the bustling pedestrians downstairs, doing nothing. At that time, the people who went to the teahouse were just chatting, playing cards, eating melon seeds and drinking tea, in order to find a special taste called "leisure" in life. Of course, at that time, in addition to energetic young people like us who had nothing to do, there were also "tycoons" in teahouses wearing T-shirts embroidered with a small flower on their chest and carrying mobile phone bags. Most of them hid in the small private room behind the curtain. They must be talking about big business, right?

I still remember a teahouse, which appeared at the intersection of Tongcheng Road and Yimin Street, called Chayan Guanshou. Now it seems to be a supermarket selling maternal and baby products. Perhaps the biggest feature of his family is the swing seat. At that time, we had no idea about decoration at all, so we were shocked by the sudden emergence of such an abrupt teahouse in the street-man-made trees in the hall, swings wrapped in plastic vines, across the table, face-to-face romantic hanging down, instead of ordinary seats. At that time, the little thing I understood as romantic was to sit on the swing seat of this teahouse and ask for a pot of rose tea, which might not taste good, but who cares about the taste?

After the teahouse culture was popular for a period of time, it declined again, and suddenly the collective disappeared. Again, there began to be large coffee chains with chic decoration, including coffee and light meals. When you can't find a lovely restaurant, the cafe suddenly becomes a good place to go, not only for girlfriends to chat, but also for a family of three to sit there, read magazines, eat steak and drink coffee-cafes are no longer just places for lovers.

Now, Starbucks is here. With a group of girlfriends to join the fun, in fact, a little guilty, are middle-aged aunts, how to still love those places that young people love. Sure enough, seeing that it is full of people who love crazy cell phones while drinking coffee, noisy gossipers like us are really different.

In Sanxiaokou, across the street from the former Connie Cafe, there is another coffee shop that is said to be from Taiwan-I haven't been there yet. I just stood at the old Connie's door, looking at the new cafe opposite, watching the surging youth roaring in and out.