James Huang - Far far away from Scouseland

A few weeks ago I got to meet a famous American expatriate called Daygan. He has lived in Tianjin for a while and he’s involved in a radio program, acting, modelling and, more recently, starting a new coffee house in Tianjin. It’s called "The Coffee Spot" and you can find out more about it here and keep up with the latest news on the blog. Below is a photo of the future site:

I met up with Daygan to talk about investing in The Coffee Spot. He’s got a good vision for what he wants The Coffee Spot to be. I’m excited. It will add value to the community, it will be a great place for expats and local Chinese students, the prices will be reasonable and there’ll be a real coffee house atmosphere. After many, many hours with an abacus I’ve calculated that the numbers look good for the potential investor.

The main thing is though, I’m sick of handing over my money to Starbucks’ shareholders.

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I’m proud to be living in an area where there are local Chinese people and few other foreigners. I hear the local babble, which is still incomprehensible to me. I breathe in the authentic smells of street food, smelly tofu and precious heavy metals.

When I want to breathe more rarefied air I take a trip to the South of the city. Nanjing Lu is a favourite of mine because I can see where China is heading in the future.

The pace of development is lightning quick. The old buildings, shops and markets are being mercilessly torn down. In their place will come luxury apartments and shops.

What you see on the left will become prime real estate, like the Kensington and Chelsea of London. Buy now while you can.

Now, within 5 minutes walk of this area are: 3 Starbucks, a Pizza Hut, a Rolex shop, a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar, a TGI Friday’s restaurant that is under construction and a Zara designer clothes shop that has just opened last week.

This blog entry has another discussion on China’s nouveaux rich.

This is where Tianjin’s nouveau rich are coming out to play and they are playing in increasing numbers.

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It was more like a casual walk onto the plane, which had a dire lack of entertainment. But I occupied myself with reading, sleeping and balancing my accounts for the year 2007. All that I could conclude was a lot a money was spent at McDonalds.

I was privileged to have my flatmate organise a birthday party for me at Starbucks upon my return (a lot of money was also spent there in 2007). Despite the horrific jet-lag, it was much better than my actual birthday spent in hospital.

The jet lag remains but now I am back to the teaching routine. My Chinese is really rusty and my teacher is going to be disappointed when she finds out I have done no work in the past month.

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