Playwright in Beijing - A Little Bit Of Coffee Culture

Playwright in Beijing

(Frank Gagliano, China Journal）

……

And will the Chinese audiences gasp, as I did, when Joe first mentioned the idea over coffee and goodies at the Paradiso Coffee?

PARADISO

-- and over cigarettes, of course. Joe is a smoker. And smoking is allowed in the Paradiso Coffee. (Smoking is allowed in all restaurants in China)

The Paradiso Coffee is a student hang out on the campus of Peking University, located under the Centennial Hall. The Centennial Hall is a huge building with an imposing square in front of it and houses two theatre spaces, one with 2,167 seats and a smaller 300-seat house.

You enter the Paradiso Coffee by going round the back of the Centennial Hall and down an outside flight of steps. When you go through the doors, the Coffee is on the left; on the right is a steep staircase going further down to an even lower-level restaurant --just one of many restaurants on the campus.

By the time I return to the US, I will have eaten excellent full-out Chinese meals at six restaurants on campus; there are at least twice, or maybe three times, that many non-fast food, major eating establishments on the Peking U campus, that cater to even nonstudents in the area.

The Paradiso Coffee is a large Starbucks-styled space (with un-Starbucks-styled cheaper, per-cup, prices). As you enter the Paradiso Coffee you spot the coffee bar at the other end of the room.

Clean, warm atmosphere.

Simple, clean-lined furniture; small, round, blond, wood-like plastic topped tables and chairs, for the most part; some booths; some stuffed, dark-covered arm chairs; to the right, the room, with more tables and chairs, extends farther back; some food cases with pastries, sandwiches, snacks; the coffees range from an "Americano" to a latte to a Cappuccino to an Ethiopian blend I tend to favor; teas, cold drinks.

There are posters on the wall of the Italian film classic, Cinema Paradiso. Also, enlarged poster-sized photos of New York scenes are prominently featured on the walls near the large windows, where you can see the feet of outside passersby; one of the posters has a New York scene with the twin towers still standing.

The music loops are constantly playing and filling the room's atmosphere with vocal and instrumental music that ranges from rock to pop to easy Llstening to Chinese pop to old-time jazz, to classical, to foreign artists, including my favorites, Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf. The music is always a little too loud.

Two baristas, Cindy and Tiantian run the place, augmented by two boys (baristos?). Sweet Cindy seems to be in charge (more about her later).

Chinese students, foreign students, campus visitors, sit alone, studying, working on their computers or putting tables together to socialize, study in groups and often, each coffee drinker is on the "Ubiquitous," cell-phoning or text-messaging away; the ring-tone music always cutting through the music in the Paradiso ether, no matter how high the canned-music's volume. Many students can be seen sleeping over their books or laptops, or curled up on the stuffed chairs or sofas, scattered about.

On occasion, The Paradiso is used for a magazine photo shoot or a shoot for a television series.

Often there's some Young-Love kneeing and canoodling going on in some of the corner booths.

There is always time to appreciate the stunning Chinese student beauties making their Paradiso entrances and exits.

Listen to the foreign students, from all over the world, studying the Chinese language, as they sit, talk and create an interesting music of their own; and as they mingle and counterpoint their native languages with the four tones of the fiendishly difficult Chinese.

Lots of one-on-one goings-on; of language-coaching and group reviewing for test preparations.

The Paradiso Coffee is comparatively new on campus this semester and is not open during the winter "Year-Of-The-Pig" holiday-week when I arrive in February. (That's why Joe Graves and I meet at a Starbucks off campus, that first holiday week). By the time I leave to return to the States, the Paradiso Coffee becomes the place to meet. Eventually, I will have an all-day meeting at the Paradiso with each playwriting student.

A little taste of Coffee culture for me.

Just about every morning I meet with Joe at the Paradiso Coffee. The weeks he needs to go to Macau and Taiwan to lecture and perform his one-man show, RAVEL'S SHAKESPEARE, leave a morning-routine hole in my Peking U life (my wife will join me for the last month at PKU).

The talk ranges from the work on BIG SUR and the maddening Peking U obstacles that often derail a rehearsal to problems I'm confronting in my adult conversation classes, to sharing with him the tongue twisters I'm developing for those same classes, to talking American politics and how surreal all that seems to viewing Bush-era madness from China, to making arrangements with Qing to get acupuncture when my lower back starts spasm-ing, to a lot of smutty Graves/Gagliano sophomoric talk from two aging fantasizing sybarites -- and to stopping whatever we're doing to chat with the passersby who stop by our table.

In the five years Joe Graves has been the Artistic Director of the Beijing Institute of World Theatre and Film, he has cast many students in his productions. His first casting call elicited 4000 requests to audition -- that's right, 4000 (for his production of Gozzi's, The King Stag)! The students adore Joe and seek him out, whenever they can. Jane, for example, stops by our table. Jane is a graduate PhD student (lovely, charming, sweet, studying the Linguistics of Character Development in Drama). Her spoken English is perfect. Joe embarrasses her by praising her acting ability.

Jane lives some distance from the Peking U campus, so, when she arrives daily on campus, she sets up office in the Paradiso Coffee and can be found there, laptop before her, whenever she is not in class. For most of the term Jane is feverishly preparing for an important examination. I will discover that most students will prepare for important examinations while I'm there (like, every week, it seems), and this will make life difficult for our BIG SUR rehearsal schedules.

Jane introduces me to the world of linguistics, where theories on drama and dramatic character (Jane's linguistics' focus) seem to dovetail with mine. I invite Jane to attend my playwriting class, if she has the time.

I am beginning to understand in more depth the lure of the Coffee House centers of creative camaraderie that were often the centers of artistic and political and social life in Fin De Siècle (and early 20^th Century) Vienna and Paris and Berlin and Prague. Would I, while I'm at Peking U, hold court while chairing an all-day-long table, where a Chinese Picasso, or a Chinese Cocteau, or a Chinese Gustav Klimt, or a Chinese Arthur Schnitzler, or a Chinese Madam Alma Mahler – with five of her current lovers perhaps -- pulling up chairs, regularly stop by and, over an Ethiopian brew, rage with me against whatever Establishment shackles are currently crushing our creative balls?

I'll tell you this: Before heading for China I had become a tea drinker back in the good old US of A -- mainly English Breakfast tea with milk and "Splenda" sugar substitute. At Peking U, in Paradiso, I've become a coffee drinker again.