One Beijing cafe that I have visited over 100 times

all my friends know, so should you

Unlike my love-hate relationship with Beijing, I have nothing but love for this spot near the third ring road in eastern Beijing. Located in my neighborhood tuanjiehu, SOE, or Square of Eight, was a place I had taken all of my favorite friends (and you are not one of…just kidding) to.

First of all, what makes it stand out from other Beijing coffee shops is that it opens at 8am. While it shouldn't be too much of an ask for coffee shops to open that early, it's actually quite rare in Beijing. It's not as if people don’t need that cup of dose before work—the city is home to millions of sleepy workers who stay up late, but Beijing’s vast urban landscape is good for cars rather than walking, and many take the subway. So grabbing a cup of coffee on the commute is not the norm. Instead, people go to cafes to meet people or work. SOE was not on my way to the office neither, but it must be somebody else’s. It just felt assuring to know that it existed. Think about it, it was like someone was always awake nearby even when you chose to stay in bed on long Beijing winter days. It made me feel accompanied.

Secondly, SOE has the right vibes, which is important for lone cafe goers like me. The MANN coffee next door looks a bit messy, which, apparently, is popular within the filmmaking community. The air there was often filled with casual flexes from some middle-aged men, like “Last time, I invested 1 million in that film”, and their menu was so big that you felt you could no longer trust it. You could find everything such as waffles, smoothies or honey ginger tea. I once had a date there on which I didn’t remember what we ordered, and by the end of it, I’d overhear more from the next table than remembering anything from my date. I never saw that date again nor went back to MANN.

SOE, on the other hand, seems to attract people who prefer to stay quiet. I’ve also made a couple of friends there. Once on a weekday afternoon, I saw a girl had Politico open on her laptop, and I was very curious to find out what she did for work. I mean, who reads Politico articles on a weekday just for fun (sometimes I actually do though…?) She turned out to be a journalist who worked for a Chinese-language business publication, at a place where one of my friends used to work. I connected them right away. Ohh yesss you could sometimes see others' screens, but I believe not many stop their glares for too long!

As many of us have figured out already, Beijing is not known for being particular about coffee. In Shanghai, I often hear customers asking about the beans when ordering, while some customers in Beijing were worried that there would be sugar in their lattes. SOE takes their beans seriously. As one of the earliest coffee brands in Beijing, they went out of their way to source beans from farms in Africa and South America. And in a time when special blend coffee, or 特调 (te tiao), is one of the only ways for coffee shops to become trendy and get social media influencers visiting, SOE has decided to stick to black coffee.

On the other hand, for me SOE was a small window in which to feel the temperature of the economy in the last three years. Before the COVID restrictions were lifted in 2022, I couldn’t recall a time when SOE wasn't busy. Three baristas were like moving dots, constantly swapping places. The seating area was usually packed, so I always needed to find an empty table. Since around a year ago, however, I couldn’t remember a time when it was packed, and I was always able to occupy my favorite seat.

To pay less rent, SOE gave up a corner, which had turned into a nail booth. The staff was reduced from three to one for weekdays. Fewer orders were arriving. As someone who would easily get awkward in an empty restaurant or cafe, I would often cheer when I saw more guests coming or heard the little printer at the cash register was processing incoming delivery orders. The rising competition in Beijing's coffee business was certainly one reason, but the decline of the economy was something baristas felt deeply.

I like the two remaining baristas, who are both a few years younger than me. We often had good chats commenting on weathers, hot topics on the Internet, new developments in the neighborhood, and gossiped on some frequent costumers as well as encounters with weird costumers.

Selfishly, SOE had become a way for me to measure time. If I was away on a trip, I’d come back thinking, “Oh, I haven’t been here for two weeks”. The baristas would roughly remember how long it had been since I was last there, “long time no see, where have you been?” In a new city, at least someone (apart from my colleagues) were aware of all of my whereabouts. How sweet (I believe you don’t talk to friends all the time. And I never had a partner in the last few years)! SOE turned out to be an additional support network for me.

As Chinese cities have become gentrified, it’s lucky to still have community cafes where you know the baristas personally and where you could go there for all situations: needed a coffee, needed to read, needed to meet a friend or needed to use laptop. During my time in Beijing, I had visited SOE at least once a week if I was in town. So I must have been there more than 100 times. SOE was a solid base for me when everything else was changing. Now I am in Shanghai, I would report back trends here.

So what’s your story with community cafes in China?