1、1Defenders of Slow CultureTHERES a hutong brew pub inBeiJing where owner and pa-trons drink cheerfully underBlitzkrieg-like conditions.Theyare making a stand on the front lines otbeer culture,in the back alleys of a highprofile,low-tech hutong heritage neigh-borhood.The Great Leap microbreweryand ta
2、proom suffers from “orange-outs“ daily,owner Carl Setzer explains,but theyre not quite as bad as powerbrown-outs,and nothing the fermenta-tion process cant ride out.When theuninsulated water pipes froze,he andhis wife Liu Fang had to coach their lo-cal plumber how to build them a bypassso they could
3、 stay in business.Thentheres the persistent threat of develop-ment.The traditional domestic Chinesearchitecture around ancient Beijingscultural north pole,the Drum and BellTowers,is being tarted up and many an-cient alleys have already been reducedto rubble.The young couple has a 10-year lease on th
4、e premises but Setzersays the fact is,“We could go home ona Tuesday,come back on a Wednesdayand it could be destroyed.Little old la-dies drop by when they see us makingmodifications to the bar and ask whybother? Youll just be torn down in fiveweeks,or five months or five years.“ 2Why bother indeed?
5、Hanging out theproprietors shingle is risky enough any-where,but doing it in a foreign countrywould seem to up the ante considerably.Nevertheless,a growing number of for-eigners are doubling down on the visionof being their own boss in China.Own-ing your own business seems to haveperpetual allure,de
6、spite the difficulties.Two young independents,a brewer anda tea exporter,are doing it by sellingslow culture in the heart of Chinasheadlong dash into modernity. With no formal background in the artof brewing,Seizer struck out on his ownfor all the usual reasons.Even beforehe and his business partner
7、-wife wereexpecting their first child,the desirefor a quieter life,more time together,and more control of their environmentwas beginning to get some purchasewith this successful young couple.Whatstarted as a sideline to their regularday jobs became Great Leap - Beijingsfirst microbrewery.It took som
8、e doing:consider that they spent nine monthsjust looking for a suitable location fortheir brewpub,then continued to workfull time while the hutong space theyfound was being renovated by contrac-tors.More than once they came home tocheck on the place only to find 3nothinghad been done since the last
9、long dis-eussion.After burning through two con-struefion crews,the hutong house andits walled,tree-shaded courtyard werefinally ready,but the challenges werentover by any means. “Theres many a slip twixt cup andlip,“ as the old saying goes,and CarlSetzer would agree.Things started outwell.Setzer has
10、 been working for theman since he came to China seven yearsago,apart from two half-year stintsback in the U.S.to complete his Mas-ters in International Affairs. He was the classic “white guy“ hired by Chinesebusinesses in those days,a jack of alltrades who polished English-languagecommunications,hel
11、ped with purchas-ing,or negotiated with English-speakingoutsiders.Then he got a scholarship toNational Taiwan University in Taipei topolish his slowly accumulating Chineselanguage skills and entered in earnestthe busy wheeling-dealing world todaysChina offers.Along the way he met andmarried colleagu
12、e Liu Fang.Liu is oneof two women in China since 1947 whohave been to the bottom of a deep-shaftcoal mine - as part of her work for amine security company; it speaks to hergumption.It was Liu who actually sug-gested they start a mierobrewery as ahobby of sorts after Setzer introducedher to British a
13、les on a vacation theytook in Laos.To 4hedge their bets awhile,they kept their day jobs. An American,from Cleveland,Ohio,he says,“In the U.S.,if yon want to starta brew pub you go to one supplier toget yourself set up,and after that youdeal with maybe a handful of suppliers.“Here in developing China
14、,a microbrew-er must deal with 28 different ones on aregular basis,because not only are thepots,hoses,taps,kegs,fittings,pipes,and valves all handled by different peo-ple,so are the regularly required sun-dries,everything from the hops to thecleaning fluid.Many of the necessarycomponents had to be s
15、ourced and re-purposed.“Explaining to the workmenhow to place all the containers and howto connect them up was simply comicbecause they had no concept of what wewere doing“ was the stoical commentfrom Carl,and everything else was trialand error too.“Even now we are con-stantly challenged to see what
16、 we can dowith local products,or source aroundthe difficulties.“ Beer is technically a simple beverageto brew,compared to making wine orspirits,but the haggling over the finalnature of deals,which is all a part ofChinese business culture,had an expo-nential quality.Venders the couple dealtwith durin
17、g the set up would assume thefair-haired Setzer was Liu Fangs foreignboss and would try tempt her to proposedeals that 5undercut him; it happenedwith every supplier,and for Setzer thatwent “from cute,to interesting,to frus-trating to infuriating.“ When the divideand conquer tactics were thwarted,the
18、publican sighs,it turns out “There areno set prices; everything is differentevery time and it makes it nearly impos-sible to establish budgets,“ a situationwhich was partly eased by developingsolid relationships with critical venders. Last month he was an IT consultant;this month they are self-emplo
19、yed.Aftertheir soft opening in October of 2010,they swiftly decided the status and in-come their corporate jobs allowed themwas no great loss.Had they had evena hint of doubt,he says,they wouldnthave taken the leap.How they did itcounts for as much as what they did.“Wedidnt want to cut any corners,w
20、e did itpiece by piece; we wanted to make this into a scalable business without killingourselves.“ There were other reasons forgoing to all the trouble: he wants to beloved.Beer is one of those great socialequalizers. Setzer sleeps much better at night,and emphasizes that even for the swiftand the b
21、rave office jobs are stressful,whereas “Great Leap wasnt a race towin,just a puzzle to solve.“ They hadno investors to satisfy,nor pressure tochange the business plan.Now theyjust have customers to please,and theyrepresent a 6wide demographic.Setzerbrewed test batches at home before thepub space was
22、 ready and the publican isstill enjoying his freedom to experimentwith brews and make up the names.The taps at Great Leap dispense pintsof delightfully potent ales in chocolateand pumpkin flavors with two to threetimes the kick of standard Chinesefare.British ales are their specialty buttheres a dec
23、idedly un-British Honey MaGold infused with Sichuan spices andbest imbibed with that cuisine; nearbyrestaurants deliver when the taproomscustomers get peckish for somethingmore substantial. The clientele doesnt come for thefood anyway.Great Leap is tucked awayin an alley far enough away from theacti
24、on of a touristy hutong makeover,as Setzer points out,to guarantee that“people wont just drop in here becauseits handy.Tired shoppers and casualpartyers are not going to be wanderingthe hutongs looking for us.“ The beeris about to find its way to the fans how-ever.Setzers second brew pub will benear
25、 Chinas best known tourist destina-tion.The Great Leap of the Great Wallwill open in the fall of 2011,equipped toproduce 250-gallon batches and gleeful-ly awaited by local eating and drinkingestablishments with whom the couplehave cut deals. It is both an act of defiance and of ac-ceptance to lounge
26、 7in the Great Leapswalled garden or in its cheeky Pre-Re-form China interior decor.On the sur-face everyones there because they likequality beer and a taproom atmosphere,but pub culture,as a version of “slowculture,“ is reason enough.Even in win-ter customers pick their way throughthe snow and alon
27、g the narrow alleys tohunker down in the Great Leap.“Thegovernment has made living in this areafairly comfortable,the water,the natu-ral gas,the electricity are all subsidized,because for the most part residents hereare property rich,cash poor,“ Setzerpoints out.But there are elements in-tent on tot
28、al modernization,includingthose who would replace real hutongswith convenience-bolstered replicas orworse: opposing them are many differ-ent international and local groups des-perately promoting preservation,and ahandful of local politicians who have adifferent version of progress.“Its an ex-citing
29、place to be and an exciting time tobe here,“ the brewer admits,“but thatsthe biggest risk.“ Charlene Wang is another Americanbrewster who beat her organizationaldependency,in this case for the pursuit of the perfect leaf.Her new companysopening pitch,“distractingly good teas,“is actually the core of
30、 her story,and,like Carl Setzer,the writing was on thewall before she quit her day 8job.Sheadmits while working at the Americanembassy in Beijing,“In the middle of aForeign Affairs Dept.meeting all I couldthink about was,gee,this is really greattea.“ Wang had studied internationaldevelopment at all-
31、female WellesleyCollege,and after graduation joined theUS Foreign Service.Her career even-tually brought her to Chinas capital,but by 2005 she already knew that allbureaucracies dampen creativity anddynamism.One last hurrah came in2009 when she took a dream job shedworked hard to get with the State
32、Dept.in Washington.She is grateful for all shelearned with her employer,but lastedonly eight months before realizing shewanted to be back in Beijing,and onher own terms.The 30 year old actu-ally has a trinity of motives for beingan entrepreneur; its the tea,her socialenterprise ambitions,and that gr
33、eatestof plan-spoilers,love. An extremely early convert to thebeverage,she admits to being nerdyenough by age 10 to subscribe to Vic-toria magazine,a glossy for the 40-something demographic in the grip ofhigh nostalgia.Her Chinese-Americanparents accustomed her to other aspectsof Chinese food cultur
34、e.Personal traveland professional development in teaculture consisted of fact-finding trips totea-producing regions of Sri Lanka andIndia,and 9master classes at the WorldTea Expo in Las Vegas.“Tea is aboutwhere it is grown,how it is prepared,how its consumed,“ says Wang who to-day has a characterist
35、ically Chinese tu-toring arrangement - unstructured butintense - with a local tea master. When she tasted some of the bestteas China had to offer,the questionswere obvious: why are all the famousgourmet teas French,British,Japaneseand German,when none of these aretea-growing regions? Why do Chineseh
36、otels offer low-end foreign teas in thesuites? Kudos to the Starwood Hotelchain (think Westin) for carrying goodJing brand teas,but why a British brandin their Chinese properties? Wang hadher China mission cut out for her: builda company that would showcase Chi-nese teas.Wang has hunted down teasand
37、 producers of quality: a white for itssubtle sweetness and storage practices;an organic green for the fidelity of theproducers definition,a fall-harvest oo-long,a black for its richness and depth,and a Puer for the wild 7oo-year-oldtrees that yield it. Tranquil Tuesdays is her businessand she buys,p
38、ackages,brands andsells these exquisite teas for the foreigngift,corporate gift,and custom-labeledmarkets,and carries related ceramicware.Like Setzer,she has embracedan 10ancient beverage for its slow culturequalities.Kung Fu Cha,using the samedescriptor as the martial arts school,means “focused“ te
39、a drinking; a wholeafternoon may spent over a bottomless teapot,in boundless conversation.Andlike Great Leap,the private showroomand offices are in a hutong setting withthe same perennial challenges: Wangbuys bottled water in winter to getaround the old neighborhoods frozenpipes. Before moving here
40、with the StateDept.her experience of China consistedof a summer interning at the LegislativeCouncil in Hong Kong the year the 2008Olympic bid was won,and volunteerEnglish teaching in a minority village inGuangxi.Wellesley alumna Wang wassensitized to womens issues,and had aninterest in “social enter
41、prise“ before itgot the clever title.But she had becomedisillusioned with the regular chan-nels of bringing relief: grant writing forfunds and report writing to justify howyou spent them gobbled up eternities.However,work in remote areas of Chinare-awakened her interest.She hopes thetea and teaware business will become arevenue source for an entity that trainsand employs rural women to developtheir own potential.Wang has startedby hiring a rural woman who came toBeijing to work as a casual domestic,and the new hire was soon handling or-ders and shipments when Wang
