Café Culture in Hong Kong by Claudia Fung

Hong Kong is a Gourmet Paradise (美食天堂). There can be found lots of world-class food, also the low-priced food can be discovered between the streets. There is a forest of different kinds of restaurants in Hong Kong. Since the booming of the economy, the rentals of a shop become too costly. Therefore, it appears the upstairs restaurants in Hong Kong and the upstairs Cafés are rising and developing in a fast pace.  

The concept of café comes from the globalization – supply a place for chatting and have a drink, for example, Starbucks Coffee and the Pacific Coffee. At the same time, the Starbucks Coffee is the largest coffee shop in the world and it lets different national citizen to relax inside. As the result of the globalization, the Hong Kong citizen reconstructs the new upstairs café. On the other hand, it seems easily to run a café in Hong Kong, and there are lots of teenagers are becoming the boss of the café now. It is most likely to have a business partnership between friends. Then, have you even got into a café? If no, I suggest you should go and see what it looks like. Although, the main customers are the youngsters and teenagers, but if you are under the age of 50, I guess you have got into a café, no matter it is a large company coffee shop or a small upstairs café. You can sit down chat with your buddy for whole day and the opening hours of cafés are elasticity too so that you can go there whenever you want. Some of them may open in the afternoon and close at the midnight. They are chiefly stand in the location where youngsters always go to, such as TsimShaTsui and Causeway Bay. 

In the past, have you even dream of drinking a cup of coffee in a hotel coffee shop in Hong Kong? If so, you should pay a hundred or more, but at this time you can have a relish coffee in a comfortable place and the price is only a half. Besides, there are not many places for the youngsters to sit down and chat for such long time formerly. Maybe they can choose the traditional restaurant to have dim-sum, but it is only available in the afternoon. Also, nowadays we claim the healthy meals for every age group people. Consequently, the high calorific dim-sum is less popular to the youngsters and it is just good for the families which have elderly. In addition, the dim-sum restaurants limit the time and space to the youth, as they like to chat with their friends after work or do homework together after school. Nowadays, the café become a nice place for them.  

The cafés not only provide a comfortable place, but also offer different magazines and novels for reading. A number of café owners will design different theme for their cafés. They always have cozy sofa, tiny table and gentle light to match their themes. They have different type of drink and snacks. There will be some seasonal special in drinks and snacks. Furthermore, cafés also provide the board game for the customers. It can be said that you just cost you a cup of coffee to have a rest for whole day. The Café culture becomes one of the youngsters culture in the recent days.