Beijing entrepreneur Yu “Anna” Yuanyuan passed this week’s 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of the China in the most patriotic way possible — trying to make money off Americans.
She said she’d ignore the goose-stepping People’s Liberation Army soldiers parading next to Tiananmen Square and ignore speeches extolling the glory of capitalism, known as “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
Instead she said would be busy making sure all the dwindling number of American expats and businessmen still crowded around the bar she owns had full mugs of beer.
During the late ’90s, when I was a struggling writer in Beijing and Yu was a street-side souvenir hawker, we lived blocks from each other but never met.
Now, a decade later, I returned to my old Beijing neighborhood on a journalism fellowship to see firsthand China’s staggering economic expansion.
I took a break from endless meetings with bureaucrats and party functionaries to stroll through my old neighborhood in the northeast part of Beijing when I happened upon Yu’s place. Five years ago, the 37-year-old opened Café del Mar — a multistory complex of restaurants and stores that replaced a block of shabby eateries with names like Dog Meat King, where plates of braised canine ribs sold for a buck.
As Yu made small talk with me and other patrons, I realized she represents the unofficial bargain the ruling Chinese Communist Party has made with its people — leave the politics to us and we’ll give you a chance to get rich.
Yu migrated from Chinese Inner Mongolia in her 20s in search of a better life in Beijing. The Chinese government was encouraging its citizens to go into business for themselves and earn dollars.
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