A Post-2000 Nursing PhD Student Opens a Café in Qingdao: 'The Name Is About Pumping Up a Bicycle'

At a Glance (China Coffee Network): In a residential community near Yan'er Island in Qingdao, a small café has quietly gone viral online. Step inside and the owner you see has a crisp, no-nonsense crew cut and an al…

In a residential community near Yan’er Island in Qingdao, a small café has quietly gone viral online.

Step inside and the owner you see has a crisp, no-nonsense crew cut and an altogether clean, fresh look. His name is Hou Hailong, a Sichuan native born in 2000 and a second-year PhD student in nursing at Sichuan University.

“The shop’s name has to do with pumping up a bicycle. This place is also somewhere I can recharge myself,” he said.

The little shop officially opened on July 9 this year. From Chengdu to Qingdao, from the laboratory to the coffee bar, he has set a doctoral student’s desk and the steam of an espresso machine down in the same coastal city.

The name holds a story of a low period and self-rescue. Last February he was going through a slump and considered taking a year off to readjust. His faculty advisor told him he could do what he wanted as long as it did not hold back his studies. His family also voiced support: if he could keep up with his coursework, he could give it a try.

So in March he went to Kunming and systematically learned coffee from his brother-in-law, who runs a café, studying for nearly three months. On May 3 he flew from Kunming to Qingdao and began scouting locations and fitting out the shop. Two months later, on July 9, the café opened.

When his classmates learned he had opened a café in Qingdao, they looked on with envy — envious that he had done what they had wanted to do.

He is not a local and never studied in Qingdao, yet he opened his shop there. His reasons were simple and clear: though he is a southerner, he likes northern cities, and he studied in Shenyang during his master’s years. He also likes mountains and sea, and he likes winter.

Most important of all, two earlier trips to Qingdao had left him with a very good impression. He wanted to try Qingdao beer, walked into a shop and said, “I’ll take one jin.” Hearing this, the owner simply gave it to him. “Don’t you know about Shandong hospitality?” That small incident stayed with him for a long time.

After arriving in Qingdao he got to know some people in the same trade. They had studied and worked in the city for years and were a few years older than him. With no competitive tension between them, they talked without reservation about adjusting the menu in the off-season and about the experience of running a shop.

This also made him feel that, apart from a climate you cannot change, the human environment is what decides whether a place is comfortable to stay in, and he soon settled into the city.

The shop is small, tucked inside the Yan’er Island community. He said that on his first evening in Qingdao he spent the next day walking around looking for a storefront, passed through the Yan’er Island community, felt an instant affinity with it, contacted the landlord, and that was that.

There was no market research, no familiarity with Qingdao’s commercial districts or foot traffic, not even knowledge of where the nearby metro was. “It just felt right.”

After opening, he began a life split between two cities, spending almost all his time in Qingdao minding the shop and not taking a single day off since opening. Only when coursework requires it does he fly back to Chengdu for a few short days.

“Opening a shop is easy; keeping it going is hard.” Business was good in July and August, then fell off noticeably from September. There are some repeat customers, but new visitors still drive daily sales. Natural foot traffic is thin, and many customers see the shop online and come specially to look around and have a coffee.

He says it is fine when he is busy; when there is nobody, he is bored and anxious, worries about turnover and feels cooped up in the shop. But the experience has tempered him. He used to be restless and unable to sit still; now he is gradually able to settle. With no customers, he reads and studies in the shop.

In his view, Qingdao has many cafés with strong character; the seaside ones are especially beautiful, good at building their own IP, and the city has a rich coffee culture with real depth. Going forward, he wants to refresh the winter hot-drink menu and make the inner room warmer so guests can settle in. If he has the means one day, he would like to open a beautiful café by the sea: “That would be an incredibly happy thing.”

The sea breeze is turning cool and the coffee is still hot. Small as it is, this shop connects a post-2000 doctoral student’s studies and his life. Minding a shop is a slow fire; a doctorate is a long road. He steadies himself in the aroma of coffee while, in Qingdao’s sea wind, pumping up his life again.

——————–

● By Peninsula All-Media reporters Tian Kun and Yao Jia

Reprint Notice & Disclaimer

This article has been edited and compiled by China Coffee Network. The information and images therein come from public sources and the copyright belongs to the original author. This reprint is intended solely for information sharing within the coffee industry and does not represent the views of this website; all data and opinions are subject to the original article. Our thanks to the original author for creating and sharing it.
For matters concerning content licensing, attribution, copyright or otherwise, please contact us promptly and we will verify and cooperate in handling them as soon as possible. We also welcome coffee origins, brands and industry media to exchange ideas and contribute articles.
Contact China Coffee Network: Tel 400-0000-641 (+86-18288016826) | Email 405854472@qq.com | Address: Jinghong, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province / Tieling, Liaoning Province