Corner Coffee

peace corps china coffee matt christensen

Coming to China I was expecting to be drinking a lot of tea. And I do. But I also drink a lot of coffee. And usually I drink it for free. It wasn’t always this way…

latte and man peace corps china matt christensen
fo’free

A big part of being in the Peace Corps is getting out into the community. You know, being the butterknife that spreads American culture all over the local breaded landscape. I was having some trouble with this for some time, what with being busy teaching and travelling and not being able to say ‘bread’ in Chinese.

But these last few months have been different and I’ve been able to get out there and see what Chengxian, Gansu, China has in the way of bread.

What I did was I walked around a lot. And I ate food.

chinese egg and noodle peace corps china matt christensen
chinese cold food peace corps china
chinese food twice cooked pork peace corps china matt christensen
plate of chinese dumplings peace corps china matt christensen

Lots of food.

Perks of Exploration

I drink coffee for free because during this time I walked into a coffee shop looking for some food. The twenty-five year old owner offered me a beer, so I sat down.

“Hey man.”

“Oh, hey. Yeah I’ll try some coffee,” I said after the first seven beers and twenty-eight games of “shi dian ban”, which means “10.5” in Chinese. In China they literally have a card game that is half of what 21 is.

“Come here drink free,” he replied.

Fast forward a couple months and I’m on the coffee shop’s soccer team. We’ve been playing most nights every week. Number 1 team in our county.

7 soccer teammates posing at practice peace corps china matt christensen
5 soccer teammates posing at practice peace corps china matt christensen

Lights.. Camera..

After returning from the marathon in Beijing, I got a call from my friend. He said to come down to the shop the following morning.

They were shooting a commercial for the coffee shop’s one-year anniversary. I was gonna be an actor!

Now, lots of people have told me, “Matt, you probably shouldn’t be an actor. With your good looks, great hair and propensity for dramatic appeal, well you’d frankly just blow us all away, man. And there aint enough hospitals in the country that could deal with that.”

So I didn’t. Except one winter in high school for a one-act play. I was an angry dad who just wanted to get his annoying family home from vacation. Needless to say, there really weren’t enough hospitals in the country.

But this time it was gonna be different. This is China and I wanted to put on my best face.

4 friends sit in chinese cafe peace corps china matt christensen
1 cameraman chinese coffee shop

In China, there’s a saying: “Wo ye shi zui le,” which means, “I, too, am tipsy.” The girl, who was my co-actor for the scene, whispered this to me just before we started to shoot.

So of course, I couldn’t help but fitfully smile and laugh. We had to do at least seven takes of me sitting down and ordering cappuccinos because of this. Thanks a lot Mrs. McFunny Funpants.

Click here for a link to the full commercial, which is taking Chinese YouTube by storm:

After the wrap we celebrated with a cake and a lot of beer until the wee hours of the morning. It was then, during the zenith of my inebriated clarity, that I realised something.

“I, too, am tipsy,” I slurred aloud in non-tonal Chinese to the twenty or twenty-five people in the room.

“But now, at least, I have friends.”

3 people coffee shop peace corps china matt christensen

Originally posted in an old blog.

My Peace Corps timeline of service.

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