Fresh flavour at Houhai

　　By Tang An

　　28. April 2004. Aroma is celebrating its first birthday, with a free flow of wine or whatever else may be one's favourite tipple. On top of this, there is a mouth-watering feast of Pakistani treats, expertly prepared by Harry's Kitchen. 'Harry' is Haroon Rashid - reminiscences of the Caliph of Baghdad of old - a native of Islamabad with oodles of experience in the catering trade. For quite a long time, he recalls, he had his own restaurant in London, but for the past five years he has been delighting the palates of some of Beijing's hungry with his Pakistani, Indian and Middle Eastern delicacies, catering to events and doing home deliveries.

　　That's nice and enjoyable, but our luck this day - 28 April - extends to more than just the food and drink: It's one of those rare spring evenings that's neither too hot nor too cold, and the air is clear and mild enough to be sitting outside, enjoying the view across and along the expanse of Houhai.

　　I look around and wonder: 'How did I come to be invited here today?' Slowly, it comes back to me: It's a pleasant Sunday afternoon last autumn. Strolling by the lakeside, looking for a place to sit down to enjoy a nice cup of coffee, a sign catches my eye: Aroma. Below it a list of three different kinds of coffee, including the inevitable spelling mistakes. Perhaps they're deliberate, and the ploy certainly works on me.

　　I go inside, order a macchiato and a piece of chalk and set to work on the sign. Clumsily, I try to strike up a conversation with the owner, but he just remarks: 'Tang An, how are you?' He is one of those Chinese people who never forget anyone they've ever met, and it turns out that he was the director of an advertisement I was acting in back in 1999. My excuse for not recognising him is that I was in front of the camera, staring into the spotlights, while he had ample opportunity to watch me for the two days the shooting lasted.

　　'Fine. Good to see you!' I reply. 'Have you given up directing?'

　　'No,' he replies. 'Directing is still my main line of work, but I like art and I like the people who create it. I just wanted to have a place where I could meet my friends. With this caféhere, anyone can just drop in whenever they feel like it.'

　　It's clear that Wenheng is an artist at heart and likes to surround himself with like-minded people, mostly painters, film-makers, singers, song-writers. And the place certainly doesn't look commercial; it's more like a collection of small sitting rooms. Altogether, there is room for around 40 people, but even when the place is full it doesn't feel crowded. It takes an artist to design a place like this, I feel. A kind of artful configuration makes more of the space than there actually is of it.

　　'Is your home like this, too?' I ask Wenheng.

　　'Not at all,' he replies. 'I live in Wangjing, near the airport road, you know that place? It's a bit of a concrete jungle, that's why I need somewhere completely different.'

　　He has a point, I guess. Wangjing is already home to more than 200,000 people, living mostly in high-rise apartment blocks, with another 300,000 people expected to arrive over the next few yeas. A place, in other words, that could hardly be more different from the character of the lanes and waters of Houhai. It certainly wouldn't be the right ambience for a cafélike Aroma.

　　To his regret, Wenheng can't make it to Aroma every day, so he makes a point of going on those days when he is not busy with his work. The place is open every day from early afternoon to around two o'clock in the morning.

　　As the weather is getting warmer, Wenheng is putting chairs outside his café, for people to sit outside in the sunshine and enjoy the view across the trees and the water. Unfortunately, though regulations forbid people to sit by the actual lakeside.

　　I ask Wenheng what he thinks is special about his place, as opposed to the other establishments in the area. He explains that Aroma was a meeting place for people - especially people who understand and speak Chinese - to be in touch with developments in present-day Chinese art; understanding different artists' ideas and current trends.

　　'What about foreigners who don't speak the lingo?' I ask him. 'With a bit of luck,' he shrugs, 'they may bump into some locals who are able to speak English.' Certainly, the place is friendly and open enough for guests to have no inhibitions in that regard. Still, the patrons being mostly artists, rather than businesspeople, rarely do speak much English.

　　For those who are in tune with cross-cultural communication, Aroma is a venue for meeting people rather than just a place for having a cup of coffee or a whisky. Selling liquor is not its main purpose, though. The caféwasn't set up as a money-making enterprise, and anyone is welcome to hang around over a single cup of coffee for as long as they choose. In that way, it's much like one of those old-fashioned Viennese coffee houses or the cafés on the Left Bank in Paris. There weren't any of those places in Beijing, so Wenheng set out to create his own.

　　This is quite strange, one feels, because Wenheng has never been to Paris, let alone Vienna, but he intends to make it later this year, as well as Italy and Spain. He believes that the people of southern Europe have good artistic sense and in many ways are close to Chinese. Italian art, to his mind, is among the foremost in the world. So far, the only places he has been to outside of mainland China are Saipan, Thailand and Nepal.

　　All the more amazing, then, that he has managed to set up such a cosmopolitan place. Sure enough, he will bring back plenty of inspiration when he finally does make it to Europe, one can't help feeling.