I've gotten the terms to describe fair trade coffee in Chinese...down. Down like You down with that? Down like ordering dumplings is down pat. Downier than a down pillow. Down like I'm stark raving evangelical and no one seems to give a...sip. Yes, no one gives a sip.

 

Do you know what fair trade coffee is? Most American coffee drinkers have heard of it. You pay a little extra for your cup o' joe and some coffee farmer in the tropics receives something a little closer to a living wage. It frees the average grower from being beholden to coffee plantation and industry giants, who, like chocolate companies, farm at a high economy of scale in "the south" while roasting at a small scale (the value added) in "the north" for higher profits.

 

When I passed on the idea of fair trade coffee to my students, they said, "hmm... sounds like a government thing."

 

"No, it's a market thing," I replied. "You're not entirely powerless."

 

"Hmmph," they shrugged and went on to talk about the plastic surgery clinic on the 8th floor of my building. (nose reconstruction only about $300 US). Now that is a market thing.

 

The average coffee shop clerk is no better. After explaining how fair trade works, looking at the bags of coffee, and telling them that "fair trade" is not a brand name, I ask "can you request the management buy fair trade coffee?"

 

Their usual response is, "we don't make the decisions. The boss does."

 

"Can you tell the boss that a customer requests fair trade coffee? Tell them I really want to buy some coffee, but I can wait. Tell them more people will want to buy your coffee if it's fair trade. You can advertise your coffee as fair trade."

 

Only once out of the dozen or so times did the clerk seem to take my request seriously. I have yet to find fair trade coffee in China. Yet every day I see a new Starbucks.

 

 

Perhaps this is due to the fact that shop clerks have little sympathy for farmers in other countries because they themselves can barely make ends meet. Most of them need to work two hours before they can buy a cup of coffee themselves. A waiter at Pizza Hut starts out at 75 cents an hour. A counter slave at "kendudgy" (KFC) makes even less. Perhaps what the coffee shop clerks are thinking when I ask them to help some faceless coffee picker battle a friendly-faced corporate giant is, "what about me?! What about my boss giving me the shaft?"

 

China has returned to the age of the corporate robber barons. Posh bars are full of expats and Chinese executives. I see Humvees and Mercedes and Corvettes on the streets. The "Well-Off Society in an all Round Way with Chinese Socialist Characteristics" that everyone's supposed to be building is in the hands of the WTO and joint ventures. And people's sense of personal responsibility for all this? That's more of a government thing.

 

~your narrator is a normally-subdued tea drinker from the Great Lakes region.