Back in 2000, I was fortunate enough to take part in a “Jewish heritage” tour of China. I came home with some amazing memories, including shabbat dinner and davening with a local minyan in Bejing, and a tour of the Jewish neighborhood in Shanghai where thousands of Jews successfully fled Nazi persecution. Six straight weeks practicing with a Chinese language tape in my car allowed me to successfully navigate the streets of China (or at least ask, “where’s the bathroom?” or “is there pork in this?” at least five times a day). But my proudest moment came when I was able to walk into a store in Shanghai and order a package of my new favorite tea (a sweet concoction called ba-bou-chai - “8 treasures tea”) without uttering a word in English.

I had quite a different cultural experience when I entered a brand-new coffee shop in the Forbidden City and ordered a Venti non-fat caramel latte. Yes, Starbucks (or *$ for short) had managed to outdo the parodies of its own ubiquity by opening a branch in the most culturally innappropriate spot in all of Asia. I shouldn’t have been surprised - American culture had infiltrated urban China to such a shocking extent that an alien plunked down in Tienanmen square would have assumed from the sheer number of KFC awnings that Colonel Sanders was China’s “Great Leader,” and not Chairman Mao. But the juxtaposition of American consumerism and ancient/communist Chinese culture was too great to wrap my head around without a serious infusion of caffeine.

As the NYTimes recently reported, Starbucks finally succumbed to local protests and closed its Forbidden City location (leaving a scant 250 other Starbucks throughout mainland China to satisfy local consumers). It hasn’t been a good PR week for the coffee company, as they are now facing union-busting accusations by the Manhattan branch of the National Relations Labor Board. Jspot.org has a great article about the Jewish angle to this story: Starbucks’ founder and chairman, Howard Schultz, their lead attorney, Stacy Eisenstein, as well as the main plaintiff in the NRLB case, Daniel Gross are all Jews. How they invoke, either patently or latently, their Jewish values in pursuing their claims in this case is quite interesting.

Ever since our Tuv Ha’aretz site hosted a Fair-Trade Tu Bishvat seder, I’ve been more and more aware of the benefits of righteous coffee. In the opening chapter of Pirke Avot, Shammai famously instructs, “Say little and do much, and greet everyone with a cheerful face.” Starbucks has certainly talked the talk when it comes to living out the values of Tikkun Olam on a corporate scale. The question has always been can they walk the walk?