Trending in Beijing: The Cost of Boozy Bottles and Baby Bottles
The fun, the strange, and the what-on-earth-is-this? Trending in Beijing is a wrap-up of top stories in Beijing as told by the trending hashtags, local press, and general power of the internet.
Will Beijingers accept a bottle opening fee?
It’s a familiar concept for Western diners: Restaurants may choose to charge a corkage fee for any beverage that patrons bring in themselves, the idea being that the venue can still profit from playing host even if the party forgoes the purchase of alcohol.
But in China, where diners are used to bringing in their own bottles of baijiu or wine and opening them free of charge, the idea just doesn’t sit well. Thus, when a reporter at Beijing Daily penned a piece about the growing trend towards corkage fees in high-end restaurants, the topic spread like wildfire online.
In their digging, the reporter found the majority of Michelin-starred restaurants and Black Pearl restaurants not only charge a corkage fee in the range of RMB 200 per bottle but even have a minimum consumption fee for private rooms.
More than a few netizens were quick to criticize the idea of a corkage fee, calling the fees everything from “moronic” to “tyrannical.”
Fair enough, although, if you ask this author’s humble opinion, those seeking to confront injustices against consumers might find a better cause than fighting for the rights of people who can afford Michelin-starred restaurants. As one netizen put it, “I’ll tell you how to solve this problem. Just don’t go there.”
Child-rearing in the capital costs RMB 2.6 million
“To raise a child is to eliminate a millionaire.” So goes a Chinese saying, and the numbers appear to prove this proverb true, particularly in large cities. The average cost to raise a child in China amounts to RMB 700,000, but in the top ten most expensive cities for child-rearing, the amount is well above RMB 1 million, with Beijing topping the charts at RMB 2.6 million.
This is all according to reporting by Phoenix Weekly, whose post on Weibo was met with many sighs from millennial netizens, who are by and large more reluctant to have children than their parents for fear of prohibitive costs.
One user quipped, “You’ve heard of employment insurance, well how about birth insurance?”
Beloved panda Jini passes away
The Beijing Zoo reported that a giant panda named Jini passed away last week at the age of 27. The post is translated below:
Jini was born Nov 4, 1993 in the Beijing Zoo. Already in her old age, Jini’s health has been carefully monitored as one of the zoo’s elderly pandas since 2017 with one-on-one caretaking session. Since 2020, Jini was sometimes unwilling to eat and her body gradually became weaker. The zoo invited experts for consultation and treatment. On Nov 23, 2020 Jini’s condition worsened and she was transferred to the back-end for treatment. On Jan 7, 2021, a zookeeper discovered that Jini was having trouble breathing. The zoo organized an emergency rescue, but at 10.35pm, her heart stopped beating. On Jan 8, the Beijing Zoo contacted China Agricultural University to arrange an autopsy. It was determined that the cause of death was kidney failure due to old age.
We are all deeply heartbroken over Jini’s passing, and will cherish her memory forever!
READ: Trending in Beijing: Doggy Ice Cart and a Message from Neck Imparts
Images: Unsplash, Weibo
