The Beijing restaurant has been a source of mystery for habaneros
Fidel Castro, the late Cuban dictator, shaking hands with Xi Jinping, China’s living one, hangs in the entrance to the newly opened “Beijing” restaurant in Havana. Around it are snapshots of Chinese and Cuban bigwigs past and present. One from 1961 shows a smiling Mao Zedong and Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, then Cuba’s president, on a balcony.
It took five years, and millions of dollars in rent and renovation, before the Beijing was ready to serve its firstnoodles. It opened in August at last, two years later than planned. Even when the Chinese and Cuban autocrats bless the enterprise, doing business in Cuba is hard.The restaurant, which was the first firm in Cuba to be wholly owned by a foreign one , has long mystified. They watched as Chinese builders refurbished the structure, which was built in the 1930s.
Now Chinese executives, ferried to the portico in German cars, enter through circular front doors painted with a huge red, which means double happiness. The phrase is often emblazoned on cash-stuffed red envelopes given as wedding presents. Small fans display table numbers. Cuban waitresses dressed in red—high-necked dresses—take orders on tablets made by Huawei, a controversial Chinese maker of telecoms kit.
Cuban complications intrude. Unlike eateries in China, where diners can pay by reading a barcode on the table with their mobile phones, the Beijing accepts only cash. It aims for authenticity, but must buy most ingredients through Cimex, the state-run export-import company. Ducks for Peking duck come from Canada. Their skin is thicker than that of Chinese ducks, and so does not become as crispy, explains Li Sha, who helps run the restaurant. The sweet-and-sour fish is Cuban, not mandarin fish.
So far, China has profited little from its friendliness. From 2000 to 2018 it forgave $6bn of Cuban debt, about 60% of the total foreign debt that it wrote off during that period, according to Development Reimagined, a consultancy, and the student-run Oxford China Africa Consultancy. The two communist states may be in for a period of double disappointment."Double happiness"
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