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IF you're in the know, there's a hidden coffee hangout where you cannot only enjoy a bit of the bean but also learn about coffee culture and get a tattoo. You can even snooze at the Nap-Cafe, writes Pang Liwen
If not for insider tips, you would never find Nap-Cafe, tucked away in a longtang (lane) of shikumen (stone-gated) houses. But if you head down a narrow old lane on Changle Road near Maoming Rd S., go to the back door of No. 392 and climb to the third floor, you will find a family-style coffee house. No flashy advertisement board, not even a simple sign outside.
Small and cozy, Nap-Cafe is a place where you can laze away the afternoon sipping coffee, reading books or magazines in Chinese or English, listening to northern European music, like Sophie Selmany. You can relax on a sofa, even take a nap - hence the name Nap-Cafe.
There are 18 diffferent kinds of coffee available, including eight from Latin America, five from Africa and five from the Asia-Pacific region. There also are flower teas, red tea, juice and milk.
But forget fancy cappuccino. Instead there are Saturday afternoon coffee tasting, coffee making and coffee culture activities. You can learn how to make cookies or muffins to nibble with your coffee. Or learn how to paint a ceramic cup and play African drums.
The owners Zhu Yi, an IT specialist, and Ji Rong, a Website editor, are a newly married couple who quit their jobs and opened the cafe a year ago with a Taiwanese coffee professional. The couple are passionate about the bean and the year-old cafe is their coffee culture project.
After Zhu and Ji married in 2006, he worked for a company in Beijing while she remained in Shanghai. The separation was difficult, so he quit and moved back, and together they sought a new business.
"We both wanted to do something. Routine white-collar life is definitely not for us," says Ji. "So we quit our jobs and switched to coffee, which we are both crazy about."
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