5:30 am HKT
Jan 30, 2015
Culture
Hungry in Hangzhou? McDonald’s Applies to Lease Taiwan Leader’s Home
Hangzhou’s West Lake draws crowds of tourists every year.
Associated Press
For years, local authorities in the Chinese city of Hangzhou have put Taiwan leader Chiang Ching-kuo’s former home up for rent.
Now they have a taker: McDonald's MCD -0.25%.
The U.S. fast-food chain has applied to open shop in the historic lakeside villa, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s Corp. said. She declined to disclose further details on plans for the villa, located in the hotbed of a tourist town and once owned by the son of the famed Chinese Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek.
Local Chinese media is reporting that McDonald’s applied to roll out a McCafe coffee shop, selling 20 yuan lattes and sweet cakes instead of Big Macs and McFlurries from its typical McDonald’s fast-food chain.
Hangzhou authorities are requesting public comment on conversion plans for the villa, which Mr. Chiang inhabited before the Nationalists lost control of mainland China, spurring him to find a more permanent home in Taiwan. The two-story house, overlooking the scenic West Lake, was built in 1931. The trees lining the garden are reportedly ones that Mr. Chiang planted himself, according to Hangzhou tourism authorities.
If social media outrage is any indicator of public sentiment, the application may not pass muster. “This is a joke,” one person wrote on Weibo. “Can we turn Mao’s old house into a KFC?” another person wrote.
China has proven to be a mixed bag for Western companies that attempt to move into historic spots. KFC opened its first China outlet decades ago in a prime spot along Tiananmen Square in Beijing and still operates there today. But Starbucks shut its doors in 2007 at its Forbidden City outlet, succumbing to public outcry that the coffee chain was inappropriately stomping on Chinese culture grounds.
Conversions of historic buildings are fairly common in China. Luxury giant Hermes recently overhauled an old French Concession fire department for its Shanghai flagship store. Outside of the country, brew-pub company McMenamins converted the John D. Kennedy Elementary School in Portland, Ore. for its current-day bar, movie theater and hotel. A night club opened in former Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in New York in the 1980′s. It closed its doors in 2007.
– Laurie Burkitt