Inside a cafeteria for the elderly in downtown Shanghai, Maggie Xu, 29, was finishing a bowl of rice, broccoli soaked in garlic and oil when an employee brandishing a sponge inched closer to her. Mr. Xu ignored her.
“If you come at 12 o'clock, the aunts will have less food,'' Mr. Xu said calmly. Soup will be served after 1:30pm. They also start hovering like old ladies with sponges, rushing those who are late out the door.
Mr. Xu eats at the Doxinhui community cafeteria every day to save money, so he is familiar with the rhythm of the Doxinhui community cafeteria. She has a successful job as an accountant for a foreign company, but she can't shake the creeping anxiety she has about her future.
“It's only when you save money that you feel secure,” she says.
Many young people have lost their jobs in this difficult economic situation in China, but they are not the only ones feeling anxious. The catastrophic collapse in real estate values, to which much of household wealth is tied up, has increased the sense among young working professionals like Xu that their situation too is precarious.
In Shanghai, some people find solace in subsidized community centers that once catered mainly to the elderly, but now also attract younger people. Food is affordable and plentiful. The plates on offer, some as low as $1.40, are chock-full of local specialties like shredded eel with hot oil, steamed pork ribs, and braised pork belly.
Like soup kitchens, the cafeterias are privately run but subsidized by China's ruling Communist Party, offering discounted meals to elderly residents who are too frail to cook or who are housebound. Offers meal and delivery services.
At the restaurant where Xu often eats, customers over 70 receive a 15% discount. The cafeteria is part of a three-story party community center that opened in May.
As neighbors and employees of nearby stores and small offices packed into the dining room for lunch or dinner, folding dining tables and plastic chairs were quickly assembled to accommodate grumbling bellies. spills out at the entrance of the building.
During the lull between meals, elderly residents sit in the entrance hall, chatting and passing the time. A giant sickle and hammer ceiling light glows, reminding diners of the homeowner.
National University of Singapore associate professor of history Sunjun Lee said the canteen's history dates back to the dark days of Mao's Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, when the Communist Party replaced individual restaurants with communal canteens.
Mismanagement of canteens contributed to the devastating starvation that would later characterize the Great Leap Forward.
“Perhaps for some people, it may remind them of the tragic events that took place in the Maoist communal canteen,” Lee said.
More recently, community cafeterias have emerged as part of broader social welfare efforts to improve food services for a rapidly aging population.
According to state news agency Xinhua, there are 6,000 local organizations operating community canteens across the country. Shanghai, where almost one-fifth of the population is over 65 years old, has more than 305 local eateries. Many of them receive tax breaks and low or no rent.
But canteens have also become important to Shanghai's young workers. The portions are often large enough to last over several meals, and customers can often be seen cleaning up the food after they've finished eating.
The cost-cutting drive stems from an all-too-common reluctance to spend among Chinese people, which is contributing to the country's economic problems, and which leaves government officials feeling uneasy about their confidence. People are now talking with a sense of urgency about fostering a sense of security.
If there's one thing Deng Chunlong, 31, lacks right now, it's confidence. Deng Xiaoping's personal training business has taken a hit. Some clients no longer go to his studio at all. Some people are now enrolling in one-third of the classes they previously took.
Mr. Deng, a tall man with unkempt hair, eats cheap meals at community cafeterias in Shanghai's Jing'an District to cut down on expenses. He recently stopped renting an apartment and is sleeping in a Pilates studio.
“I feel like business is not as easy as it used to be,” he said, eating cauliflower and pork. “I feel like people don’t want to spend as much money.”
When Deng Xiaoping discovered the restaurant a year ago, most of the customers were elderly, but the customer base has since expanded. “There are a lot of young people now,” he said.
In some areas, young people form lines alongside older people, sometimes extending into the street. Customers find community eateries listed on restaurant apps and social media platforms. There, tips on which dishes are the tastiest and cheapest will also be shared.
“Young people who are not wealthy for the time being will have to go to community cafeterias in Shanghai,” one person wrote on the Instagram-like app Xiaohongshu. Another described the diner as a “happy home for the poor.”
Charles Liang, 32, discovered Tianping Community Restaurant in Shanghai's upscale Xuhui neighborhood while scrolling through the Chinese food app “Tianping.''
From the outside, the diner looks like a modern restaurant, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a red brick façade. Inside, you'll find blue plastic boxes overflowing with colorful dirty plastic plates, creating a cafeteria-like atmosphere.
“I tend to save money,” said Mr. Liang, an independent graphic and clothing designer who has found it difficult to find work. The two-month coronavirus lockdown across Shanghai in 2022 also weighed on his outlook, making him more uncertain about his future and cautious about his finances, he said.
Liang said he regularly eats at the restaurant, which opened in 2020. This evening, when we arrived for dinner, all the tables were full. A man in a three-piece suit sat down with a tray filled with plates and began dividing the food into plastic takeout containers. Almost everyone ate quickly and left.
When Mr. Liang was about to finish his meal, the number of dinner guests began to thin out, and some of the cafeteria's servers and chefs sat down to eat. One of the servers, Li Kuiping, 61, a migrant worker from central China's Henan province, said he has been serving customers at the cafeteria for six months and has noticed an increase in the number of young people in recent months. . “Everyone is welcome,” she said.
On a recent Wednesday, at another cafeteria near Jiangsu Road in Changning District, an employee known as Fatty Yao cleaned up more than a dozen empty blue-and-white plates left behind by a group of young office workers. Was busy. At the restaurant, more young people like that group were serving customers, he said.
The plates were left behind by Qiu Long, 24, and five colleagues who worked together at a lighting design company about a 10-minute walk from the street. Long said he and his colleagues started eating at the cafeteria just a week ago.
But while they kept coming back because they were cheaper and had more variety than other nearby eateries, Long said many of them tended to go out of business after a few months.
“I think cafeterias are a more affordable place to eat for working people,” Long said.
Li Yu contributed to the research from Shanghai.