Starbucks has been praised in the past as one of the rare foreign corporations which truly understands the Chinese marketplace; selling localised products such as green tea-flavoured coffee, and rebranding itself from cheap, take-out coffee (which worked for Americans) to aspirational, expensive, air-conditioned bistro (which worked for Chinese).
That Sinicization has reached its zenith in Fuzhou, Fujian province, where a new Starbucks coffeehouse has opened which apes the classical Chinese architectural style seen, for example, in the Song Dynasty gardens of Suzhou.


