You Can Now Order a McFrappe in the Old Living Room of Chiang Kai-Shek

The same Chinese building that once housed Chiang Kai-shek, founder of the modern Taiwanese state and a sworn enemy of the Communist Party, will now serve McCoffee and McFrappes. The move has angered some locals in Hangzhou who think the public would be better served if the space was preserved as a museum.

It’s not clear exactly how long Kai-shek and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, lived in the two-story villa, but it reportedly belonged to the family from 1931 to 1949. That’s when Kai-shek lost to China’s Communist insurgency and escaped to Taiwan, where he re-established his nationalist government in exile.

Beijing’s new Communist rulers seized the building in 1949 and used it as an employee residence until 2004, when it was officially designated as a heritage site.

In 2014, a local businessman took over the villa’s lease, and, after some renovations, began renting it commercially: A Starbucks opened in its side wing in September and the McCafé opened on Nov. 15.

A McDonald’s spokeswoman told Foreign Policy the restaurant chain is committed to preserving the site, and is “working with relevant authorities and architects to ensure the conservation of the villa’s structure and style.”

Apparently, the heritage zoning doesn’t prohibit commercial use. Officials in Hangzhou moved forward with plans for the McCafé despite overwhelming objections from local residents who want the building fully preserved. During a government consultation in January, 90 percent of residents who attended meetings reportedly said they opposed the plan.

That didn’t move the local government. “The coffee shop meets the municipal planning criteria,” said one Hangzhou Cultural Relics Bureau official who agreed to only be identified by his surname, Wang. “It’s not a restaurant after all.”

A local government spokesman, who refused to be identified by name, asserted that Chiang lived in the villa for only a short time, and that the interior has been irreversibly changed.  

“There is not much point in turning it into a museum,” the official said, according to the BBC.

It’s not the first time Beijing has sought to gloss over the more contentious moments in modern Chinese history. The government, for example, has censored online search queries into the pro-democracy student uprising in Tiananmen Square.

Chiang Ching-kuo’s grandson, Demos Yu-bou Chiang, was invited to participate in the building’s restoration, but declined when he learned of Hangzhou’s plans for it.

“Is having a McDonald’s in a historical residence, or a Starbucks in a palace, really an OK thing in management of cultural real estate?” Demos asked in a blog post on China’s social networking site, Weibo.

Photo credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images