Coffee: The DNA of hit new Shanghai film

Have you seen the new local film "B for Busy"? It's become a huge, unexpected hit.

One of the charms of the film is that it's almost completely in Shanghai dialect. That means that not only foreigners, but even Chinese from out of town need to read the subtitles in order to follow the story.

It might sound like a pain, but that's part of the movie's allure.

One should not underestimate the audience's love for "B for Busy". As one comment, which has gained over 100 thousand "likes," puts it: "This is a vivid and chic promotional film for Shanghai."

Absolutely. Even without the use of dialect, you will still recognize the film as unmistakably Shanghai through its character shaping and scene setting.

It can only be in Shanghai. Why? Because of coffee.

There are nearly 8,000 cafes here, overtaking New York as the city with the most coffee shops in the world. Different types of round tables witness not only negotiations, but love, breakups, inspiration, meditation and more. Even the shoe repair man in the film has coffee time every day, using a delicate white china cup with a tray.

It seems that all of the stories that take shape every day in Shanghai cannot be separate from the aroma of coffee, or the "Shanghai aroma."

The city's coffee culture has been rooted in this metropolitan melting pot for the past 150 years, such a long time that it has already become part of the city's DNA.

People in Shanghai coming from all over the world share similar peculiarities: chic, sophisticated, vitality, sleepless, community, Shangri-La and inclusive.

Today, iDEAL SHANGHAI launched the multimedia project "iDEAL Cafe," using these seven words to identify the spirit of Shanghai from different perspectives using literature, art, history and daily life.

So, would you like a cup of coffee?