SHANGHAI -- Drained from a morning on the crowded boulevards of this teeming city, Sui Qing and her husband were inclined to find a sit-down restaurant where they could relax while waiters covered their table with a profusion of dishes -- the experience that has for centuries defined Chinese eating.
Their 5-year-old son had other ideas. So the couple submitted to what has become a near-universal experience among the world's parents: They agreed to go to McDonald's.
Shoppers are drawn to a McDonald's in Shanghai, where the menu includes red-bean-paste ice cream sundaes.
(Peter S. Goodman -- The Washington Post)
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"It's crowded," Sui said, as her husband navigated six-deep lines at the register, bearing hot chocolate and french fries. "It's not nutritious, and they don't have the variety that a Chinese restaurant would have. But children like it, so we're here."
As the world's most populous nation continues its transformation from a former outpost of communism into a place where spending power reigns, it has come to this: China's cuisine is increasingly being altered by the growing consumption of fast food, with Chinese now more likely than Americans to eat takeout meals, according to a survey released last week by ACNielsen Corp., the market research firm.
The survey, which polled more than 14,000 adults in 28 countries, found that 41 percent of respondents in mainland China eat in a fast-food restaurant at least once a week, compared with 35 percent in the United States.
Elsewhere, 61 percent of Hong Kong residents, 59 percent of Malaysians and 54 percent of respondents in the Philippines say they frequent fast-food places at least weekly, underscoring how Asians are more likely to carry their meal in a bag than people in any other region. By contrast, 11 percent of European adults eat take-out meals weekly, the survey found.
A dozen years have passed since the opening of the first McDonald's outlet in Beijing, which amounted to a cultural spectacle, a landmark in China's then-fledgling engagement with the outside. Steps from where a monumental portrait of Chairman Mao beamed down on Tiananmen Square, 40,000 people lined up to inspect a Big Mac and have their pictures taken with Ronald McDonald.
The opening of a Western fast-food outlet is now an everyday occurrence. McDonald's owns and operates more than 600 stores across 105 Chinese cities, with plans to add more than 100 annually in coming years, according to the company. Kentucky Fried Chicken has more 1,200 shops in China. It opened 270 new outlets this year and plans to launch at least 200 more in 2005, said a spokesman for Yum Brands Inc., which owns the KFC brand.
Where foreign brands in China have often met with more frustration than profit, fast food amounts to a lucrative exception. Major brands have enjoyed striking and visible success, carving into what now stands as a $48 billion-a-year Chinese fast-food industry, according to Bloomberg News. With urban incomes up 40 percent from 1999 through 2003 and city-dwellers increasingly inclined to eat on the run, sales at McDonalds are growing faster here than in the United States.
Fast-food merchants are finding new customers on the strength of aggressive marketing campaigns, often targeted at children and featuring lively colors and cartoon characters. The basketball icon, Yao Ming, is a visible pitchman for McDonald's. They are also capitalizing on a traditional Chinese taste for fried, salty foods, and by providing a clean eating experience in the midst of the some of the most frenetic and hygienically challenged cities in the world.
