In the two years I’ve lived in Asia so far, I’ve spent what most people would deem a worryingly large amount of time in weird theme restaurants. Living most of my life in the UK, where a cafe serving breakfast cereal is considered the height of quirk and petitions are set up against the opening of owl bars, has led to a deep appreciation of eateries where you can spoon ice cream from a toilet bowl or share chips with a cat. While the range of themes at these places is wide, from the sex-based restaurant in Taiwan to Beijing’s disputed East China Sea territory-themed cafe, most have two things in common. Firstly, with the draw being the decor rather than the menu, the food is mainly woeful. Secondly, the owners usually claim there’s some deep meaningful reason why they chose their theme, rather than simply because people might think a load of plastic cocks on the wall or whatever is funny
And so it is with Prison Feng Yun in the city of Tianjin, a half-hour train ride from Beijing in Northeast China. The country’s first prison-themed restaurant has furry spider toys hanging from the ceiling, a fully-stocked bar and, for some reason, modern US country music constantly blaring. But the inspiration behind the place, which opened last September, is supposedly more serious than the cos surroundings suggest. “I want people to experience what it’s like without freedom,” says owner Zhou Keqiang (that’s him in the plastic chains, below), chatting to me across a table segregated from the main room by metal bars. “I want them to experience the reality of it, so they’ll stay away from committing crime.”
Noting the bandstand in the center of the room, the friendly staff in orange bibs bringing us beers and the large plate of chicken nuggets in front of us, I have to say I feel skeptical about the effectiveness of this place as a crime deterrent. But then Zhou unveils his masterstroke, walking out of our mini-cell, closing a gate behind him and locking it. “We close and lock all the gates on customers after the dishes are served,” he says proudly, as I imagine a thousand British fire safety officers having heart attacks. “Some people ask me whether this environment will lead to a misconception of prison, making people want to go in because it seems so nice here. I can’t stop that, but my intent is not that.”
To be fair, Prison Feng Yun goes beyond the installation of metal bars to portray the reality of prison in China. An accurate reflection of authorities’ penchant for torture is reflected with a water torture-themed table. “We fill up the bit under the table with water in the summer and give customers flip-flops,” says Zhou. There was once a nod to torture in the food, too. “We used to have a dish that translates to English as ‘Cutting people to death’,” Zhou says. “And we had other dishes that had food arranged to look like handcuffs, or a gun. But we got rid of all those. Chinese people have vivid imaginations and a lot of these dishes just didn’t sit well with them, so we changed them to normal dishes.”
