When I was sending my children for ballet classes in Silver City, there was a coffee shop next door. After a while, the faces of the elderly men became familiar to me. I used to wonder, why would these men brave the hot sun to drink white coffee every afternoon?
Apparently, explained a friend who grew up there, once a regular customer got used to the way a coffee "sifu" brew a cup, he would "follow" the latter to the ends of the town. Some old timers suspected that such famous "sifu" would throw in a minute pinch of "shapu" (a type of habit forming narcotic) into his brew. Whoever who enjoys the "lift" the drug gives would often return day after day around the same time for a further cup. If the "sifu" moves to another shop, his regular customers would follow him en block there.
It is a good thing even though I did drink from that coffee shop once, I was thrifty enough to think of the cost saving of buying a bag of three-in-one white coffee from a supermarket to keep in my mother's house as an occasional treat. That way I did not number myself among the faithful followers.
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