Karl Marx is selling wine on Tiuyudong Road

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It’s true. A new upscale wine shop opened on Tiyudong road named Karl Marx 1818. If you don’t see this as funny you should probably read more.

At top Universities in China Marxist theory is still a mandatory course. It’s one of the hardest courses to teach because most Chinese students want to study business and finance. In a country with no social welfare run on fashion and greed, students find Marxist Theory primative and useless.

Let’s think for a minute and try to find a use for Marx in China 2012.

2012 will be remembered as the year when Zhao Meimei bought a new Mercedes and posted it on her weibo, Bo Guagua, son of Bo Xilai just graduated from Harvard while his mother went to prison for murder, and the year a kid in Hunan Province sold his kidney an i-phone. I don’t think Marxist education has had a profound effect on Chinese youth. (All that said, new president Xi Jingpin really has a tough act to follow.)

In 2008 Local entrepreneurs found a good use for Karl Marx in Guangzhou. They started a wine company, Marx 1818. Why 1818? That’s the year Marx was born.

Chinese brands like Huawei, Lenovo, and Haier always suffer from foreign worship. The best way to get Chinese to buy Chinese products is to use a foreigner in the commercial or the name. Like Shandong clothing company Qiaodan, which is now sued by Michael Jordan.

This local wine company is clever, they use a dead foreigner who can’t sue them.

When Marx co-wrote-Communist Manifesto with Frederick Engles, he predicted that free market capitalism would lead to a society run on greed. He was right. But he never predicted that his fat bearded face would be selling wine on a busy street in one of Guangzhou’s business districts.

Joking aside, the interior design of the store is very cozy. When I walked in I saw a corporate meeting going on, which means the space is put to good use. There was also a lovely bottle arrangement by the windows. And pictures of Karl Marx everywhere.

Still, red wine is new to Chinese culture. Chinese know wine about as well as American’s know Baijo. Most Wine shops are a rip off, low quality wine like Carlo Rossi will be sold at high price to unknowing consumers. Like Hagendaz ice-cream or KFC. Common in the west, fancy in China.

Another Irony is that when Marx was studying philosophy at the University of Berlin in 1836 I guarantee you he was drinking beer, what Germans do best.

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