Unlike the locally owned and operated Garage Cafe, the nearby Beta Cafe was born two years earlier in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. Bai Ya, designer of China's leading third-party online payment platform Alipay, was one of the cafe's founders. He just wanted a fixed place for his friends to get together.

More than 300 people queued up for Beta Cafe's grand opening. To Bai's utter shock and amazement, they came not for coffee and food, but to get to know more people in the IT field.

A Beta Cafe franchise moved in to the Zhongguancun area in February 2011. With comfortable U-shape sofa and unblocked Internet access, it too also allows customers to relax for a whole day for the price of a cup of coffee. Most customers work for Youku.com, a video hosting site analogous to YouTube, or Tencent, operator of the immensely popular QQ Web portal.

Xu Dandan's idea of opening a cafe was quite similar to Bai's. Xu is the CEO of Danseq Investment Consulting. When a cafe where he was hosting an investment salon tried to shake him down for extra money, a distraught Xu microblogged his intention to open his own.

His idea won support from major industry players including Wu Yimin, President of InfoBird, a cloud computing service provider, and Zhuang Chenchao, CEO of Qunar.com, a leading Chinese travel service portal. Within a month, about 100 people expressed willingness to invest in the cafe. 3W Cafe opened its door in Zhongguancun in August 2011 and had accumulated 200 shareholders within just one short year.

The three cafes are more than meets the eye, said Sun Dayang. Sun works with two of his Peking University classmates, exploring development of iOS and Android apps.

At the entrance of the cafes, there are big boards for people to post notices seeking cooperation or investment. "You don't need to have a mature business plan to be here," Sun said. "You are welcome to talk any idea, even if it sounds unrealistic and crazy. This is what makes me feel comfortable."

Smart money

"Starting my own business sounded distant and unrealistic before I came to this cafe," said Li Min, a student from Tsinghua University. Li and two schoolmates came to Garage Cafe out of curiosity. "Everybody here is very friendly and Su offered us quite a few suggestions on changing what we learn to practical use."

Talk of venture capital and user interfaces are overheard as often as fun, passion and aspirations at Garage Cafe, which has an iMac and two Windows laptops open to customers free of charge, as well as a low-cost copy machine and 3D printer.

"I think I am more like a go-between for investors and entrepreneurs," said Su, who stays in the cafe for more than 10 hours every day because he so sincerely enjoys his work.

But the buzz in these cafes isn't about the coffee. China Central Television, The Washington Post and The Economist have reported on Zhongguancun's cafes, and now journalists are working the cafe beat hoping for a scoop on the next rising star of China's hi-tech sector.

Beta Cafe plans to open another chain store in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, and 3W Cafe prepares to expand into Shanghai and Shenzhen in Guangdong.

Yuan Gang from the Central Academy of Drama plans to direct a TV drama about Garage Cafe, but Su is still thinking locally.

"What makes the cafe unique is not the cafe itself but the environment of the Zhongguancun Hi-tech Zone," Su said. "So far, we just want to stay in Beijing right now and hopefully in the near future, this quiet book market will turn into a place for startups."

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