Seems we needn’t have feared and fretted so much about the blog calls for anti-French protests. Today, the New York Times put out an article whose title says it all: “Anti-French Boycott Falters in China”.

Even James Galvin, the American volunteer who, it was reported in the Associated Press and The Shanghaiist, had supposedly been attacked by a violent mob outside of Carrefour in Zhuzhou, came out last week and called the initial report "sensationalist" and blown out of proportion.

I reached out to some French establishments in town to see if, perhaps, they had been affected. “Not at all,” was Guillaume Galliot‘s response. The JAAN Chef explained, “We are actually full every night. I don’t know about the rest of the French restaurants in town, but for us, ‘mei wenti’.”

Felix Zafra, Senior Sales & Marketing Manager at Brasserie Flo, was just as sanguine: “FLO is busy—we are actually not affected by the call...for protests against French establishments.”

“It’s a pity what is happening between France and China,” he went on to lament.

Perhaps the people who would boycott Carrefour are different from those who are attracted to high-end French restaurants like JAAN and FLO—and for that reason, Beijing’s bistros will remain above the anti-French fray.

Or maybe, as Zheng Wu, 55, a Beijing housewife shopping at Carrefour indicated in today’s NYT article, food comes with special consideration. “Politics is one thing, but the people have to eat.”