KFC opened its doors near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, becoming one of the first major American fast-food chains to enter mainland China after the country's economic reforms began loosening restrictions on foreign business. The three-story restaurant, capable of seating hundreds of customers at once, quickly became a novelty destination and a symbol of China's tentative embrace of Western consumerism.
China in the late 1980s was only a decade removed from the Cultural Revolution, and Western brands remained a rarity even in the capital. When KFC selected a prime location on Qianmen Street, within sight of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, it was a calculated bet on the direction of Chinese economic reform under Deng Xiaoping.
The restaurant opened as the largest KFC in the world at the time, spanning three floors and seating over 500 people. Lines stretched down the block on opening day, with curious customers waiting hours to taste fried chicken, a dish practically unknown in Chinese cuisine at the time. The Colonel's face, rendered in Chinese characters, became an unlikely fixture of the capital's skyline.
The gamble paid off spectacularly. Within a few decades, China became KFC's largest market by number of restaurants, outpacing even the United States, with thousands of locations serving localized menu items like congee and egg tarts alongside the original recipe. The 1987 opening is now seen as an early landmark of China's globalization, a single storefront that foreshadowed the flood of Western brands that would follow in the ensuing decades.