Lest You Forget, Hacienda Heights Is Zen-As-All-Get-Out
News comes from Eater today that a Mcdonald’s in Hacienda Heights has undergone the chain’s first transition (more to follow) into what they hope will now be a more relaxed, Feng Shui’d, Zen-like beef-and-cheese-purchase- inducing atmosphere, inside and out. To be sure, years of serving up beef and those beef-extract-inclusive french fries under the shadow of the Heights’ Hsi Lai (pictured), the nation’s largest Buddhist temple, have had a marked effect on the Hacienda’s hamburger-serving outpost. Mcdonald’s Corporation, bodhisattva to the world’s beef-eating masses if you will, has had a (presumed) longstanding tradition of operating under the Buddhist tenet The greatest quality is seeking to serve others (Atisha, 11th cen.) Let this then be further testament to the awakened purity of the Board of Directors’ collective selfless souls.
Related: My favorite Mcdonald’s site to date remains a true paean to the (Heights-inclusive) SG Valley: http://www.i-am-asian.com/
» Only in SoCal: The Country’s First Feng Shui McDonald’s (Eater)
My parents live right down the street from that McDonalds. It’s huge compared to the old McDonalds. During the grand re-opening (I think in December), they had all kinds of specials — so my siblings tell me — and had those huge lights. There are only two places in HH that have those lights: the strip clubs and now McDonalds.
I think the Taiwanese giganticistic Buddhist temple aesthetic is about as far from Zen as you can get, but I took my bike up there for the hell of it once, and taught the English summer school program for Chinese and Taiwanese kids at Hsi Lai University in Rosemead a couple summers.