Colin Flahive and Aling Yang Flahive run a cafe in China serving Mexican and American "comfort food." They were visiting family in Denver recently and stopped at Pablo's Coffee near downtown Denver. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

There are things that Colin Flahive loves and hates about China, but something makes him go back.

The 35-year-old Colorado native backpacked around Asia during his college years 14 years ago, returned to China in 2002 to study martial arts and stayed after he injured his neck to run a restaurant he believes could exist only in China.

With only some experience working as a waiter and night manager in eateries during school years — and with one year of college Chinese — he took on managing a cafe with American partner Kris Ariel in Dali, a Chinese town Flahive calls "Steamboat-ish" — big lake, big mountains.

By 2004, they had moved on to greater opportunity in Kunming, a provincial, midsized Chinese city of 6.4 million, where Flahive, Ariel and two other partners opened Salvador's.

Flahive calls the cuisine a hodgepodge inventory of Mexican and American comfort food (burritos, falafel wrap, milkshakes, craft beers) that sprawls in written form over 23 pages of menu. Ice cream is a staple.

More than half his patrons are Chinese, but about 40 percent are foreign residents. Most of them either teach English or study Chinese in Kunming.

Salvador's tries to accommodate requests for favorite foods from home, wherever that is.

"That's why our menu is 23 pages long," Flahive said. "Salvador's is like a hangout. We're open until 11."

Flahive and partners get all their meats and vegetables "very locally." A group of Americans runs a nearby cattle operation. The region is known for its produce. Even the coffee is grown locally. Salvador's imports alcohol from the United States. Cheeses and tortillas come from New Zealand.

"China's food costs are almost at American levels, which is crazy," Flahive said.

The only reason Salvador's tiny kitchen can turn out so many different dishes so fast is what Flahive calls its unique, irreplaceable labor force of 22 rural, hard-working young Chinese women.

"We have 22 sisters in a very real way," Flahive said. "We do everything we can to hold onto our girls. They're all country girls from three villages."

And, while everybody does a bit of everything, he said, he and his partners really just try to stay out of the girls' way.

What Salvador's really offers workers, according to a recent story in "The Atlantic" about Chinese labor conditions, is "an unparalleled suite of benefits: Above-market salaries, health insurance, one-on-one English tutoring, team-building retreats, paid vacations, unlimited free food and revenue sharing."

Chinese restaurants typically provide employees room and board, but most supply cramped quarters with six to eight workers in a room. Salvador's employees have one roommate.

In the more than eight years Flahive has run a cafe in China, he's seen his workers' wages rise from $25 a month, plus room and board, to 15 times that. But most Chinese restaurant wages are still commonly as low as $4 or $5 a day, according to The Atlantic.

Meanwhile, Flahive has learned the language. He says he's fluent in Chinese but that he can read more easily than he can write.

He met his wife of two years, Aling Yang, 28, now a successful artist known as A Ling, when she walked into the restaurant in response to a hiring sign in the window.

Flahive expresses most pride in his workforce but also seems pleased he and his partners "have never paid a bribe in our lives" to grease the skids of Chinese bureaucracy.

He downplays his resourcefulness, adaptability and character in starting his own small labor-reform movement — and a nonprofit called VillageProgress.com.

"It's more of a different world for our girls to leave the countryside and come to the city than it was for us to leave our (countries) for China," he said.

He and partners also helped three workers start their own restaurant in Lincang. They're co-owners.

And who knows what the future holds.

"China is changing so fast," Flahive said, "it's hard to say what we'll like and won't like about it soon. But China gives you the opportunity. We could never do this in America."