HBH 159

Oh, a bare forearm - Its softness, coolness so near - It tantalises.     One of those weeks....

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Last Days of Pepto-Bismol

There have been changes afoot at our favourite little Pakistani restaurant for a while now.   For quite some time over the summer it was closed completely.  When it reopened, it appeared to have undergone a change of ownership (a bunch of real Pakistanis having replaced the Chinese family that used to run it).  Some of my friends griped that it would lose its "distinctive charm", but actually I thought it rather improved.  The menu remained identical, but the quality of the food seemed a little better (slightly less greasy than before).  The newly built covered balcony at the front was a pleasant open air hangout, and an even better vantage point for gauging the lack of custom in any of the shops in the adjacent hideous mega-mall, The Village.  There were two pretty Chinese girls added to the staff, who both spoke a fair bit of English.  And they still had the big bottles of Tsingtao for only 10 or 15 kuai.   It had lost the charm of its "namelessness", perhaps.  There was a newly painted and much more prominent sign above the entrance - but at first it still said only 'Pakistani Restaurant', I think.  The menus, though, (and I think the sign as well, for a while, though it's changed again now) proclaimed it the Yaadgar Restaurant - though perhaps they just picked them up cheap from a failed business elsewhere.   Now it appears we are about to suffer a more convulsive change.  They were briefly displaying a new sign with the name Pardesi, announcing both Indian and Pakistani food.  That came down again, but they have a HUGE sign with that name on it stowed on the balcony now.  I'm not sure if there's been another change of ownership or management; all the folks there appear to be the same; but there is major change in the style and ambition of the place about to occur.  The Choirboy and I dined there last night and were told that a new menu is about to be introduced within the next few days.   Yes, we may have chanced upon the last chance to savour the Pakistani experience as we have known and loved it for the past year-and-a-bit.   I do not welcome any change here: I like the old menu.   Even if the dishes are greasy and heavily spiced and apt to repeat on you for hours afterwards.  (Boy, was I suffering last night!  But maybe I have an ulcer.  After this week, I wouldn't be surprised!)   I suppose we can but hope that the new menu will encompass the old in its entirety (only about 10 dishes, after all).  We shall see.  Change - I don't like it.

Trying too hard?

I am being deluged with e-mails from Culinary Capers, the catering company responsible for last year's horrendous Thanksgiving Dinner.  I assume this means that they're still underwhelmed with bookings with only a couple of days to go.  Hardly surprising after last year's fiasco.   I have to say, though, their menu does sound rather nice.   Roasted Beet and Tangerine Salad With Honey, Spices and Currants Or Wild Greens with Merlot Poached Pears, Caramelized Hazelnuts With Maple Apple Cider Dressing ***** Oven Roasted Grain-fed Turkey With Rich Turkey Gravy House-made Spiced Cranberry Chutney Celery, Apple and Onion Stuffing Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Chives Medley of Roasted Root Vegetables with Maple Butter and Fresh Thyme ***** Citrus Pumpkin Tart Delicate pastry filled with a citrus scented pumpkin finished with Grand Marnier cream and pumpkin seed brittle     Well, nice in theory.   I think, though, this is probably getting a bit over-elaborate for a traditional holiday feed like this: simplicity and quantity are what we want on this occasion - not chevre and cranberry compote and pumpkin seed brittle.  Fancy-dan complicated stuff like that is just going to slow down the service out of the kitchen, which is not what you want when there are a few dozen ravening diners impatiently waiting for their holiday meal.   Caramelized hazelnuts (last year, we had one or two each, and they were inedibly hard) do not make a salad sophisticated, I'm afraid.  They just make it irritating.   And last year, the medley of roasted root vegetables consisted of one piece of yam and one piece of carrot.  Very small pieces, at that.     Wild horses couldn't drag me back there again.     Fortunately, my estimable 'social secretary' has arranged a much more promising venue for us this year.  Of course, with a huge holiday like this, there is always the potential for things to go horribly wrong with the food or the service or both - but I am practising comparative optimism: however f***ed up things might get tomorrow, it can't possibly be as bad as last year!

Farewell to.... The Farewell Party

I had been planning to have one last humongous bash at Froog Towers this weekend, to mark my moving out.  I am long overdue for one, since it is over two-and-a-half years since my last major event.  And the notion of having a wild party a matter of hours before I'm due to hand the keys back to my git of a landlord appealed to my wild sense of brinksmanship.   However, the stress involved in packing and moving has been even greater than I anticipated, and I fear I'm just a bit too done-in at the moment to go to all that trouble.   Also, I sent out an invitation - with a beseeching request to RSVP - the middle of last week, and, as of yesterday, I had received a grand total of only four replies (two of them in the negative).   It's really not worth the effort, is it?  Maybe I will never throw a party again....

Froog Solutions (4)

Froog's solution to the  disturbing effeminacy of the Manhattan cocktail...     Macho it up a bit, of course!     The martini glass is a bad start.  I like its elegant lines, I do; but it is a bit poofy.  And I disdain to use it for anything other than a genuine martini.   Dispense with the mixing glass too.  Whiskey-based drinks don't need to be severely chilled, in my view.  Serve in a good stout lowball glass, add two or three big rocks of ice... and mix it in the glass.  Immediately heaps more masculine.   That cherry has got to go!  I'm not big on garnishes in a drink at the best of times, and certainly not one that threatens to make it sweeter.   Likewise the sweet vermouth should be reduced to a bare minimum (on this point, at least, my buddy Dr Manhattan and I are as one: he prefers no more than "a whisper" of vermouth; although his "whispers" are a darn sight louder than mine).   Bitters, on the other hand, are the raw meat of cocktail mixing, 100% masculine!  Don't go overboard with them, but you can give yourself two or three big drops.   Made this way, the Manhattan is a surprisingly robust and tasty drink.  And your buddies won't laugh at you for drinking it.

The other kind of packing

Dr Manhattan is taking a holiday in Thailand, the lucky sod.   He declined to come out for a farewell drink last night, on the grounds that he was packing.     I felt compelled to taunt him (or was I just taunting myself?): "Oh, yeah - packing!!  Should I take sunscreen?  Should I take a second pair of shorts?  Should I take my own bottle-opener?  My heart bleeds for you."     I, on the other hand, have only been engaged in the relatively trivial matter of boxing up my entire life in China preparatory to a change of apartments in two days.  Dr M, I think I HATE you.

Bon mot for the week

opportunity, n. A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1842-1914)

Missing out again... (and again...)

After missing out on the largely unheralded performance at Peking University last month by mind-blowing Aussie guitarist Tommy Emmanuel (my biggest musical disappointment this year, or for many years past), I followed that up by missing the visit of Clive Chin, a Jamaican dude of Chinese ancestry who, as an engineer/producer at Randy's Studio 17, worked with most of the greats of the reggae scene in the early '70s (in particular, he's known as the Duke of Dub, and is usually credited with creating the dub style with seminal stars of the form like Lee 'Scratch' Perry).  He was appearing at Bed bar (which is practically on my back doorstep!) a week yesterday, to give a talk about the history of Jamaican music and then play a DJ set to demonstrate the work of the artists he'd mentioned.    I had been meaning to go, but.... well, I got distracted by something or other.  I take some consolation from reports that the bar's compact and discrete spaces were so packed out that it was difficult to hear the great man's lecture, much less to get a view of him.  That's another big regret of my musical year, though.  He's a fascinating character, and I love the 60s/70s Jamaican sound.     And then last night I was going to check out Au Revoir, Simone - a trio of young ladies from Brooklyn who seem to be well spoken of: folky synth-pop (not really my thing), but with catchy melodies and decent lyrics.  Unfortunately, they were playing at Yugong Yishan, so I wasn't sanguine about the event.  The acoustics in that place are so bad that it's often a struggle to hear a quiet band at all, especially if there's a big crowd.  And the crowd for this seemed to be huge - spilling over into the entrance foyer and the corridor leading to the loos; the din of chatter from inside the main room didn't augur well for my chances of being able to get close to the stage, or being able to see or hear anything..... so I decided not to shell out the door fee and settled for an early night instead.  Again, something of a disappointment.  I don't think they're a band that would have wowed me, but I was curious to find out what they're about.   [The one thing Yugong is getting really good at is publicity.  All credit to them for drawing such a big crowd out on a chilly Friday for a (relatively?) little known band.  Unfortunately, it's just not a good space for live music: the layout's all wrong, and the sound's terrible; it just can't cope with an audience in the hundreds.]

A new love

Amongst drinks, that is.   I have recently been introduced to a cocktail called the Black Feather.   It's a sour - but it rings a number of changes on the usual format for such drinks.  It uses brandy rather than whiskey.  It reduces the sweetness to a vestige.  And it ramps up the alcohol intensity by using dry vermouth rather than lemon juice or lime juice as the souring agent.   So... we have a generous double measure of a tasty Spanish brandy called Torres, a hefty slug of dry vermouth, a dribble of Cointreau (for the orangey aroma rather than the sugar) and a couple of drops of Angostura bitters. Finished off with a spray of lemon oil from a vigorously twisted piece of rind.  Those diverse flavours blend together beautifully.   It is, for me, just about the perfect drink.

We can remember it for you wholesale

I had such... such an unusual night last night (and, yes, an exceptionally alcoholic one) that, having dozed off briefly in the cab on the way home, I found myself for several minutes completely unable to remember where I'd just been.   Worrying.

HBH 158

Sharp disappointment: A pretty girl eyes you up, Then asks for money.     I didn't think they let the Russian working girls into Maggie's.  That was my mistake (well, being in Maggie's was a mistake!).  I thought she might have been genuinely attracted to me.  I was tempted anyway.  She was very pretty, very sexy, very into me.  Oh, my principles!

Here we go again....

In 5 of the last 7 years I have taken it upon myself to organise a Thanksgiving Dinner (for American friends too feckless to do it for themselves....); 3 of those have been quite big affairs.   And that is a lot of hassle and stress.   This year, I have sought to spare myself this aggravation by delegating most of the organizational duties to a 'social secretary'.   However, I still have to take some responsibility for finalizing the numbers for the booking, chasing up my half of the guest list.  And that does get to be a rather irksome exercise - dealing with people who dither over their replies, give equivocating answers, change their minds repeatedly, or fail to reply at all (until the second or third follow-up).   I wonder why I bother.....   Well, I bother because it will be a lovely party when we finally get together next Thursday.   The week up until then, though, is just going to be one long round of vexation.

Beijing's Top Five Dive Bars

Beginning a new occasional series of drinking-related 'Top Five' lists....   [Lists are good.  People like structure.]       The Top Five best dive bars I have known in Beijing     5)  The (original) Bus Bar This was a surreal oddity when I first arrived in Beijing - the shell of an old concertina bus converted into a windowless hut, and parked permanently in the island in the middle of the road at the north end of Gongti Donglu, right opposite The Den.  (The Den really seemed to resent the "competition", and for a little while, I believe, put up a notice purporting to impose a penalty 'door fee' on anyone who'd been drinking there first.  Perhaps I just imagined that?)  It was very, very basic - and very, very cheap.  However, it seemed relatively benign - not the pit of sleazerie that its second incarnation would become.  Indeed, I gather it was quite a mainstream haunt for a while, a budget fueling-up stop for those on a long night out in the bar district.  I wouldn't really know about that: I hardly ever went there at night or on the weekends.  I probably only went in a scant half dozen times over two years, usually in the late afternoon or early evening as a prelude to a night out on the old Sanlitun Nanjie (and for those purposes - a cheap start to the evening - I tended in fact to prefer the noodle shop next door).  However, it was a quirky Beijing landmark, and most of us formed a strange sentimental attachment to the place, even if we hardly ever used it.  It was a sad day when it was displaced to make way for the ghastly China View shopping mall development.   4)  The Bla Bla Bar One of Beijing's oldest surviving bars (the only one on this list still in business!), this bar is hard to find (tucked away in the midst of a rabbit-warren of buildings near the south gate of the Beijing Language & Culture University campus) and utterly characterless.  It is, however, pretty damned cheap, and it has a captive clientele in the huge - and ever-growing - numbers of foreign students of Mandarin living in the area.  The place does, I suppose, recreate the ambience of grotty cellar bars of our far-off student days, but I no longer find much charm in that: listening to gaggles of drunk twenty-year-olds complaining about their classes and trying to cop off with each other soon gets tedious.  Bla Bla has achieved a remarkable level of prominence in the expat consciousness, though: it seems that everyone has heard of it, yet no-one (well, apart from anyone who's been a Mandarin student in Wudaokou, which is, I suppose, quite a sizable proportion of the foreign population here) has ever been there.  Although quite a number of those Mandarin students are very dodgy characters who are using their studies as a front to get visas while engaging in commercial activities of doubtful legality, Bla Bla doesn't quite seem to generate the sense of threat I expect in a true dive bar: it has the physical grunginess but comes up just a little short on the moral squalor.   3)  Sammy's Technically, this bar on Xingfu Ercun was called The Sunset Grill, but I don't think anyone ever used that name; it was always known simply by the name of its effusively genial host (see my original post on this place for further elaboration on the short, eventful history of Sammy's, and on the appeal of the 'dive bar' in general).  It had the suspiciously cheap drinks and the severely minimalist approach to decor that are key components of the true dive bar; and it had plenty of that moral squalor I just mentioned above as well.  Corner tables were usually populated by gnarly East Europeans or West Africans who you wouldn't want to mess with; indeed, they emanated such an air of menace that you were nervous of even glancing in their direction.  There were persistent rumours that the bar's closure was connected with some nefarious activity or other of these gnarly ones, but we'll probably never get to the bottom of that.   2)  Afro Arena I confess to having fallen in love with the awful cheesiness of that it-does-exactly-what-it-says-on-the-label name (although people expecting to find tall frizzy hairdoes or bouts of gladiatorial combat within would have been mostly disappointed).  For physical squalor, I think the Arena has to take the top prize in this list: there was always a faint smell of very, very stale cigarette smoke and mould about the place; the chairs were all battered and torn, even when it first opened; and rips in the cloth of the comically dreadful pool table were mended with strips of duct tape.  I'm not sure that it ever developed enough trade to nurture the atmosphere of seediness and probable criminality that characterised Sammy's (it was deserted on the 5 or 6 times I went there; well, apart from the boss and a handful of his friends); but when the owner invited you to join him in a bottle of poisonously fake whisky, you felt it was an offer you couldn't refuse.      And the top spot goes to....... (imagine a drum roll, if you will...)   1)  The Bus Bar (Mk. II) When it was reborn in a slightly less conspicuous location (I'm not sure if it was the same 'bus' - the second one seemed a little bigger to me... and even more scuzzy!), the Bus Bar seemed to ramp up its sleaze-factor (and it's fun-factor) to a previously unimagined level.  Or maybe it had always been like that, and I just hadn't been aware of it?  The base of the infamous Devil's Triangle of bars in the old Gongti Beilu parking lot, the revived Bus Bar became a regular mid-week stop for me for 18 months or so.  I never bought any of the drugs that were so freely - and sometimes aggressively - offered for sale there (the place, open more or less 24/7, seemed to serve as a rest station for all those African gentlemen who pound the sidewalks of Gongti/Sanlitun offering you their coded salutations of "How you doin', man?"), but I loved the atmosphere of cheerful outlawry that this engendered.  And I have many, many delightful memories from that period (it was, for example, the venue for the first of many all-night sessions of drink and talk with The Poet, great friend, great lost love).  Ah, yes... all-night drinking sessions (some good nosh, too - they'd happily order in for you from nearby Chinese restaurants), bizarre conversations with total strangers, fantastic music (there were a couple of African DJ nights I blundered into there by happy chance that rank amongst the very best musical experiences I have had in this city), a free buzz from downwind smoke... and the intoxicating undercurrent of criminality - the second Bus Bar had it all.  We shall probably never see its like again. (I still haven't checked out its Version 3.0, but I hear it's much more genteel.... and that's not right.)       Of course, of these picks, Sammy's closed abruptly for reasons unknown, allegedly due to problems with the police.  Afro Arena was chai'd for the redevelopment of Nuren Jie, and both the earlier manifestations of the Bus Bar were cruelly moved on.  Only the Bla Bla Bar is still soldiering on, and that's too far out of the centre to be of any use to me.  Beijing is sorely in need of a new dive bar.  But the general trend of the city's bar scene in the last few years seems to be a move away from diviness, a progressive slide towards expensive swankery.  I find that most regrettable.   If any readers discover a new candidate for a good dive bar hangout in our capital, please let me know.

Unravelling

Or, the Elements of a really shitty evening....     I'm not usually one of those people who whine about cold or wet weather, and use it as an excuse for staying home - or as an excuse for being miserable if I go out.   But last week's early snowfalls in Beijing, jolly as they might briefly have seemed in the midday sunshine, were starting to put a bit of a damper on everyone's mood by the evening - including mine.   It had thrown a spanner in the works of The Bookworm's speaker event too: a visiting novelist, flying up from Shanghai, had his flight delayed for several hours - and the start time for his reading, originally set for an unsociably early 7pm, got shunted back to an equally unsociable 8.30.   In fact, I hadn't been that enthused about this talk anyway; I'd just been using it as a pretext to meet up with a couple of friends I don't see enough of; but speaker events aren't great for chatting, so I had hoped to be able to break away from there as soon as possible.  In fact, The Worm isn't a great place for chatting - even before or after an event - when it's that crowded, and this author had drawn a big audience. So, the core plan for the evening, as far as I was concerned, had been to repair to Fubar (where I have some freebie vouchers to use up!) for a few cocktails immediately afterwards.  The revised timetable at The Worm put the kibosh on that, rather.  But the plan was, to be honest, floundering already: one of my companions surprised me by suddenly professing an irrational froideur towards poor old Fubar (she too has vouchers for the place, vouchers I fear she is unlikely ever to use), and both had arranged to meet other friends at the speaker event - which left me ignored out on the margins (and unenthusiastic about the speaker, reluctant to hang around The Worm until 10pm or so, and bummed that my cocktail plan had gone out of the window).   I decided to beat a retreat.   At least, I thought, I had a very tempting Plan B, a fortuitous consolation option that had only arisen at the very last minute and would probably have been far more fun anyway.  Well, it might have been, if I could have enticed out anyone at all on that bleak, damp, bitterly cold evening.  Instead, the alternate plan just degenerated into another succession of frustrations and disappointments.     That sound you hear at times like this, far off yet somehow inside you, like the crackle of dried leaves, is the sound of your crest falling.  Or your soul shrivelling.   I can endure a fair amount of plan derailment and friends letting me down, but.... when you have that many different annoyances assailing you one after another in quick succession, and even the weather gets in on the act... well, it does start to feel as if Fate is somehow conspiring against you.   Ah, well.  I went to one of my reliable usual haunts and got pissed on my own.  It's nice to know there are some things you can rely on....

All the world's a stage

Or should that be, All the world's a bar...?

The weekly bon mot

"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content."

Helen Keller (1880-1968)

Hope springs eternal...

... in the entrpreneurial breast.   I just got a text message from a lady with the catering company that did last year's Thanksgiving Dinner at Sequoia.   If she thinks that anyone who went to that dismal affair is going to come back again this year, I fear she's going to be in for a very big disappointment.   That was, by far, the worst big occasion dinner I have ever suffered (and I still cringe with embarrassment at the recollection of it, since I had arranged the evening for a dozen or so of my American friends): an horrendous wait for our table (it's always dicey being on the second sitting, but we'd been particularly unlucky in that the party ahead of us had all arrived an hour or so late; and then weren't in any hurry to finish up, even when they knew we were waiting; in fact, they showed no inclination to leave, even well after they'd finished; and the bloody caterers were showing no willingness to try to politely hurry them along, so eventually I had to do it myself); undistinguished food (and cold, too!); tiny portions; chaotic organisation and nearly non-existent service; and did I mention the TINY PORTIONS?   I hope they've learnt from last year's experience, and will be putting on a better show this time (it is, I believe, quite a bit more expensive this year).  But I won't be taking a chance on it.       This is a timely reminder, though, that I should start doing something about sorting out this year's T-day bash.  Oh dear.  Like I don't have enough else on my plate at the moment!

The detention of Dr Manhattan

I am having a 'night off' tonight - because my regular bad influence drinking buddy of the last several months, Dr Manhattan, is otherwise engaged.   He is, in fact, under a self-imposed house arrest.   It seems he has rashly agreed to give a telephone interview tomorrow to some radio station in America.  This involves him being able to answer the telephone in a reasonably lucid and non-groggy manner at some unearthly hour like 4 in the morning.   However, it is not just the earliness of his start tomorrow that is restraining him from his typical Friday night out.   No.  He doesn't have a landline telephone in his apartment.  (Don't ask me why not.  This is unclear.  They cost next-to-nothing out here, but it seems his landlord didn't want to provide one...)  So, the only place he can be available to take the call is..... at his office in the State Propaganda Factory.   Since the office is closed over the weekend, he felt he wouldn't be able to blag his way past the gate guards in the wee small hours of tomorrow morning.  However, he is reasonably confident that they won't actually do anything to flush people out of the office (we shall see about that!), so.... he's having a sleepover.  Yep, he's camping out at the office all night, and hoping to grab a few hours sleep in a comfy chair.   Good luck, Doctor!   (Of course, if the silly bugger had thought to ask me, he could have crashed in my spare room, slept on a proper bed, woken up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to wow a listening audience of dozens in the Mid-West.... but no.  He would do things his way.  He would have his little adventure.)

The times, they are a-changin'

I learned by chance the other day (bumping into JB "The Film Guy", a circumstance that occurs surprisingly often on the streets around Dongsi and Dongzhimen) that the laoban at Reef Bar was having an extra-special little bash that night in honour of his own birthday.   I was quite excited about this.  Similar 'impromptu' events there in the past have been some of the happiest - and most alcoholic - evenings of the past few years.  I still have jolly, but indistinct, memories of the boss's wedding celebrations there a couple of years back.   Tuesday, alas, is never a good day for rallying the troops.  In fact, these days, no day is a good day for rallying the troops.  Very sad - because a night at Reef, you see, just doesn't really work without all the old gang there, the gentlemen of The Yacht Club.  And the spirit of that fine institution has pretty much died.  The original driving force behind the idea, 'The Commodore', abandoned us long since for Kiwi-land.  Dapper Dan, the other leading light of the group, an ambassador of suavity and a premier mixologist, has also departed (again: he goes, he comes back, he goes again...).  The others are all slowly but inexorably succumbing to 'respectability': a couple are now married with kids, the rest have all taken on serious girlfriends and serious jobs.  Getting tanked on martinis in the middle of the week just isn't an option any more.   I'll sail this ship alone...

HBH 157

Next to her he lies Each morning in waking dreams. Phantom love, long lost.   It is worrying how often the first addled thoughts in my brain each day as I drift painfully back into consciousness revolve around one particular woman - and a woman who is, how shall I say, a particularly inappropriate object for such affection.  I suppose it's the old end-of-year wistfulness again, that instinctual urge to find a bed-warming companion for the long cold winter ahead.   [I originally wrote 'lover' in the last line, but that breaches the ruddy syllable count rules.  I'm not sure that I don't prefer it, though.]

Shit happens

As I trudged home through the unseasonal winter chill last night, I kept myself warm by rattling off a little exchange of text messages with my translator buddy, The Weeble - who has not been seen these last several days because he has so much work on at the moment.   As so often with us, the wordplay soon got rather silly.   I began by asking if he was returned to society yet, or was languishing in the translation dungeon.   He responded that he was indeed still in an oubliette, and up to his neck in shit.   I tried to encourage him to try some positive thinking, to Oubliez le merde!   I was then inspired to coin the term merderie to describe his situation.  (Perhaps it already exists in French, but I am damn well going to take the credit for adopting and popularizing it in English.)  There's something about the French language that seems particularly well-suited to furnishing words for this class of thing.... although I did also mint an Anglo-Saxon alternative, poopmire (or perhaps poopmere too?).  I like the alliteration of mired in merderie; or the simplicity (well, simple but for deceitful insinuation that this may be a genuine piece of French usage) of en merderie.   The Weeble continued to emphasise how excessively merderieux was his current state.   I ventured that it sounded like "what I think Vonnegut called The Grand Ah-Whoom - the cataclysmic shitstorm that ends the world."   Of course, he would get the reference (Cat's Cradle - apparently venerated by us both as a favourite Vonnegut work).   He quibbled that the Bokononist term for 'shitstorm' was in fact pool-pah.  I had forgotten that, but it's ringing a bell.  I was reluctant to hazard a bar bet with him on the point, as I'm in a very poor run of form on those just lately - and it is utterly foolhardy to challenge a man with such a compendious memory.    However, I think pool-pah is a general term for egregious unpleasantness and inconvenience in any area of life, whereas the ah-whoom is the Armageddon event, the massive pool-pah that causes The End Of The World.  So - for once - perhaps we're both right....?   I can't remember how Bokonon elaborated on the relationship between the two concepts.  It's all foma anyway.

The sly evil of the DPRK

Christmas is starting early this year.   I thought I heard Christmas songs on the subway yesterday - but in fact it was just the oddly tinselly patriotic jingle "Ai wo Zhongguo!"  But there are other signs, too - the first Christmas decorations going up in stores.  Mincemeat appearing in Jenny Lou's.  Snow.   And the Koryo Christmas Party!  It's always one of the earliest parties of the season (and most foreigner-organised Christmas bashes are early, because so many expats quit the country for the holiday itself), but I've just received notification that this year it's going to be nearly a week before the end of November - before Thanksgiving!!   What's more, they've picked the day I'm planning to move apartments.   The folks who run this boutique travel company (specialising in tours to North Korea) are old friends of mine, and I can't help thinking they might have chosen this date just to piss me off.   Well, your dastardly plan is not going to work, gentlemen (and ladies): oh, no - I will not be discouraged from attending the most alcoholic event of the year.  Absolutely not.   I mean, what's the worst that could happen?  I go home in a brain-fogged stupor... go to the old apartment by mistake.... have to sleep on a bare mattress.... 'redecorate' the bathroom, only hours before I'm due to return the keys to the landlord....   Yes, yes, it could get UGLY.  But that's a risk I'm prepared to take.

Drip, drip, drop

Here in Beijing, we get used to highly localised and rather freakish weather phenomena.   The conspicuous example last night was the persistent and fairly heavy drizzle on the steps leading up to The Bookworm - long after precipitation had ceased everywhere else in the city.   I assume it was snow meltwater dribbling off the roof.  I got pretty well doused by it four times.

NYU 'B'

I think that would be a great t-shirt slogan for China.   I wonder if the chaps at Plastered or NLGX would be interested?     You see, my friend, Dr Manhattan (who appears to have been to most of the universities in the American North-East, or at any rate to have collected sportswear from most of them), has a sweatshirt with NYU on it (short for New York University, of course).  The first time I saw him wear it, I couldn't help wishing that the second string team in one of their major sports would produce a shirt of their own - with this emblazoned on the chest.  Just so that they could amuse all their Chinese - or Chinese year-abroad experienced - friends.   Explanations later, in the comments - if called for.

Mongol!

[Ah, that reminds me: I am long overdue to pen a review on Froogville of a film of that name I enjoyed a little while back...]     There's a new bar opened recently in the China View Mall over by Gongti.  It's called, I think, just Mongolia Bar - and it does exactly what it says on the label: it is a little piece of Mongolia transplanted into downtown Beijing.   I wouldn't have given it a second glance (it's in a mall, for gawd's sake!), but The Choirboy persuaded me to try it out on Friday night, and for a one-off 'experience' it was surprisingly good fun.  The prices aren't that alluring (booze is only sold by the bottle: mostly about 400rmb or 500rmb, I think, for standard spirits), with even a humble Tsingtao setting you back 25rmb.  However, the owners are very friendly, and the floorshow is quite impressive.  Well, I could have done without the jangly electric keyboards of one of the two or three (I assume) professional musicians they had in and the upbeat, disco-fied versions of Mongolian folk songs they were playing a lot of the time.  However, I love the matouqin (the horse-head fiddle, a traditional Mongolian instrument that sounds a bit like a 'cello), and both the house player and a couple of guest musicians who sat in for a while played it very well.  We also got the obligatory dose of throat-singing (an astonishing vocal technique which rather defies description, if you haven't heard it).    The main event, though, was the punters themselves.  This was essentially a karaoke night; but, unlike the dismal caterwauling I've suffered at most regular Chinese renderings of this entertainment, these Mongols could all sing!  Really bloody well.  The management nearly ran out of the blue neck-scarves available for audience members to drape around the neck or microphone of a performer as a token of approbation (another old Mongol custom, I gather; I remember seeing it much in evidence at a 'Mongol Night' they had at the old Yugong Yishan once, although the main recipients that night were a Mongolian boy band, so I wondered if it weren't just a teeny-bopper thing).  Every single singer merited two or three such marks of respect.  There wasn't a dud performance all night.   I don't think there was a single Han Chinese in the place, and only a handful of Westerners.  I half expected the laoban to say something like, "This is a Mongol bar for Mongol people.  We want no trouble here!"   It was a unique entertainment.  Very cheesy, yes, but great fun, and rather touching.   Oh yes, and it probably helped that we were all well tanked up already (Foreign Correspondents' Club social at The Bookworm augmented by cocktails at new favourite Gongti hangout, Fubar).  That was quite a big night out.   I usualy take the precaution of staying in on Fridays.  It is a wise and necessary measure.  Whenever I do go out, weird shit happens.  Usually very enjoyable shit - but it leaves me short of sleep and fretting about the hole in my wallet for days afterwards.

A double bon mot for the week

"Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire."

Basho [Matsuo Kinsaku] (1644-1694)

"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained."

William Blake (1757-1827)

Madder music

Blog friend JES the other day reminded me of this, and it seemed so appropriate to this blog.   Dowson, in fact, can probably be counted as another of my 'Unsuitable Role Models': a tremendous poet, but he drank himself to death with wine and laudanum in his early thirties.   Madder music and more wine, indeed!     Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat, Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, When I awoke and found the dawn was gray: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, all the time, because the dance was long: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion..   Ernest Dowson  (1867-1900)

The Beer Spread Index

I offer this further little appendix to last week's introduction to the Beer Equivalence Index, which endeavours to provide a useful guide to the comparative cost of living in different countries by calculating the price of everything in terms of how much that would buy you of the cheapest available beer.     You can also, I suggest, draw some interesting inferences about a country's state of socio-economic development by charting the difference between the highest and lowest prices charged for a beer, the Beer Spread Index - a kind of corollary of the better known Gini coefficient.   As I described in last week's addendum on Beer Equivalence, when I first came to Beijing seven years ago, a big bottle (700ml, sometimes a little more) of the local Yanjing brew could be got for a little over 1 rmb (if you were getting your deposit back on the bottle afterwards); less than 1 rmb if you were able to buy wholesale; but generally for 2 rmb from mom & pop stores and grotty kerbside restaurants.  That base price has now sneaked up to 3 rmb, but that's still agreeably inexpensive.    In those far-off 'good old days', there were a few places where you could get the cursed Tsingtao (usually the only budget beer on offer in most bars, and not usually very nice) for a mere 5 rmb, and quite a lot that only asked 10 rmb.  Now, it's 15 rmb as a minimum almost everywhere.  It's quite instructive, actually, to consider the Beer Spread of Tsingtao alone: it only costs 2.50 or 3 rmb in supermarkets, so presumably isn't much more than 1 or 1.50 rmb wholesale.  It's usually 15 or 20 rmb in regular bars.  In fancy-pants, up-themselves bars, it can be as much as 35 or 40 rmb.  That's a heck of a broad range.   The spread gets even more dramatic if you include imported or 'premium' brews.  Even bog-standard foreign lagers like Heineken or Corona usually cost at least 25 rmb for a 330ml bottle, and sometimes 30-40 rmb.  More exotic beers like Hoegaarden or Sam Adams can cost even more.  And then, if you want a decent foreign beer on draught, you're typically looking at more like 50 rmb or so (55 or 60 rmb, for the fiendishly expensive Guinness).  I've never attempted to order a pint of draught at one of those very upmarket places like Lan or Ruby Khi, but I imagine (if they deign to carry something as plebeian as draught beers at all) they might well be charging 70 or 80 rmb or more for that kind of thing. The preposterous German theme pub, Drei Kronen 1308, charges, I think, nearly 70 rmb for a glass of its home-brewed beer.    Local draught beer, on the other hand, is rarely more than 20 rmb for a pint even in foreigner-oriented bars, and can often be got for 10 rmb or even 5 rmb in restaurants (I believe it's currently 8 rmb per pint in alcoholic-friendly Russian joint, Traktirr Pushkin).  In fact, there have been a few places in the past that gave the stuff away free - but I'm afraid we have to ignore such instances of unihibited largesse in calculating our Beer Spread.   No, our range seems to be 3 rmb (big bottle of Yanjing in a standard Chinese restaurant) to 70-80 rmb + (posh beer in an upscale bar/nightclub) - giving a BSI of at least 25.     This is indicative of massive inequalities of income distribution, and one fears that the social fabric of the country may start to tear itself apart....   [If anyone's organising a pitchfork-toting mob to besiege Lan - or Drei Kronen, or Paddy O'Shea's - to demand more affordable beer, you can put my name down.]

HBH 156

Wanderer returns. The bar was missing something, Without the boss man.     After a long spell Down Under, JK - our host at 12 Square Metres - is now restored to us, and all is (more or less) right with the world.

The party we don't have

Here in Beijing, it seems, we celebrate just about every kind of holiday from every nation on the planet.... except Guy Fawkes Night (November 5th, the big firework festival in England).   There aren't many things about 'home' that I get wistful about, but this is one of them.  It's one of the best parties of the year, and it just doesn't happen here.  Where's the British Embassy when you need it?  (Really, where is the British Embassy, ever, when you need it?)   Oh, sure, one of the international schools usually puts on something over the weekend - but that's the weekend, not now.  And it'll be in loathesome Shunyi (not part of China at all, but a little transplant of European or North American suburbia - and about as geographically remote!).  And it'll be for the kids - so the adult hankering to get off-your-face drunk and blow shit up would have to be strictly reined in.   It would be nice to look at a REALLY BIG BONFIRE, though.  Maybe I'll choke back my scorn for Shunyi for one evening, after all.     [I think the biggest and best bonfire I've ever seen was the creation of my compadre the Mothman.  He constructed it out of railway sleepers, and it must have been well over 10ft high.  Oh, when shall I see its like again?]

It may be the only way

My dearth of romantic prospects has become so acute that I've now sunk to the depths of asking my letting agent for help.  (Actually not such a dumb or desperate move: she does meet a lot of foreign women, many of whom are single and newly arrived in town....)   I have often been guilty of being too fussy, I fear.  Perhaps beer can indeed help me here....

Traffic Report - the blog stats for October

Wow - October was something of a bumper month!  Hardly surprising, perhaps, given that ill-health and under-employment kept me at home for so much of it.     There were 52 posts and 17,000 words on Froogville.   There were 40 posts and very nearly 12,000 words on Barstool Blues.     And that's without attempting to tally up all the comments I wrote (on my own blogs and elsewhere).  I could have written a novel in that time!  Well, half a novel, anyway.   Let's hope I can cut back a bit from that output this month, since that would assuredly be a sign of much-improved financial and mental health.     However, glancing back over those 90 posts, I do feel it was a month of considerable quality as well as quantity.   My post on favourite openings of novels (reader contributions encouraged) seems likely to become a long-running 'collecting box' feature, and I must soon promote it to a spot in my sidebar.  I was also quite pleased with the piece on My philosophy of teaching and my recent Halloween collection of micro ghost stories.   Meanwhile on The Barstool, there were important posts about my theory of Beer Equivalence and the essential ingredients of a good sports bar (all sadly lacking in Beijing!).     Nothing interesting to report on the readership this time, I'm afraid.  Google Analytics is determinedly unforthcoming about the geographical origins of my visitors, and - usually much more fun and informative on this - Statcounter seems to be down at the moment.  If you are looking in from an exotic corner of the world, please leave me a comment to say hi.

Young Americans

Well, the 2 Kolegas Halloween gig was all that I hoped it might be, and then some: all the bands on cracking form; and even the unknown quantity, YACHT, proved to be quite fun (a boy-girl pair of weirdoes from Portland, Oregon who straddle the line between music and performance art, their singing along to pre-recorded tracks of, I suppose, a sort of upbeat techno [not at all my sort of thing, usually; but I found myself quite enjoying this... maybe it was just because the girl was hot...] accompanied by some interesting video backdrops.... and rather less compelling mime routines/robotic dancing).     However, I found myself worrying, yet again, about my advancing age (and perhaps the increasing unsociability that comes with that).  Aside from the laoban and the bands, I found I only knew about half a dozen people there; and they were mostly music biz types.  For a large and predominantly expatty crowd, that was a strikingly low proportion of acquaintances.  At gigs like that, I'd usually expect to run into at least two or three times as many people I know.   I fear I just haven't been getting out and meeting new people enough in the past few years.  It is the curse of expat life that one's social circle withers rapidly unless you're making constant efforts to diversify it.     Then again, Saturday's crowd was a reminder of why I don't go out and mingle that much any more.  It was 90% American, and very, very young.  I would guess a majority of them were language students or 'interns'.  There has been a mind-boggling proliferation of this demographic segment in Beijing in the last three or four years, and it's not a phenomenon I welcome.  I'm sorry to be such a curmudgeonly old git, but I'm afraid I find it very difficult to have a conversation with people who use the word 'like' a minimum of three times in every sentence.   I suppose the fact that it was Halloween made it even worse.  This is essentially a festival for young Americans.  We Brits don't really bother with it.  But there was a serious overdose of "like, totally, like, you know, like..." at dear old 2K that night.  And it threatened to start spoiling the music for me.

Bon mot for the week

"I am only as old as the woman I am currently fantasizing about."

Froog

Beijing sports bar HELL

I complained last month about the many failings of Beijing's sports bars.   Last night produced a bloody illustration of those faults.     Outside of the top of the table clashes between 'the big four' football clubs of England's Premier League - of which there are, after all, only 12 per season - the big local derby matches, Manchester, Merseyside, and North London, are the high points of the football year.  This tends to be true even when one of the two teams in each of these match-ups is obviously weaker: the history of the fixtures and the intensity of local rivalry and animosity almost always ensures a lively game, a passionate and often brutal competition played with the desperate hunger of a knockout cup tie - and fairly often producing an upset for the stronger team.  With the sudden re-emergence of Tottenham and Manchester City as contenders for a spot in the top 4 or 5, these games have got even bigger this season.  So, I really wanted to see last night's North London face-off between Arsenal and Spurs.     If only there were a decent sports bar in this town....     Ned's a nice little bar.  But emphasis on the little.  And it's an Aussie bar.  Therefore, you must expect that when there's any Aussie sport on, that might take preference over Pommie football.  (Last night, it was cricket.  Only a one-day international, and the small crowd of young Aussies in there seemed only to be watching very half-heartedly, but.... it's their bar.  Ho hum.  Let's try somewhere else.)   The Den was also showing the India v Australia cricket match. On 4 of its 5 or 6 screens.  Despite the fact that, I would say, at least two-thirds, if not three-quarters of the punters in there were attempting to watch the football.  They weren't playing the commentary on either event, of course.  They often don't, it seems, even when there's only one major event on.  Whenever there's a clash, they dispense with commentary on any of them.  Now, it wouldn't be that difficult to devote one bar to the cricket and one to the football, and have the commentary on for both.  If you have to mix it up, I'm sure fans of either sport could tolerate the muted commentary on the other.  Much less distracting - much less f***ing annoying - than having deafening music thumping out of the speakers (and the music on their playlist has got really awful of late).  Because of the music, everybody is having to shout their heads off to carry on any sort of conversation; so the din is an environmental health hazard, inducing migraine within minutes.  And it makes it quite impossible to concentrate on the game.  It seemed as though almost no-one in there was really watching either game; they were just intemittently trying to. I go through periods of being modestly well-disposed towards The Den: the food isn't bad, the waitresses are excellent, and they have a proper 'happy hour' - everything cheap until 10pm.  But whenever I go there to try to watch sport - and it is supposed to be a sports bar! - I end up absolutely hating the place. I had a hunch there'd be a very similar situation at Danger Doyle's.  And even if there had been no music, no Halloween parties, no Australians, decent TV screens and English commentary - well, the place is still an overpriced shitbox.  And, I mean, it's up a flight of stairs, for fuck's sake.  In a mall. Do not the rules of Great Bar-ness decree that you cannot have a bar in a mall?  I couldn't even be bothered to go and check it out. I tried Luga's Villa instead.  Without any great optimism.  My lack of optimism was justified.  Luga just can't commit to the idea of trying to be a sports bar.  Having TVs in there is just one of a random selection of elements he employs in a scattergun approach to try to woo customers.  Last night, he was throwing a Halloween party instead: THUMPING loud music, almost no light, people in fancy dress.  The TVs were on as well, but - even more so than in The Den - it would have been just about impossible to watch them. The only other option around the middle of town was The Pavilion - which is expensive and devoid of atmosphere.  It might at least have been showing the game, without the distraction of Halloween parties - but by this time, I'd already missed most of the first half, and had grown dispirited. Hmm, I forgot about The Rickshaw.  Does anyone still go to The Rickshaw?  It seems to have died the death over the last 6 months.  Last I heard, they'd given up on their satellite feed altoghether (they never were very good at getting it to work!). Paddy O'Shea's was a bit too far away from where I was.  And I hate the place with a passion, anyway.  And it was a racing certainty that they would be going the Halloween Party route.  Halloween with leprechauns.  Eminently avoidable.   And that's it for the Beijing sports bar scene.  The Stumble Inn has closed.  The new Goose & Duck is unreachably far away, for any of us that live within the city.  (And it always has been crap, anyway; but at least its original location was accessible and crap.)  Frank's Place and (well spoken of) newcomer The Irish Volunteer, out by the Lido, are likewise too far away for us city centre dwellers. There's a yawning gap in the market for a really good sports bar in the centre of the city. Especially one that specialises in football.  Let us keep our fingers crossed that one day soon some visionary entrepreneur will step forward.... to save us from the direness of The Den et al.

Whither tonight??

There's a welter of Halloween parties tonight, but none I've heard of have tickled my fancy.   Dr Manhattan is rather keen to try out the overseas alumni groups' event at Ruby Khi.  He cites the 3-hour open bar for a very affordable 150 kuai, and the likelihood of there being lots of single women there.  Young, American graduates.... hmm.  Tempting.  Except that too high a proportion of Americans in one place tends to lead to gratingness and raucosity.  And there are likely to be far more male recent American graduates than female ones at a party like this, I fear.   Also, unfortunately, this place is a re-launch of the utterly execrable (and stupidly named!) i-Ultra Lounge in the appalling Block8 complex.  My prejudices die hard.  Unless Dr M harnesses up the team of wild stallions, I think I'm unlikely to join him there.     Also, I'm considerably more drawn to the simpler but more reliable pleasures of 2 Kolegas, who supposedly have a stonking good bill tonight: utterly fabulous Ziyo, dirty blues-rocky Wu & The Side Effects (terrible name, great band), and the crowd-pleasing big band swing of DH & The Hellcats.  And an outfit called YACHT who no-one's ever heard of before.   Yep, I think that's my likeliest destination tonight.   I'm hoping, hoping the good Dr will be able to round up a group of eligible young ladies to meet up with me somewhere else after midnight....

Round-the-world 'Beer Equivalence'

A supplement to Tuesday's post on my Beer Equivalence Index:     As well as being a useful way of monitoring - and restraining - your regular spending, the concept of 'beer equivalence' can also be applied to comparing the relative cost of living in different countries (just as with the better known 'Big Mac Index').     When I first arrived in Beijing in 2002, the usual cost of a beer in a cheap restaurant or a neighbourhood xiaomaibu store was 2 kuai (a few restaurants would charge 3 kuai, but could usually be haggled down if most of the competitors on their street were only asking 2; only places that were a little bit up themselves would dream of of trying to ask 4 or 5 kuai).  Moreover, most stores would give you (a rather generous!) 5 mao deposit back on your bottles.  There were even a few places that would charge only 1.50 or 1.60 kuai for a beer, but only give you a rather more miserly 3 or 4 mao back.  And I did hear tell of the odd restaurant that would only ask 1.50, effectively giving you the bottle deposit back - although I never encountered such a haven of generosity myself.  I gathered that the typical price for a crate of 24 beers back then was only about 30 kuai, of which 6 or 8 kuai was deposit on the plastic crate itself, and another 12 kuai, seemingly, the bottle deposits (and then a few fen more for the bottle caps!), meaning that the wholesale cost of a big 700ml bottle was only about 5 mao.  However, for the purposes of the BEI, I took 2 kuai per beer as my benchmark, because that was what I usually had to pay.   These days, I suppose, I might have to say 4 kuai is the baseline.  I don't think you can get a beer for 2 kuai anywhere now.  Even very cheap restaurants and xiaomaibu now charge at least 3 kuai.  Most of the places I drink seem to charge 4 kuai.  That's some fairly hefty inflation in only 7 years.  But never mind - this has still got to be one of the cheapest places in the world to drink - particularly given the abundant employment opportunities for foreigners.     In my first impecunious year here, my basic salary was a little over 2,000 beers per month; but I was usually able to double that with moonlighting.  Now, despite the cost of a basic beer almost doubling, I am usually able to make 4,000 to 5,000 beers per month, sometimes rather more.  (Of course, it would take me a few years at least to drink that much!  Hmm, I wonder if there's some value in a related index on how long it takes to earn a year's consumption of beer?)     I don't get out of China often enough to have a very clear sense of how much it costs to drink in the USA or the UK any more.  It seems a pint these days in Britain is usually something over £3 - although I'm mostly drinking in Oxford, London, or Edinburgh, which are all unusually expensive; and drinking premium brews at that.  A countrywide average for a decent draught beer might be something more like £2.50, perhaps.  Can I envisage earning £150,000 a year in Britain?  After tax?  Unfortunately not.   In America, I am likewise drinking on the east coast, mostly in super-expensive New York or DC.  You don't seem to be able to get a domestic draft for much less than 5 bucks anywhere now, not even in the sort of divey places I am drawn to.  Often, it's rather more.  And then you have to tip your bar staff.  What could I do to earn $360,000 dollars a year in the States?   That's why I'm in China.   But I am starting to feel that it's a kind of economic gravity well that's got me trapped here.  If I could find another country where the beer is cheap and the employment prospects are as varied, I would certainly consider a move.  I am conducting research.....

HBH 155

wake to fierce headache depleted, after gutstorm whiskies were unwise       Not that I get hangovers, of course.  I think I must still be suffering from some sort of bug.

Let this po' boy be

Not long ago I was reading in one of the expat mags about a new opening down in the Embassy district, a New Orleans-themed bar-restaurant called Nola.  Since the demolition of the old Big Easy at the south gate of Chaoyang Park 3 or 4 years ago, I have been feeling the lack of such a place.   The write-up seemed vaguely promising, and made much of the place's brick-built bar (supposedly one of only two in Beijing).  The photos had a cosy ambience about them.  And I'm a sucker for all things New Orleans.   Well, the other day I was headed into that part of town to meet up with some friends at a place where I don't much rate the food; so, I thought I'd drop in on Nola for an early evening bite, and to scope it out.     Hm - where to begin?  The disappointments came thick and fast.  The vaunted brick bar is not really a bar at all.  Although there are a few stools there, it's obviously intended solely as a serving counter, and the staff get visibly anxious if you even walk up to it to place an order or ask for a menu.  It's too high to stand at (something of an emerging vice in recent Beijing openings).  It doesn't have any draught beer.  And it's horribly overlit.  A complete waste of what might have been a unique feature attraction.   The whole place, in fact, is horribly overlit, and desperately bare.  Perhaps they're going to elaborate the interior decor once they've been going a while, but at the moment it's just pale, featureless walls and bright lights.  Every bar (and restaurant) I've been in in New Orleans has had low lighting, lots of wood, and a clutter of characterful junk.  This place just isn't setting up the vibe.   And, as I said, no draught beer.  A small bottle of Stella is quite reasonably priced, though, so I went for that.  An over-officious waiter swiped it from it my table before I'd quite finished emptying it - very briskly, very surreptitiously, without asking me.  Another black mark.   And the food?  Oh, my god.  Nola really seems to be positioning itself purely as a restaurant.  It has absolutely nothing to offer as a bar; and it's just not in a bar neighbourhood - no walk-by trade at all.  The menu, however, is fairly short, and mostly devoted to rather snacky things.  A restaurant that's even half-arsed about being a restaurant.   I decided to try their po' boy (short for 'poor boy': the Louisiana interpretation of a long-loaf sandwich - a rather odd name, I always thought, for such a big sandwich, but the Cajun Dictionary assures me that it was originally a cheap lunch for working men).  I went for the beef & horseradish variety, which came - as do they all - with a choice of sides.  I opted for the 'slaw.  Ho hum.  The French bread was good.  That's about all I can say.  The beef (as, unfortunately, we have to expect nearly all the time in Beijing) was dry and tasteless.  And the horseradish (in fact, I think, horseradish mayonnaise rather than proper horseradish sauce - maybe I just didn't read the menu carefully enough?) was so bland and so sparingly applied as to be negligible.  And there was no salad to speak of, either.  The biggest let-down, though, was the size of the thing.  The menu offered half- and full-size versions, so I opted for the half, assuming that the (80 kuai!) full-size one was intended only for broad-girthed Texans with mighty appetites or amorous young couples looking to share a single meal.  After all, a po'boy in New Orleans is usually a big slab of food; and 80 kuai is a lot of money.  But no - the "half-size" po'boy at Nola is two fairly dinky hunks, only about 3 or 4 bites big each.  On that basis, the full-size one is probably going to be rather smaller than a Subway sandwich - which is far superior, and less than half the price.   And the mayonnaise?  It came irrelevantly garnished with a few pieces of chopped pecan, and was dressed in something that tasted to me more like stale vanilla ice-cream than any kind of mayonnaise known to man.  The only saving grace was that it came in such a small portion it was easily ignored.   Unfortunately, I failed to ignore it quite thoroughly enough.  I love coleslaw so much that, despite the vile first impression, I unconsciously wolfed down a couple more forkfulls.  And 6 or 7 hours later I was going down with one of the most violent episodes of food poisoning I have yet suffered in Beijing.     But you know what, guys - I forgive you.  Food poisoning can strike anywhere in Beijing.  I can't prove it was you (although I'm pretty damned sure it was).  And, if you're making your own mayo from fresh eggs, then salmonella is always going to be a risk.   I don't hate the place only with the bitterness of an abused intestine.  No, I hate it for the stinginess of its portions.  I hate it for its stupid prices.  I hate it for its lack of effort or common sense in attempting to create any sort of atmosphere.  I hate it for its sheer bloody pointlessness.   Nola?  No thanks.

The Beer Equivalence Index

I was reminded by a news item today of the tongue-in-cheek 'Big Mac Index' started by The Economist a dozen or so years ago as a means of comparing the PPP (Purchasing Power Parity - the relative cost of a consumer item or basket of items, exchange-rate adjusted, against the benchmark of the USA).   When I first came to China, I was very favourably impressed by the low cost of the local beer (at least in neighbourhood stores and restaurants; in bars, other than the very diviest bargain dumps, prices are close to parity with the UK or the US, and getting higher every year).  And I found it consoling, since I wasn't earning very much money back then, to calculate my salary in terms of how many beers I could buy with it.  This simple exercise certainly gave a boost to the spirits: I was earning over 2,000 beers a month!  (They were usually only 2 kuai for a big bottle in those days, mind you.)   I fear that this is the moment at which I became 'trapped' in China.  I realised it was pretty much inconceivable that I could earn enough to support such a good lifestyle - well, such an alcoholic lifestyle! - in the UK, or almost anywhere else in the world.   Of course, one has to keep in mind that beer is unusually, unnaturally cheap here.  In fact, it is - bafflingly - more or less the same price by volume as the cheapest bottled water, and significantly cheaper than any kind of soft drink.  Hence the tendency to drink it all the time.... purely for rehydration....   Food in grotty street-corner restaurants is also astoundingly cheap (rather cheaper than cooking for yourself at home, I find), but the more upmarket places, and especially the Westerner-targeted places are closer to the level of prices we're used to back home.  Food in supermarkets is mostly pretty cheap, but has got a lot more expensive in recent years; and any imported luxuries - or domestically-made Westerner favourites like processed ham or potato crisps - are likely to be as much or more than they would be back home.  You need to be very careful in in your spending, with such an uneven spectrum of pricing.     So, doing regular BEI (Beer Equivalence Index) comparisons in your head should work in two ways:   when you're feeling down, you can focus on the overall value of your income in beers, to give yourself a lift;   but most of the time, you should be using it as a brake on your spending, by reminding yourself how many beers you could buy instead of something else you're about to purchase.       Trust me - this is a very useful technique.  I'm surprised it hasn't been more widely exploited by academic economists yet.

How not to do it (2): the entirely predictable demise of Tun

I never really expected much of Tun.   It's not got much of a location: charmless, hard to find, marooned in the arse end of an industrial estate - even if it is reasonably close to the established bar areas around Sanlitun and the Workers' Stadium.   It's a barn.  Terrible acoustics for live music.  Dead atmosphere if there are only a few people in.  Noisy and oppressive if there are a lot of people in.   And I hardly ever go out over that side of town anyway.   However, I've known Huxley - one of the shadowy consortium behind the venture - for several years now, and I feel a lot of affection and loyalty towards the guy.  So, I was willing to at least give this place a go a few times.... even though it wasn't at all my type of place, and even though - opening with negligible PR immediately before the great Olympic lull - it was impossible to be optimistic about its chances of survival.   And there were a few promising signs.  The staff were mostly quite good. The prices - for such a big and ambitious bar - were pretty reasonable.  And they had Stella - one of my favourite poisons - on draught.   Then, shrewd bar guru Chad Lager joined as a manager for a while - after the Olympic debacle, at the end of last year.  And he really got the place jumping for a few months.  Live bands, special promotions, the beguiling gimmick of the 'flowerpot-sized' glasses for cocktails and mixed drinks, and, of course, the infamous Friday Ladies' Night.  They were packing the crowds in for a time.  Too successful for its own good, really; or, rather, for mine - I don't like big crowds; and it could get difficult to move around or breathe in there on Friday nights.   But Chad left again.  And they don't seem to have done anything about replacing him.  Nope - the few times I've been in there since, it has not been apparent whether there's anyone in overall charge of the staff on duty at all.  And the whole place seems to be directionless.  Or heading very rapidly in the wrong direction.     I looked in a week or two ago on a Thursday, because I'd heard they were still having a live band in on that night, and also had a special on Stella all night.   Er, NO.   They now have a new range of promotions - crudely chalked on a set of blackboards inside the door.  Thursday is now the confusingly named 'Voucher Night' - which apparently means that if you spend 200 rmb you can get another 50 rmb of drink free.  Big f***ing deal!  This has to be the daftest offer I have ever heard. a)  It's too complicated - I have to do what, and then I get what? b) It's hardly a special offer at all, since it is so conspicuously less generous than any of the specials they used to run under Chad; conspicuously less generous, indeed, than even the stingiest of this town's mostly very disappointing 'happy hours'.  c)  It's way too much, for most people, either to spend or to drink.  (I could drink 250 rmb of booze, just about; but I try not to make a habit of it.  And not too many people would attempt it on a 'school night'.)  Utterly f***ing DAFT.     As soon as Dr Manhattan and I set foot inside, and started trying to decipher and evaluate the bewildering display of not-so-special 'specials', we had two over-anxious waiters trying to chivvy us to come in and order something. Inept, pushy staff - another big NO-NO.  You could almost smell their desperation.  Most off-putting!   9pm on a Thursday evening, and the only sound was the rustle of passing tumbleweed.  Not a single punter in the place.   I doubt if I'll ever be going back there again.  It doesn't look as though anyone else is either.   Very sad, though, that a place that seemed poised on the brink of becoming a significant success story could fall apart so utterly in the space of just a few months.  But that's Beijing for you.....

How not to do it (1): the sad demise of Huxley's

I dropped in on Huxley's with Dr Manhattan a couple of weeks ago.  For the first time in ages.   The place was pretty much dead.  And the pair of charmless boneheads that have been running it for the past couple of years were doing nothing to improve their chances of attracting anyone in.  They closed altogether at the indecently early hour of 1.30am.  In fact, they started closing up - and unceremoniously pressuring us to finish the drinks we'd only just bought, and get out - rather before 1.30am.  Not a very positive impression to give to customers.   And not much of a help to the bosses' bottom line.  The good Dr and I, when we have our drinking heads on, can be relied upon to drink three beers an hour, and the occasional spirit too.  And we had at least another hour or two of drinking left in us.  In the good old days, that place just about never closed.  Not on the weekend, anyway.   But things have changed in that neighbourhood.  Maybe it's on its last legs as a bar street.  Azucar, right opposite Huxley's, was also deserted - but was at least still serving.  (They have a very good bar football table - 'foosball', if you must - but I don't think that's enough to entice me back there ever again.)  The rest of the street was completely dark.  Come to think of it, a few times I've been along there earlier in the evening, 10pm or 11pm, it's nearly all been dark.  And I rather think that quite a few of the places that were trying to make it as bars or restaurants have closed completely.  It's nearly all cafés and curio shops now.   I gave up on Huxley's initially because it started attracting too much of a young crowd.  And I mean VERY young.  There was a period when there was a gang of American high schoolers who were hanging out there every weekend.  One rather cute one who would flirt with me when she got drunk - but it was utterly indecent: she can't have been more than 15 or 16.  That might have been just a temporary blip, but they drove me away.... breaking the chain of continuity, as prior to that it had been my regular neighbourhood drinking-hole - just about my only one - for the better part of two years.   Then my friend, Jackson Bai, quit the place.  He was the guy who'd set it up and run it for Huxley throughout those first two years or so, and made such an impact in the job that his loyal customers boosted him to the Runner-up prize in That's Beijing's Barman of the Year poll the following year (and he came within an ace of winning, despite the fact that the big hotels and cocktail bars have a lot of money to spend rallying votes for their people, and Jackson's surge was purely a grassroots write-in kind of campaign).  He was a large part of the reason why I - and many other people - had gone there; and it was just never quite the same afterwards.  Jackson has pretty good English (entirely self-taught), he's genuinely friendly (rather than awkwardly and exaggeratedly so), and he's put a lot of effort into learning what people like - OK, yes, especially what foreigners like - in a bar.  There was some great music on the playlist while he was there, for example (he's still the only person I've ever heard play AC/DC in this town); and he was always amenable to you bringing in your own CDs or hooking up your i-Pod if there weren't too many people in. The new guys have a much more limited playlist, it's mostly very abrasive (I think I said in the Great Bars post that genres like gangsta rap are too divisive for a general bar); and nothing about these two is amenable - if you ask them to change the music, or turn it down a bit, they'll refuse, or ignore you, or comply only very slowly and with the maximum of complaint and ill grace.   Jeez, I miss Jackson's days there.  He's been an asset to a lot of other bars since.  But Huxley's has never managed to find a suitable replacement for him.  I don't think they've even tried, really.   The place didn't turn to shit quite straight away.  For a little while, a couple of new staff who'd been working with Jackson - an attractive girl called Lucy and a goofy young guy who was English-challenged but friendly - kept the old spirit alive.  But they soon left too.  And the new guys they got in - well, they've never projected anything but surl towards me.  It seems they don't speak much English.  It seems like they don't want any foreign customers.  It seems, most of the time, like they don't want to be there at all.  And yet they've stuck in the job for two years or more, while the custom slowly shrivels to nothing.   (And, oh yes, as it became harder and harder to maintain their position at the budget end of the market with a dwindling clientele, they became less and less discriminating about the quality of their spirits.  Jackson had always made at least a modest effort to ensure that most the stuff he sold was kosher, and would happily replace anything you weren't happy with.  But these days, it's almost all poisonously fake and you really can't afford to risk more than one or two mixed drinks in there without seriously jeopardizing your liver.)   It is a sorry turnaround indeed for what was once one of the great bars.   I wonder, though, if this isn't partly a tide of history phenomenon.  As I mentioned at the outset, the whole Yandai Xijie strip seems to be in the doldrums these days.  I suspect that the rapid development in the last few years of the rival Nanluoguxiang strip less than a mile away (and, more recently, many of the hutongs to either side of NLG, and the main drag of Gulou Dongdajie also starting to show signs of trendifying, 'Westernization') has sucked business away from Yandai.  Heck, I gave up on Huxley's almost completely when I discovered the much more alluring - and then newly opened - Pool Bar.  And now other bars like Salud, Ned's, Amilal, and 12 Square Metres are dividing my loyalties.  Even if Huxley's could magically return to how it used to be, I doubt if it could win me back.  Even with Jackson, or someone similarly adept and appealing, behind the bar, I think Huxley's would have been doomed to a slow death - wrong place, wrong time, too much competition.   Ah, it was good for a while, though.

Bon mot for the week

"Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything."

Willa Cather (1873-1947)

Missing Tommy

I discovered on Friday afternoon that the Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel was in town, playing a one-off concert at the Peking University Concert Hall.   Now, alack and alas, there didn't seem to have been very much publicity for this gig at all - at least not in expat circles.  I only noticed one brief listing in one of the English-language magazines - no articles or ads or posters - and that when it was really already too late to do anything it.   Peking University is miles away (and, despite it having its own stop on the recently opened Line 4 subway, still not really very convenient to reach from the city centre).  The campus is enormous, and there are very few signposts (and, as far as I can recall, no maps).  I've been to the Concert Hall once before, but it took me bloody ages to find it, and I had no confidence that I would be able to find it again - at all - in the dusk, in a hurry.  And, this late in the day, I figured the tickets would probably be all sold out anyway.  (I do hope so: this is a guy who really deserves a packed auditorium.  The event was obviously targeted mainly at the University crowd, and I would hope the word-of-mouth got around in Chinese musician circles.)   I wrestled with my conscience a good deal over whether I should try to schlepp up there and hope to be able to snag a ticket from a tout - but I'm afraid pessimism overwhelmed me.  Damn.  I do hope he'll be back one day.  And play at a more accessible venue.  With some decent advance publicity.   I'm not able to view (or embed) video clips at the moment, but there are quite a lot of performances by him on YouTube and so on.  Well worth taking a look.   Tommy Emmanuel is a dazzling virtuouso, mainly these days in a sort of folk/jazz genre.  Inspired by the great Chet Atkins, he has become perhaps the world's premier exponent of the finger-picking style, and is widely acclaimed by other guitarists as one of the greatest players of our age.  He is the most significant international musician - well, the most significant non-classical musician, certainly - to have visited Beijing in several years (well, here I'm probably going to get Kanye West on my case, because Beyoncé was also playing here on Friday night, at the Wukesong Basketball Stadium), and I am gutted to have missed him. I have mentioned him on here once before, and linked to a clip of him playing a stunning arrangement of the sea shanty South Australia.  If you haven't watched this yet, do go and check it out.

Our love was on the wing...

When it's 1.30am and you're drinking the bad whisky and listening to Fields of Athenry, you know things aren't good....

Trinity

Tuesday's "Nobody mention the goddamn b-word!" party went off very well.   There was a certain inevitability to the pattern of the evening - moving between my three favourite bars: 12 Square Metres, Amilal, and the Pool Bar.  A good night out for me almost invariably includes at least one of these, and very often (rather too often!) all three.   Tuesday's perambulation should perhaps be represented as a pentangle, since The Choirboy and Dr Manhattan joined me for a swift preliminary drink (or two or three) in quaint little Aussie bar, Ned's, and, after the "assembly of the News Team" in 12 Sq, we dined at Hot Bean, the neighbourhood's celebrated barbecue joint - making five stops in all.     There seems to be a rule of threes at work in my so-called love life as well.  My attention during the evening was unduly preoccupied by the three women who've made the biggest dent in my heart in recent years (not that they were necessarily present, but booze and anniversaries seem to bring romantic memories bubbling forth): The Great Lost Love, The Crush Who Doesn't Know I Exist, and The So-Near-And-Yet-So-Far Lustful Frisson.   Then again, maybe it's a rule of fives.  Another ex-girflfriend of mine contrived a stalker-ish ambush at one point.  And then the next night (or the night after) I ran into another almost-ex, the girl who should have been my Great Rebound From The Great Lost Love but turned out instead to be Ms I-Have-No-Time-For-A-Life.   It seems like it's not safe to set foot outside the door just at the moment.  I think I should hunker down at home with my DVD collection for a few months - until all this wistfulness and frustrated longing has dissipated....

Big Band!

Well, those Panjir boys just keep ringing the changes.   Last week, it was a guitar trio jam session.  This week, they've morphed into a full five-piece ensemble - a new lineup they're hoping to use for some big concerts and festivals upcoming.   They've added a bass player, a dutar player, and a pyrotechnic finger-drummer.   Alas, it looks as though they may have dispensed with their upright fiddle player. (Is it called a ghijak?  I'm never sure which term this guy prefers; the instrument has so many different names across Central Asia.)  That instrument is the soul of this music for me; it has such a marvellously melancholic tone to it.  And the chap who plays it is so cool.  I hope they bring him back before long.

HBH 154

Too many the years, lying heavy on the heart. Youth seems so distant.     I used to like the idea of being a long-player, but I have become a single....