The Wudaokou bar scene SUCKS (mostly)

A fine sunny holiday afternoon yesterday found me up in 'the Wu' - Wudaokou, the hub of the university district in the north-west of the city.

There's been such an explosion in the numbers of foreign students trying to learn Mandarin at the universities (and private language schools) round there in recent years that it's also become a boom area for foreigner-targeted bars and restaurants.

One of the longest-established and most popular of these is a place called Lush. I'll save my character-assassination of Lush for another time; suffice it to say that I've had so many bad experiences there in the past that I didn't think it was even worth giving a try yesterday.

Instead, my companion and I thought we'd investigate La Bamba, a new 'Mexican' joint that's opened up in the past month or two. I want to like this place, I really do. It's got a lot going for it: good decor (properly dark, with a real wood bar and lots of bare brick), cosy booths (pairs of mini sofas facing each other beside the small arched windows at the front), plenty of space, spread over two floors (or more? they might even have an open roof terrace, but I didn't get the chance to check), a pool table (albeit one of those dreadful American-style ones with the HUGE pockets), and reasonable prices. Unfortunately, they have absolutely terrible staff: two very dim and unhelpful barmen on duty yesterday afternoon, with about three words of English between them - and obstinately trying to impose a policy of insisting on payment before making any move to get us our drinks. I find such a policy unnecessary (at least during the afternoon, when the place is virtually deserted), dumb, and RUDE. ("What?! You don't trust me to pay you?? Well, I don't trust you to give me the friggin' drink! If you forget to bring me my drink, or it takes you half an hour, or you bring the wrong order, or it's undrinkable shit...... am I going to be able to get my money back from you? I think not." 'Pay first, drink later' is an obnoxious policy in any country in the world; in China, with the abysmal standards of service that usually obtain, it's just daft, completely unworkable.)

We left in a huff. (My companion's short stock of patience had already been just about exhausted by Barman No. 1's repeated misinterpretations of his Pina Colada order: "Cola? Corona??")

Just next door, there is another potentially quite promising bar - again, very American in style: an invitingly gloomy interior, lots of wood, lots of tacky Americana adorning the walls (a road sign saying 'Dale Earnhardt Dr.', for example). I have no idea what it's called. I think it used to be something like 'Red Rock' - but these days, the sign is in Chinese only. They used to have some extremely good beer deals - most notably, big bottles of the excellent Japanese brew Asahi 'Super Dry' for only 10 kuai. However, I gave up on the place 3 or 4 years ago, because the service was just dreadful, and they seem to have an extreme reluctance to open. It appeared to have shut down completely for a while, and I was hoping that it might now have the same ambience (and the same cheap Asahi!), but a more amenable ownership.

Alas, no. I think it must still be the same guy. The surly boss man told us heavily, "Closed". Hmm. No sign saying 'Closed'. The front door and the back door are wide open. All the lights are on. The boss and at least one of his hirelings are here. How difficult is it going to be, really, to hand us a couple of beers and take some money off us?? Not that hard, I think.

"When will you be open?" "Later." This guy really doesn't want any customers, for some reason.

A little while later, we hooked up with The Chairman - now living in that 'hood - and he told us about this Korean place he'd discovered. I was impressed - and surprised - that he managed to find it again, since it is on the third floor of a large mall/office building, accessible only via an elevator, and with absolutely no external hint of its existence at all. He thought it was called Torch (not a bad name for a bar, really), but actually we find it is called Touch (which is a much less good name for a bar). In fact, it is called Public House Touch 9 (a truly terrible name for a bar). And it is indeed a truly terrible bar. There's only one beer tap behind the bar (and no barman behind the bar!), and that's Budweiser. At least they do have some decent bottled beer - including Asahi, though not the premium 'Super Dry', and a rather less beguiling 18 kuai each. However, most of the cocktails on the menu prove not to be available - either because they don't have the requisite mixers (no Coke??!!), or because the staff don't know how to make them. Neither do they have any Mike's Hard Lemonade, although posters advertising this lethal alcopop are all over the walls. The decor is atrocious, too: chrome and plastic stools, formica tables, bright lights, big windows. (Everyone I know who's experienced life in Korea tells me the same story about the direness of the Korean bar scene. And this seems to be borne out around 'the Wu', where the great majority of Mandarin students are young Koreans, and so bars like Touch are becoming numerous.) The photography of the food on the menu was some of the most grotesquely unappetising I have ever seen; we decided not to order any food. A little later, I found one of the chefs peeling garlic on the floor immediately outside the men's toilet (because, presumably, this was more hygienic than trying to do it in the large but chaotic kitchen next door). And a group of young Koreans celebrating a birthday had a deafeningly loud snatch of the cheesy Cliff Richard hit Congratulations played for them (although this is really an engagement song rather than a birthday song). Yep, this place was so stupendously awful, it was actually kind of fun - for a single visit, for a single beer.

No, not a good evening in 'the Wu', on the whole. I was reminded of why I hang out there so seldom.