The Beijing 'bucket list': 10 things to try before you die

A few weeks back, the Beijing edition of City Weekend magazine did a feature on 'Things you have to try before you leave Beijing' (everybody seems to be talking of leaving these days; although with many, perhaps, it is only talk). I found I had done quite a lot of them; and was quite happy not to have done the rest. (How do you fare? Check it out online, Part 1 and Part 2.)

This seemed like a good theme for a 'farewell post' on here, so I thought I'd try to come up with a similar list of my own (with a heavy bias towards drink-related activities, naturally).

Froog's Top Ten Things To Do Before You Leave Beijing

Have a rickshaw race

As I once managed to do with my erstwhile drinking companion The Tedster. It is damned difficult to persuade any of the rickshaw guys to play ball on this. I don't think they'd ever trust a laowai to cycle their precious vehicle themselves. And they can't be persuaded to go all that fast, even when offtered significant financial incentives for a 'win'. But still, we did once manage to find a pair of drivers who were game for it, and we had a race of sorts around Houhai, early in the morning before there were too many people around. This was about 8 years ago; the tourist throngs have grown much denser in that time. It just might not be practicable at all any more.

Startle passers-by with a bullhorn

Gosh, you used to be able to buy them all over the place; and they were ridiculously cheap - less than 30 kuai, I think. The Beijing government tried to ban their use prior to the Olympics (perhaps the one good thing to come out of the city's over-anxious pre-Games prettification campaign; they used to have a record facililty, so virtually all newspaper kiosks and quite a lot of other small shops would set them on endless repeat to advertise their wares - it could get very annoying). My Mancunian teaching colleague Mad Mike bought himself one, and we spent a very silly hour or so riding around the city in a taxi, hailing random cyclists and pedestrians in our bad but impressively amplified Chinese.

Drink all day

Just because you can, in this decadent expat community! I think my record setting performance was probably the day I christened 12 Square Metres' adoption of 12-hour opening by drinking there from noon to something past midnight... and then stopping in at the Pool Bar for another 4 hours or so on the way home.

Set up a barbecue on the street

Again, just because you can in this crazy country (sometimes, just sometimes, the lack of effective regulation is beguiling). The boys from Ned's bar on Nanluoguxiang used to do this pretty regularly, and my artist friend Stephanie had a little 4th July cookout on an alley just off Bell Tower Square a couple of years ago.

Dance in the rain

The challenge with this one is that your opportunities are limited because rain is so infrequent here. And there's also the problem that when it does rain, the rain is so unpleasant - filled with sand and chemicals; causing instant floods and overflowing sewers - that you tend not to feel very jubilant about it. But I certainly have done this a few times here. The one I remember most fondly was in my early days here, outside my favourite drinking haunt of that time, the 'Adventure Bar'. I got so over-excited about it because I think it was in fact the first rain that I'd seen in Beijing; we didn't have a drop in the first 10 or 12 weeks I lived here. It soon turned into hail, but I carried on dancing anyway, channelling the spirit of Gene Kelly. Or perhaps rather of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise.

Go on a ridiculously excessive bar crawl

I'm not really a fan of bar crawls, on the whole. I much prefer to find one place I'm comfortable in and spend the entire evening there. Three or four different bars is usually about the most I cover in one night, and that only happens because I've been to a music gig somewhere, or am coming back from working or shopping on the east side of town. However, I do like extreme physical challenges. And Beijing, with its handful of dense-packed nightlife areas, provides a rare opportunity to cram in 10 (or 20, or 30) different venues in quick succession. A few years ago, some friends of mine and I did a crawl along the length of Nanluoguxiang (back in the days when it had more bars than boutiques). I have hankered to try and do the same thing with Wudaoying Hutong; but there is no-one who would accompany me any more.

Go sledding on the frozen lakes at midnight

As I did with my best buddy The Choirboy five or six years ago on New Year's morning. We discovered some bicycle sleds that had been left unchained, and went for a mad, drunken race around Qianhai on them.

Stay up all night to go and watch the dawn flag-raising on Tiananmen Square

Now, I've stayed up all night here far too many times, but I've rarely had the stamina to combine it with an early morning stroll down to the Square afterwards. I think the last time was probably 4 or 5 years ago. I do recommend it, though, if the weather's nice.

Shake Ai Weiwei's hand

Whatever you may think of his art, Ai Weiwei is one of the most important, most influential, most admirable figures in China today. Not many people have the courage to jeopardise their freedom and their physical safety by standing up to the Chinese government. Even fewer have used their wealth and privilege to try to give a voice to people and causes that might otherwise be overlooked. I am proud to have stood alongside Ai Weiwei at a demonstration in support of our mutual friend, the unjustly imprisoned artist Wu Yuren.

Take over your favourite bar for a party

Well, I've done this a number of times on my birthday - for the last two or three years at my 'local', 12 Square Metres, and once (perhaps the most alcoholic of all) at the old Zoo Bar on Houhai (cunningly renamed Zoom Bar a few years ago by combining the original sign with one that said 'M Bar'), which was a fun place for the short spell that Jackson Bai was running it. But the biggest and best was surely the year that I hired Salud for the night, and got Big John and Zoe Wang and friends to play their Irish folk tunes for us. It was nearly 24 hours before I got home from that one!

And an extra one, just to give me something to continue to aim for....

Re-enact the 'Tank Man' incident with remote-controlled toy tanks

This has been a pet scheme of mine for ages. Of course, if I did do this, it would almost certainly be the last thing I'd ever do in China.

So, there you have it. And 10 of these 11 things I have in fact done already. So, I think I'm good to go; I can leave Beijing without any regrets. It's been fun - occasionally - but it's well past time for me to try somewhere new.

Let the revelry commence!

Today, December 17th, is the Roman feast day of the Saturnalia - their major midwinter holiday, and the beginning of a week or so of merriment (well, 3 or 5 days of continuous celebrations at various times, but a full 7 days at its best, taking it up to and beyond the solstice). Time to start whooping it up!

I've always liked the pagan festivals (defying the cruel dark of winter with ebullient merrymaking), much preferring them to the commercialized shmaltziness of the Christian holidays.

OK, this is actually La Jeunesse de Bacchus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a scene of riot from Greek legend rather than a Roman Saturnalia party; but you get the idea - Classical debauchery, yay!

The BIG Question

A frequent topic of speculation for me during my years of drinking in Beijing bars has been... Can you can make more money off Chinese or foreign customers?

It's a question of vital importance for any bar owner or prospective bar owner.

Although there is a broad spectrum of personality types and spending patterns in both demographics, my instinct would be that you can in general make much more off foreign punters.

The key exception that might skew the analysis a bit is your Chinese high-roller type who will order premium spirits (or wines, champagne) by the bottle, just to flaunt his wealth - and perhaps not even drink it all. However, this type of punter brings his own problems. They're often quite brash and obnoxious types, who will treat staff contemptuously, and perhaps annoy other customers with their loud and boorish conversation. And if they do drink heavily, they're quite likely to get dangerously sloppy - perhaps even start a fight, or throw up in the middle of the bar. And it's distressingly common for this sort of punter to 'forget' to settle their tab, or to quibble about it. You also have to bear in mind that they're perhaps treating quite a large group. You might be initially quite excited when someone orders a bottle of Chivas - but when you realise that means you're going to have a group of six or eight Chinese patrons hogging your best table all night, and that quite possibly none of them are going to order anything else, it really isn't such good news. Especially if they end up making an ugly scene.

Most Chinese are still unfamiliar with Western bar culture, and not really all that receptive to it. They'll dabble in it because it's become a hip thing to do for students and young professionals. But most of these people have fairly little disposable income, and a negligible tolerance for alcohol. Moreover, they rarely seem to recognise any ethical constraints about being obliged to spend money in your bar. Venues like Starbucks and McDonald's have become hugely popular hangouts for the young because they usually leave you unmolested all day long, never requiring you to buy anything. This free-and-easy attitude in two of the most ubiquitous foreign franchise businesses here has perhaps encouraged young Chinese folks to believe that it is normal and acceptable to occupy space in a venue for hours at a time after making only one token purchase - or no purchase at all (and to use the bathroom without making a purchase, too!). It is quite common for one person in a couple, or only two or three people in a group, to buy a drink, and assume it is then all right for them to occupy a table indefinitely. This might not be all Chinese customers, or even the majority of them; but it is a common enough phenomenon to cause serious aggravation for a poor bar owner.

And even the good drinkers amongst the Chinese - enthusiasts of good beers, wines, or spirits; people who'll spend quite heavily, but without exceeding their physical tolerance - are rarely going to spend as much as your average Western drinker, I think. They haven't been doing it since their early teens, haven't built up such a prodigious appetite - or the capacious gut - for it.

I'd guess that quite a large proportion of Chinese punters will spend little or nothing; and while there are a few who will improve the average substantially by spending in the high hundreds, the typical Chinese spend per head is probably a lot less than 100 rmb, perhaps not much better than 50 rmb. Almost all foreigners, even the modest drinkers and teetotallers, will order at least a couple of drinks... and then leave when they feel they've had enough, not stage a sit-in for hours. Heavier drinkers may well take up residence for much of the evening, spending steadily over an extended period. I pretty regularly spend 200 rmb, even on a fairly slow night, and sometimes go through twice that much. And I'm hardly a high-roller: I don't order cocktails or top-shelf whiskies very often. I'm just your typical enthusiastic pisshead. I suspect the average spend-per-head of a foreign bar punter here is well over 100 rmb... and perhaps, in some bars, over 200 rmb.

So, it does seem there might be a powerful economic argument for favouring foreign customers over Chinese ones. I certainly think that (unless you're running a nightclub, which is a whole different ballgame) it must be very difficult to make a decent income from a wholly Chinese clientele (although exceptions prove the rule: Reef on Nanluoguxiang seems to be managing it).

But, of course, you can't very well take overt steps to exclude any particular group of punters. Fubar's English-only drinks menu appeared to be sending some such message, that Chinese punters weren't particularly welcome, and it was not something I was comfortable with. (Although I have been notoriously - and unashamedly! - lazy about learning much Chinese myself, I think it is a bit rude to your host country not to offer service in Chinese as well as English if you're running a business here.) However, the only place I ever heard of trying to actively discourage Chinese punters was the Chinese-owned No Name Bar down by Houhai (and I suspect that was an exaggerated rumour, catching fire from the spark of one or two cases of particular customers being excluded).

You can effectively target a Western or Chinese clientele by your decor (Chinese, for the most part, don't get the wooden bar vibe; Westerners, for the most part, are fairly indifferent to soft furnishings) or the facilities provided (cheesy Chinese folk-rock performers and/or a karaoke stage go down big with the local punters; as do dice and playing cards, so that they can lose themselves for hours in noisy and pointless but strangely addictive games, rather than having to make the effort to sustain a conversation). And the pricing - most young Chinese will be discouraged by higher prices (although a lot of us less affluent foreigners will be too!).

There are some bars in Beijing - long established expat favourites like The Den, Frank's Place, Eudora Station, and the Goose & Duck (or some newer places in a similar vein, like The Irish Volunteer) - where the only Chinese people you'll usually see are WAGs or staff members. I've never felt very comfortable in places like this. Then again, I can't stand most of the bars on and around Nanluoguxiang these days: bars which prove strongly alluring to Chinese patrons tend to be deeply unappealing to me (it's not the Chinese patrons I mind, it's the things Chinese patrons seem to like!).

My favourite bars over the years have been ones that somehow managed to appeal to a good mix of foreign and Chinese punters: Huxley's, Reef (in its early days; it's rather lost its foreigner appeal now), Pool Bar, Salud, and, of course, my best beloved 12 Square Metres. I'm not quite sure what the secret is. I suspect it's something to do with being more Western than Chinese in style, but having a level of pricing reasonable enough not to drive away Chinese custom... and perhaps also with being sufficiently off the beaten track that their expat constituency just isn't large enough to establish an exclusive dominion. A bar in Sanlitun or Lido can easily establish itself - not necessarily by design, but by natural evolution - as essentially an 'expat only' kind of place; in my neighbourhood, it can't - and I'm grateful for that.

The Shanghai bar scene

Does it have one?

Well, yes, obviously it does.

Just not one that I can afford.

And, even though there are exceptions to that affordability barrier (more than there were when I last visited 4 or 5 years ago, I think), I'm not sure that any of them would entice me into becoming a regular. I was in Shanghai the week before last, and in four days of walking the streets on the lookout for a promising bar, and four days of canvassing friends for suggestions, I drew a big fat blank.

I probably shouldn't blame Shanghai, as such. At least it has some bars, whereas most cities in China, even quite large ones, still don't, really. Even in Beijing, surely China's Western bar capital, a place that seems to have a much greater frequency and diversity of bars than Shanghai, there are only about half a dozen or so to which I would give my custom, and only two for which I have a real fondness (12 Square Metres and the Pool Bar). I'm picky: there probably aren't that many bars in the world - and increasingly few, it seems, even in the UK and the US - that would appeal to me. But in Shanghai, alas, it would appear that there are NONE.

It probably didn't help that I was mostly conducting my reconnaissance by day, when even bars that were supposed to be open often appeared in practice not to be - or, if they were, had not yet managed to draw in a single customer.

I cruised by Judy's, for example - a place that appeared to be divily cheap (a good thing!), at least by Shanghai standards, but had the most vile decor, and gave off the vibe of a Chinese bar that is desperate to attract a foreign clientele but has very little idea how to do so. (Maybe I'm wrong about that. I can imagine its prices alone, however bad the service or charmless the ambience, could draw pretty big crowds in the evenings. But I noted that its entry in the listings on City Weekend had only attracted a solitary user review, and that shortly after it opened 18 months ago. Not promising.)

I cruised past nearby Oscar's, my usual default bar on previous visits, but the place seems to have become even more charmless, and perhaps to have migrated just a little upmarket (I don't remember the fenced garden area out the front being so big before, or them having such an extensive food menu).

I cruised along Taikang Lu, where my friend Ruby had told me she thought she remembered there being a rather good bar. I found a large-ish event venue sort of place, The Melting Pot, which might possibly be worth a look in the future - but it was clearly not a homely boozing spot. (Turns out the directions may have been faulty. She claims there's decent 12 Square Metres clone on some little alleyway just off Taikang Lu. Next time...)

There was a gaggle of vaguely promising-looking bars along Hengshan Lu - but again, I was too early in the day. And I was put off by their undifferentiatedness. I liked the dim lighting and the preponderance of wood, but... I found a spot where there were two or perhaps three almost identical bars side by side, and it really was pretty much impossible to tell whether they were a single interconnected venue or not. It was also impossible to tell what they (it??) were called, because, although festooned with promotional signs for various beers, there was no obvious indication of a bar name, either in Chinese or English. Well, no, there was one sign that said, in English/pinyin, Dun Di Bar, I think. I wondered if they were trying for Dundee. I couldn't find any online listing for that name.

The only place to lure me in for a drink during this rather dull and lonely spell of wandering around the city was the Shanghai Brewery. Another American-style craft brew company! These places are spreading like Giant Hogweed! I gather it won the 'Best New Bar' gong in City Weekend's Shanghai Bar Awards this year - but perhaps only for want of competition. Decent barebones American sports bar sort of ambience, decent staff, a smattering of patrons already drinking in the mid afternoon - and a two-for-one deal on the burgers on a Tuesday (unfortunately, these are 70 or 80-kuai burgers, and I was on my own). More importantly, the home-brewed beer, at least on the extended happy hour (3pm-8pm, if I recall correctly), was only 28 kuai, which would be cheap for Beijing these days, and is virtually giving it away in Shanghai. On the downside, though, the TV picture for the sports wasn't much good (I think I've observed on here before that big-screen TV is a waste of time unless you've got an HD feed, and that's still a rarity in Asia), and the beer was... well, all right, but unspectacular, compromised by the excessive fruitiness that American brewers increasingly seem to feel is de rigueur. (You have to applaud them for making an effort, though: they've built quite an impressive website to promote this bar. That's still not something you often see here.)

The only place in Shanghai where I really quite enjoyed a drink on this last visit was Windows Too (apparently one of a fairly extensive chain of affordable dive bars) - although I wasn't really lured in, more goaded into it by JK's recommendation, and despairing of other options as the penetrating drizzle I'd been putting up with all day began to get even heavier. Upstairs in a mall, which is a very bad start for bar appeal; and hence pretty inconspicuous, pretty much unfindable unless you have detailed directions (mine weren't, but I got lucky). It had a similar problem with its large space lacking atmosphere, and its TV picture being shit, but... the staff were good, and the drink - at least on happy hour - was very, very cheap. 

I encountered this place in a receptive mood, when, after a gruelling and vexing few days, I suddenly felt like I needed to get off my face as quickly as possible, and not have to spend very much money doing it. When you find a place that will conspire with you in your self-destruction at a time like that, you get the warm fuzzies for it, however lacking it may be in every other kind of positive quality.

Forgive me if I seem to be too harsh on poor old Shanghai. I can well imagine having an equally shit time in Beijing if I came here as a stranger, not knowing where the handful of good bars are. In fact, I very often have had equally shit times here, especially out around Sanlitun.

So, sorry, Shanghai. I did at least find a few glimmers of hope for you this time, a few places that I'm actually curious to check out further on a return visit - something I'd failed to do in several previous visits to the city. Maybe Shanghai is slowly becoming LESS SHIT, just as Beijing is becoming MORE SHIT; and perhaps Shanghai's bar scene will be better than Beijing's before very long. Now, there's a depressing thought - at least, if you live in Beijing.

Toronto locals

The other day, I was reflecting for a moment - for reasons which now escape me - on the time I spent in Toronto about 15 years ago, working as a legal intern.

My scholarship programme provided quite a nice apartment for me, down near the waterfront on Queen's Quay. And I had a bar in my building. One of the strangest bars I have ever encountered - the Purple Pepper, a bar chiefly notable for its name: a deeply naff but undeniably very memorable alliteration. The Pepper, alas, didn't really feel much like a bar, since it was in a mall. Well, in the middle of a rank of shops along the ground floor of this block (the dry cleaners and the 24-hour supermarket and, especially, the great little takeaway pizza joint on the corner were all very welcome facilities to have within 5 minutes of home, but the Pepper was nothing but a disappointment). And hence it was a bit of a goldfish bowl, with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows along the front. At least it was quite cosily dim inside - after nightfall - and the 'purple' motif was quaintly underscored with a purple lava lamp behind the bar (I'm a big fan of lava lamps: I could watch them for hours!).

There was also a rather beautiful Eastern European (Croatian, possibly - I forget) girl who worked behind the bar there a few evenings a week. But even this was not enough to entice me into becoming a regular. The place lacked atmosphere. Nor, indeed, did it have very much custom. It was a little expensive. And the service - from the gorgeous Croatian, and everyone else - tended to be a bit offhand and surly. [It seems the Pepper is still going after all these years, but is now promoting itself more as a café/restaurant.]

That, I found, was a more widespread problem in Canada, or certainly in Toronto. Canadians have a rather gratingly self-righteous pride about their supposed superiority to their American neighbours: they seem to believe - with overbearing earnestness - that their country is better in every way than the USA, and that they are a fundamentally nicer people than the Americans. And I'm afraid it just ain't so - not in the country's service culture, anyway. Whereas the almost ubiquitous "Have a nice day!" attitude you find in America usually seems genuine, or at least well faked, in Canada serving staff mostly seem as if they are just going through the motions. There's no perkiness, no breeziness, no friendliness. It wasn't just in the Pepper, but every bar I went in during that year in Toronto (and a fair few in other places I visited, too: Montreal, Ottawa/Hull, Quebec City, Edmonton, Vancouver). Even worse, bar staff there used to aggressively demand their tips, rather than just accepting that tipping was ultimately a matter for the customer's discretion. In America, I don't mind tipping, and tipping heavily - because bar staff give value: they're pleasant and friendly to you, they make conversation if you're on your own, they introduce you to other people at the bar; they'll quite often give you a complimentary drink every once in a while; and they almost invariably slice a big chunk off your tab at the end of the evening, if you've been a good customer. In Canada, they give you your drink, and ask for a tip. That's it. No smile, no chit-chat, nada. I soon grew to hate going to bars in Canada: it was more expensive than in the States, and not nearly as much fun.

Insofar as I did have a local in Toronto (the severe winters are a serious deterrent to going out; and I was away travelling a lot, anyway), I came to favour the Acme Bar & Grill, just around the corner. It was about a 10-minute walk away, but that's no bad thing. (A 'local' can be too local. There's not really any extra convenience in having a favourite bar only 2 minutes away rather than 5 or 10 - and 'convenience' is overrated anyway! - but the reduction in daily exercise can become significant.) Of course, it was the Wile E. Coyote reference that initially attracted me. And it did seem like a very promising venue: long, narrow, essentially windowless - nice and dark, lots of wood; almost the paradigm of the perfect (North) American bar. It had a pretty decent food menu too. Again, it was the frosty demeanour of the staff that let it down. If this place had been over the border in Michigan, I'm sure I would have enrolled it amongst my favourite bars of all time; but my experiences here were always undercut by irritation and disappointment with the service. [I learn that the Acme was relaunched as the more British-sounding Duke of Argyle in the early Noughties, and closed altogether a few years ago, when the area was redeveloped. I would like to summon up a little wistful regret, but I find myself unable to.]

Perverse and bizarre as it may seem, my 'local' during that year became the wonderful T. Hogan's - some 300 miles away in Philadelphia!

That's how much Canada's bars SUCKED.

What kind of probe?

Oh, that's all right, then.

I can't think how this can have escaped my attention for so long, but... it wasn't until I visited Guizhou (way down in the far south-west of China) a few weeks ago that I discovered that Yanjing, Beijing's local beer, is an official sponsor of the Chinese effort to reach the Moon.

Does this mean astronauts will be taking beer on the spaceship with them???

Chinese hotel bars

I stayed in five different hotels during my recent three-week jaunt around China, and hung out in the lobbies of a couple more. I thought this experience might furnish a post or two about the experience of getting a drink - or trying to - in a Chinese hotel.

But, um, not really, no. Most Chinese hotels don't have a bar at all - or nothing that really passes muster as one. In the lower-tier cities, at any rate, even Western hotel chains are geared pretty much exclusively towards the Chinese business traveller. Thus, the facilities they provide will almost always include a karaoke lounge (often a synonym for 'brothel'), often a teahouse (ditto), and occasionally a spa (ditto). But no bar, as such. Western drinking culture still hasn't really caught on that much here, certainly not out in the sticks.

The Ramada Plaza in Guiyang, for example, has only a coffee shop (and a spectacularly awful one, at that); no bar.

The Crown Plaza in Kaili, however, does have what purports to be a bar. I didn't see anyone using it in the three days I was there - apart from a couple of Chinese guests who favoured it as a smoking lounge, but didn't appear to make any purchases. When I asked the two staff behind the counter for a menu, they gawped at me in amazement. As well they might - there weren't enough options to warrant having a menu. A few soft drinks, and a solitary beer (Pearl River from Guangzhou - fairly tasteless, and absurdly overpriced). No spirits - not even Chinese baijiu. I don't think this counts as a bar; more like a convenience store with a handful of armchairs.

In only one of the hotels I visited on this trip was I actually able to get a beer. It was a huge and severely underused place out in the wilds of Guizhou. I suspect it aims for the conference and wedding banquet trade, but doesn't market itself very effectively and is completely deserted most of the time. Its karaoke facilities took up most of the second floor, but they were - mercifully - not in use; and the reception area for this, apart from a vague musty smell, was a not unpromising bar. Well, it had a bar, for one thing, a wood-topped counter at a nice height for leaning; that's a good start! And it was dimly lit, quite cosy. There was even a member of staff on duty who was aware that it was his job to sell drinks to people - although he might not often have been called upon to do so. Once again, there were no spirits. But there were two types of beer on offer, and they weren't outrageously expensive. Unfortunately, there were none in the fridge, so the barman had to take one from a pyramid display on the glass shelving behind him. He hadn't served a drink in so long that he had forgotten where the bottle-opener was kept; so - after a long, futile search - I persuaded him to accept a loan of mine. And when I finally tasted the beer, I discovered - of course! - that it must have been some years past its sell-by date and was absolutely vile.

But at least I had managed to buy a beer in a Chinese hotel. That is quite a challenge.

Bon mot for the week

"I'll stick to gin. Champagne is just ginger ale that knows someone."

Benjamin Franklin 'Hawkeye' Pearce (as played by Alan Alda) in M.A.S.H.

He was, if I recall, turning down the offer of a drink from his snobbish tent-mate Charles Winchester (David Ogden Stiers). I was reminded of this line when in New York a few months ago (it was on a chalkboard outside a bar), and it once more struck a powerful chord with me. Does anyone really like champagne? Really?? I think we have come to like the rituals of celebration associated with it, that it is an emblem of success and happiness. Many people are also no doubt seduced by the cachet of exclusivity: it's too bloody expensive for the hoipolloi. But, honestly, does anyone like it all that much for itself? Or do you find yourself, like me, sucking down one or two glasses as hastily as possible - just for appearances' sake, just because it's free... - and then looking forward to a real drink?

I am no longer a big fan of wine, and I don't much care for bubbles in a drink (I make an exception for tonic water), and I hate snobbery and affectation, and the brainwashing of branding; so, I have a low susceptibility to champagne. But even within this unappealing category of drinks, I think many cheap sparkling wines taste much pleasanter.

Champagne is just a big French scam! Give me a bottle of Cava any day.

The Top Five Unusual Places I Have Drunk

Since I am away travelling for most of this month, I thought it would be appropriate to review a few memories of some of my more exotic drinking adventures. I think I've visited 18 countries outside of my native England. And I have drunk in nearly all, no, all of them. And in many of them, I have drunk some rather strange things in rather odd circumstances.

Here then is a list of...

My Top Five unusual places to have a drink

5)  An outhouse masquerading as a Jamaican beach

OK, a little bit of a cheat this one - not really abroad at all; just a grotty semi-detached house in East London. I've already written about this, in one of my earliest posts on here, nearly 6 years ago. When I was at Bar School in London, I shared a house with the aptly nicknamed Mad Irish Dave - like me, an enthusiastic drinker. One Sunday afternoon, bored out of our minds, we improvised a 'Jamaican Beach Party' - for just the two of us - in the 'Blue Room', a narrow little extension on the house that our landlord used mainly for storing his garden tools. It was cold and pokey, but it was painted in a very restful shade of blue; so we hauled our living room sofa in there, and pinned a Jamaican Tourist Board advertisement for Negril Beach in the middle of the blue wall opposite. Then we laid in stocks of rum and ganja, pooled our handful of reggae tapes... and proceeded to get absolutely blitzed for about 8 or 10 hours.

4)  The veranda of a rock star's bungalow

Yes, a real live rock star. Not that I ever met him. Which might be just as well, given that I had never heard of him, or his band. They'd had one very big, poppy sort of hit in the late 1960s (dimly familiar to me, but I'd had no idea who was playing it; still turns up regularly on Best of the Sixties compilations), and had been able to retire on the proceeds. Not many musicians seem to have the self-restraint to decide that they've made enough money, and just give up like that. This guy, one of the guitarists, I think, had sunk most of his money into a small coffee plantation on the upper slopes of the Blue Mountains in Jamaica. He'd become friendly with an old college buddy of mine (occasional haunter of these comment threads, The Mothman) who was studying means of controlling an insect pest that ate the leaves of the coffee plants, and let him stay in his bungalow high up the mountain whenever he was doing fieldwork up there. I went to visit The Mothman for a couple of weeks after finishing university, and got to spend a night or two in the guitarist's bungalow. Only a small place, but an absolutely gorgeous location - the kind of place where you could lean out of a window to pick fresh fruit for breakfast - and a gorgeous view, looking down on the lights of Kingston far below. We got a bit mashed up on the local rum one night...

3)  The cabin of a Yangtze river cruiser

One of my favourite memories of my first visit to China in the '90s. I was going upriver through the famous Three Gorges (the huge dam project at Yichang was just nearing completion, but they wouldn't start filling the reservoir for another year or two; so, this was one of the last chances to enjoy a lot of the scenery in the gorges before it was flooded) on a mid-price cruise ship - not quite the grottiest possible (not the like the boat I came back downstream on, which was nothing but a tramp steamer), but a long way short of the swanky affairs that the better-off Chinese and nearly all foreigners favoured; I was the only laowai on this boat, and hence something of an instant celebrity. One day, I got chatting to a trio of young men who invited me back to their cabin for a drink. I was staying in the second cheapest class of accommodation - bunk beds, sharing with a noisy Chinese family; but at least there was a little bit of space, and a small TV on the wall. These lads were staying in the cheapest class - two double bunk-beds crammed into such a small space that there was almost no standing room; but at least there were only three of them in a four-berth cabin. We couldn't understand each other much (my Chinese was better then than it is now, but not much), but we mugged and smiled our way through some general pleasantries about international goodwill. One of them, I gathered, had just got out of the army - possibly invalided out after an accident (he showed me an horrendous scar on his upper arm, a large piece of it missing; but it didn't seem very new, and I couldn't make out how it had happened) - and the others were two old schoolfriends who'd come to escort him the last part of the way home. We spent a pleasant hour or two drinking beer and baijiu.

2)  The roof of a train

There's only one rail line in Jamaica, winding through the mountainous interior of the island between the capital, Kingston, on the south coast, and the main tourist centre, Montego Bay, on the north coast. It's a single track, with a passing place at the mid-point, in the heart of the jungle high up in the mountains. One train sets out from each end once or twice a day, and whichever reaches the passing place first has to stop and wait... and wait, and wait. They're not big on keeping schedules, the Jamaicans. No, they're more of a party people. And it's a party train. Vendors pass constantly through the carriages selling bottles of the local Red Stripe beer (very palatable and deceptively strong) which they somehow manage to keep refrigerated. And if the weather's nice - which it mostly is - a lot of people head up on to the roofs of the carriages to get some fresh air. It's relatively safe, since the train only moves very slowly. But it does lurch alarmingly from side to side on occasion; and I wouldn't have wanted to be up there after drinking a lot of beers!

But in the top spot, it must surely be...

1)  A prison cell

I spent a month or so in Fiji when I was backpacking around the world in '94. I grew rather tired of the main island, Viti Levu, which is rather too intensively geared toward the fleecing of tourists, and is overrun with Australians. But towards the end of my stay, I took a boat across to the second island of Levuka (site of the British colonial capital) for a few days, and found that a much more laidback and amenable sort of place. As I mentioned a few weeks back, I had become rather partial to kava, the traditional ceremonial drink of the South Sea islands (it's made from the ground-up root of a plant of the pepper family; it looks a bit offputting - like a muddy puddle - and has a slightly chalky, gritty mouth-feel; but it's quite pleasant to drink, with a mild aniseedy flavour, and a prickly, gently numbing effect in the mouth; and it's very, very relaxing), and was always keen to find somewhere to partake. Asking at my hotel if they knew where I might be able to drink kava, I was told to try the police station. It had seemed as though it might have been a joke, but I didn't see any harm in checking it out. The two young Brits who'd latched on to me during the boat crossing earlier that day were extremely wary about the idea (perhaps having had unpleasant experiences with police stations back home), but I persuaded them to accompany me. And sure enough, the three coppers there - with little or no work to do in such a tiny and well-behaved town - were brewing up almost every night, and were more than happy to welcome us to join them. We had to move into one of the holding cells, though, to keep out of sight in case anyone should come in to report some rustic misdemeanour or other. They told us that they would probably mix another bowl later, if we wanted to keep going all night, but the first one kept us merry until getting on for midnight, and that seemed good enough. It had been a splendid evening, full of memorable conversation (the desk sergeant's tales of the time he spent in Cambodia with a UN peacekeeping force probably deserve a post of their own at some point; he claimed to have been held hostage by the Khmer Rouge). I worry that this experience may have created in me some unduly positive associations with police cells.

Useful words

A few weeks back, I did a post on here about the enigmatic Russian word razbliuto (in fact, it is non-existent, a pop culture delusion). That had been prompted by a post a little before on my other blog, Froogville, about various unusual words in other languages, and the intriguing concepts associated with them, that I'd discovered in recent online noodlings.

One of the most interesting of my sources for these posts was this item (on the TED website) in which a conference of translators nominated their 21 favourite 'hard to translate' words.

On this list there were, for me, a couple of absolute standouts, words which I'd like to adopt into regular English usage:

sobremesa  -  the Spanish for the time after a meal spent enjoying conversation with the people you've just eaten with

merak  -  the Serbian for the enjoyment of simple pleasures like feasting and merrymaking

I am, of course, also fond of the Irish term craic, a somewhat nebulous concept of 'good times' that can be applied simply to entertaining conversation or more broadly to a pleasant evening out... or to improbable drunken adventures. The Irish being the Irish, the pub is most often the context and alcohol and/or music are almost invariably key accompanying elements; but its essence is simply good companionship. However, I learn from Wikipedia that the expression was originally English (or Scots English, anyway?), and only fairly recently adopted into Irish usage (mid-20th century). Moreover, the now common spelling is very new, and an affected Gaelicization; the word was originally just 'crack'. And this spelling is perhaps now even more entrenched in English usage than in Irish, as we have readily convinced ourselves that it is a uniquely Irish word and concept, and thus surely ought to have a Gaelic spelling. Oh well. Print the legend, I say. I think the word has acquired new and distinctively Irish connotations, and the transformation of the spelling is an appropriate reflection of that.

HBH 306

Sea breeze, moorland walks;

Whisky's taste plays a slideshow

Of childhood memories.

I realised the other day - perhaps for the first time - that whisky's (good Scotch single malt's) powerful hold over me may have much to do with the nostalgic resonances conjured by its rich flavours, and even more especially by its complex aromas. Islay whiskies, in particular, with their savour of peat and brine, can take me back to holidays of 35 or 40 years ago.

[Yes, I was allowing myself one of my exceptions.]

If they'd asked me...

I see The Beijinger magazine has started a new feature this month called 'A Drink With...', quizzing some notable on their personal drinking history. (Well, OK, I just noticed it for the first time this month. But I've been away for a while. And I don't read The Beijinger very often any more. Maybe it's been going a while.) This month's subject was Matthew Niederhauser, a young photographer noted for his portraits of Beijing's rock musicians.

I don't suppose they're ever likely to ask me (since I've spent the last ten years assiduously protecting my anonymity!), so I thought I'd borrow the format for a quick post of my own here.

A Drink With... Froog

Who would you most like to get drunk with?

Well, my friends, naturally. The Choirboy, foremost amongst those available to me in Beijing; and my old teaching buddy The Arts Entrepreneur, the most dearly missed of my drinking companions back in the UK.

However, the question is angling for a celebrity nomination (living or dead), so..... I did once have a drink with seminal 'Unsuitable Role Model' Jeffrey Bernard - so I don't think I can cite him for this. If I had a time machine, I think the drinker who has most fascinated me, and was most likely to be erudite and witty company, would be the Irish writer Brian O'Nolan. Amongst folks still with us, I'd like to say Tom Waits, but he renounced booze a couple of decades ago. I believe the Irish musician Jem Finer still tipples, though, and I bet he'd be excellent company on a wee bar crawl. I'd be interested to meet Paul Auster too, one of the few contemporary writers I really admire (not sure if or how much he drinks, but it seems likely he's not averse to the occasional snifter).

If you could only imbibe one drink for the rest of your life, what would it be?

I am reminded of a very wise joke I heard in early childhood: A group of newly deceased souls are given a choice on admission into the afterlife to nominate the food they'd most like to be able to eat for all eternity. Thinking they are about to enter Heaven, they all eagerly pick their favourite things... only to discover that having to eat the same thing all the time soon becomes HELL.

It would be a big mistake here to choose the drink you like most (probably, for me, single malt Scotch). Things you enjoy most powerfully tend also to pall the soonest, if you have no change from them. And spirits and cocktails are too scouring to the throat (and the liver!), too dehydrating to drink all the time. You have to pick something you're not going to tire of. That, for me, would be a beer of some kind - probably Guinness.

How old were you when you started drinking?

Well, I didn't start going into bars on my own that often until my last year of high school, when I was 17; but I had been doing so intermittently for a year or two prior to that. My parents had allowed me to drink with them in pubs (in a very modest way: shandy, rum'n'coke), and at home during the Christmas fortnight, from about the age of 11 or 12. The first time I was sick from drink, I think I was in fact only about 10 (accompanying my Dad on his Skittles Night, and being allowed a couple of bottles of Stella - far too much for my untrained tolerance!). However, the first time I was drunk - though happily so, and without being too seriously ill - was a little earlier even than that. My eccentric German grandmother got in the habit of giving me a flagon (2.5 litres, I think) of cider as a birthday present every year from the time I was about 8. Usually it was consumed as very weak cider shandy over the course of a few weeks. But in the second or third year she made this gift, my parents left me in the care of my elder brother for an evening, he was delinquent in his supervisory duties, and I quaffed most of the jug - well, whatever was left in it - in just a few hours. I was high as a kite, but, as far as I remember, I was not actually sick. That might have been a dangerously positive early experience of booze for me!!

Tell us about the first time you got drunk.

See answer above.

Tell us about the last time you were drunk.

The last time I was really drunk - in a doing embarrassing things and then forgetting them kind of way - was on my birthday last year. When I was a student, I used to get that drunk 3 or 4 times a week. In my mature years, it has lapsed to a few times a year, at most.

What's the dumbest thing you've done while drunk?

During my student years, I was walking home alone one night, very drunk (after a free tasting of port, sherry and madeira; I was on the Wines & Spirits Committee of the Oxford Union, and we'd just introduced a new range of fortified wines to be sold under the Union's own label, so this had been a small private party to commemorate the event - with unlimited supply), and I paused to collect an abandoned shopping trolley. I protest that I was motivated by public-spiritedness, since the Sainsbury's it came from was only a few hundred yards up the road and I was intending to return it. However, I started racing with it (against myself, just for the thrill of speed!), ran it against a kerb when I was running flat out, and was launched over the top of it - flying for a good 10ft or 15ft before landing face-first on a cement paving stone. It was only the softening effect of so much drink that prevented me from suffering a serious injury, although I suspect I gave myself quite a bad concussion.

What's your golden rule of drinking?

Know your limits. It's supposed to be fun, not self-harming.

Where's the dumbest place you've gone drinking?

Probably a rather dingy back alley in a small town in Fiji. I was drinking kava, the local 'herbal tea' (very mildly narcotic), rather than booze. I'd developed a taste for it, but was frustrated that there were few opportunities to indulge (it's an almost nightly ritual out in the villages, but it doesn't happen so much in the towns; or, if it does, it's rather hidden). I'd got chatting with this gaggle of local ne'er-do-wells in a bar about this, and they had invited me to join them for an impromptu kava session out on the street. Three of them were harmless old soaks, but there was a younger hanger-on who had a disturbing psychotic intensity about him. When I noticed that he was carrying a monkey-wrench wrapped up in a plastic carrier bag, I decided to bug out of there before I got myself mugged.

Could you organise a piss-up in a brewery?

Ah, that's a rather unfair idiom. In fact, organising a piss-up in a brewery is HARD, because it's a place of work; and although there's beer all around you, very often there's nary a drop of it available to drink. The Yanjing Brewery in Beijing has a very comfortably appointed bar (a bit too comfy for my taste: rather like the UK's dreaded 'saloon bars' - all beige carpet and upholstered seats) at the end of its visitors' tour. I have often thought of dragging the lads out there for a session.... Hmm, now there's an idea.

What's your favourite place to go drinking?

In Beijing, of course, it is well documented that I spend most of my leisure hours in the most excellent 12 Square Metres bar... and/or at (my older, and rather deeper love) The Pool Bar. However, my absolute favourite place to drink in Beijing is any grotty streetside restaurant where you can keep ordering chuanr and 3-kuai beers until 3am or 4am.

Oh, Fate, you tease!

Just when I am not drinking (beer, for a month) and not really eating very much either (possibly a long-term regime, since I find my weight is not falling nearly as quickly as I'd hoped), there's a new opening in my 'hood that appears to be exactly what I have been wishing for all these many years (when I was eating and drinking without restraint!): somewhere in the Gulou area that does decent Western snack food to take away, and at very reasonable prices.

It appears to be run by a couple of Chinese guys who speak very little English, and probably found their menu online somewhere; but from what I've seen so far, they are making the food quite well. Their burgers are all either 38 or 42rmb, which makes them cheaper than just about anywhere else in town these days, barely half the price of places like Let's Burger and Blue Frog, with which they compare not too badly (the toppings aren't as generous, and the side of fries is positively niggardly; but the meat and the bun are pretty darned good). They have a limited but enticing selection of soups, salads and sandwiches as well; and a bowl of chilli, which I think I'll be trying next time.

Ah, but the real draw is the drinks: fresh fruit smoothies or homemade lemonade by the pitcher for only about 15 or 18rmb (my memory lets me down on matters of detail, now that I am not reinforcing it regularly with alcohol); canned soft drinks are only 8rmb; stubbies of Tsingtao are only 10 or 12rmb. Ah, but who would drink crappy old Tsingtao anyway? They have an interesting range of imported beers at the cheapest prices to be found anywhere in town: only a few items on their beer list are as much as 25 or 30 rmb; bottles of Sam Adams or Saranac Ale are only 20rmb, and they're practically giving Stella away at 16rmb.

Honestly, IF I were drinking beer now, I would be hitting this place up almost every night.

The trouble is, they've got very little room for people to eat in, much less to hang around drinking. They've adapted a narrow little shop space, probably barely 25 sq m in total, and nearly two-thirds of that taken up by the galley and serving counter.

Also, I imagine they'll realise before too long that they've made a mistake with their pricing (Gulou hipsters will pay 15 or 20% more for the food, and probably at least 50% more for the drinks) and put everything up.

Until then, I think I'm going to try to keep this place MY SECRET for a while.

HBH 305

An old hunger rises:

Desire for oblivion, 

Escape from endless thought.

I think I have now almost completely - no, completely - suppressed the urge to drink, the habituation to think of drinking as a natural or necessary accompaniment to certain activities (like being awake [no, I jest!]). But this does not preclude the occasional resurgence of the urge to be drunk. There's only a circumstantial connection between the two. There are times when I think that if there were a pill I could (safely) take to get off my face, I'd gratefully swallow one. And I had that feeling very strongly last night, when a sudden and deep depression flooded over me.

I have long recognised that my one potential 'problem' with drinking (not an actual problem, I don't think, because I'm well aware of it, and very much on top of it) is its relationship to my depressions. 

I have been ragingly bi-polar since my early teens (if not before: we're less aware of, and so remember less keenly, mood-swings and tantrums when we're very young). And since my late teens or early twenties, I have developed the habit of using alcohol to manage the experience. 

The thing is, I realised quite early on that I don't entirely dislike my depressions. They are a central part of my experience of the world, they feel comfortable and familiar to me; I actually miss them when I haven't had one for a while. Not only does the rest of life seem rosier by comparison (a great consolation to try to focus on if negative feelings at the bottom of the depressive trough start to seem too overwhelming), but sensations and emotions are somehow more vivid, more intense during a depressive episode, and that is something I find stimulating, even pleasurable (although one's thoughts and feelings tend to be directed into very dark corners of the soul when depressed, so it's an unconventional - perhaps perverse - sort of pleasure, inextricably mingled with a profound distress).

For me, what's bad about depression is not the simple fact of it happening at all, but its occasional propensity to stick around for an extended period: I hate the sense of being trapped at the bottom of the trough, unsure of when or how I'm going to get out. I once took a course of SSRIs (not for depression, for a physical ailment; but I knew they were supposed to have a psychotropic impact as well, so I was curious to see how they would affect my depression, which I had been suffering from particularly badly of late), and I absolutely hated what they did to me: they almost completely flattened out my variations in mood, so that I felt stuck in exactly the same state all the time. I suppose people who 'suffer' from depression, without any of the ameliorating thrill of enhanced awareness that I experience, will be grateful to escape from its pit like this, and will interpret their new stable mood state as 'happy', or at least as an acceptable average level of contentment. And perhaps it works better for people who don't run to the bi-polar extremes, who don't balance out their depressions with corresponding spells of exhilaration and euphoria - people who are only gauging the new 'steady state' against the worst sensations they have known, not the best. For me, it was horrendous: I experienced the 'steady state' as being slightly, but significantly, below a reasonable median level; I felt mildly depressed - permanently. But without the heightened sensitivity that usually made depression tolerable for me; and, crucially, without any sense of when I might ever escape from this feeling, without any sense of control over whether I might be able to escape. I missed the emotional rollercoaster. And I missed the sense I usually have that the rollercoaster is not entirely outside of my control, that I can influence how fast I progress through its various stages.

That's where the booze comes in. I use it to ride the rollercoaster. There are other stimuli I can use as well to speed up the ride: cannabis (very occasionally), music (almost invariably - Pink Floyd and The Pogues have probably accompanied me on the ride even more often than whisky has), poetry, certain films, or just reflecting on particularly unhappy experiences in my life. But mostly I've relied on getting myself blind drunk. If I just leave a depression to run its course, it can linger for two or three days, sometimes even a week or more. If I blitz myself with alcohol, it accelerates the whole process; I can be fairly confident that it's going to shoot me out the other side very quickly, and that I'll at least be on the up-slope, if not approaching another euphoric peak, within 24 hours or so. Unfortunately.... the depth of the pit, and the speed of plummeting into it, may also be exaggerated. It seems a price worth paying in order to not be stuck at the bottom too long.

I know many people might see that as a rationalisation of addiction. But I sincerely believe I am not an addictive personality - rather the reverse, if such a thing is possible! If I do have an addiction, it is to depression itself; or to the - I know, possibly unduly romanticized - conception I have of it as a beneficial workout for the psyche, emotionally cathartic and liberating to the imagination. But I'm absolutely confident I don't have any kind of addiction to alcohol.

I have tried both ways of dealing with my depressions, making use of drink and abstaining from it. I prefer using drink, and haven't encountered any negative side-effects from so doing (such as tendency to relapse into depression more quickly, or irritability or loss of concentration... or anything). But, just to be on the safe side, I don't allow it to become my invariable policy; I make a point of enduring some of my depressions without alcohol.

Last night, though? Well, I think I'll keep that to myself, thank you. 

At least I'm feeling rather better today.

Excuses

Now that my great run of birthdays/anniversaries/leaving parties/housewarmings is finally over, I had been intending to embark in earnest upon an extended spell of abstinence TODAY.

But Wikipedia informs me that today is Independence Day for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. And it's also Battle of Britain Day back home in the UK (although I can't ever recall there being any special celebrations to mark this event; it tends to pass completely unnoticed, which is a bit of a shame).

And tomorrow is Mexican Independence Day - which seems like an irresistible pretext to get busy with the tequila.

Maybe I'll give up drinking on Monday...

"Sorry, old man. Not following your banter."

Before I decided to illustrate this post with the classic Python skit, I was browsing the Web for some Battle of Britain pictures and turned up a number of interesting sites: Battle of Britain Beacon, The Spitfire Site, Fighter Pilot University, and Barry Weekley Art. Well worth checking out.

HBH 301

Addiction is easy

To break; but habits are hard -

The core of our lives.

I don't think I've ever felt a compulsion to drink, nor have I suffered any physiological or psychological dependence on alcohol. In fact, at the moment, the desire to not drink is very strong in me, far stronger than any 'inner urge' in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, I just don't really have anything else to do with my life.