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.

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.

Top Five Dive Bars in Cambodia (my new favourite hangouts)

15th NOVEMBER 2017

A little over a year on from my first post about my new life in Cambodia, I find - alas! - that all the bars I celebrated in that are now closed, or.... well, considerably diminished in my regard for them.

Indo Bar, a beguilingly English-pub-like little spot in the southern town of Kampot, may in fact have closed even before I put that post up; I discovered its recent demise on my next visit down there just a few weeks later (I was even more disappointed that its sister enterprise, the Curry House, had likewise closed, leaving the town without any really decent Indian food).

Picasso in Siem Reap I've been going off as well. Vivacious Aussie bar manager Sam was one of its main points of appeal, and she's moved on now. The cocktails there were never much good, really, although brutally effective; but now, alas, they seem to be tainted by the tide of fake booze that has broken over the city in the last year or two: the last few times I've drunk the spirits there, it's made me ill.... and there's only one thing that causes that, I'm afraid. Also, I've had a run of bad experiences with obnoxious punters there recently. So, it's dropped off my 'must visit' list, although I've been spending more and more time in Siem Reap this year. I still like its ambience, and the sociability of the place, but - there's not much that I actually want to drink there.

I have a similar problem with Here Be Dragons in Battambang, where I now live (the city, that is, not the bar!). It's still a very inviting little bar, but.... well, draft beer is almost never any good in this country (and I'm convinced they've switched over from the sort-of-OK Cambodia to the gassy pish of Anchor; that might be a false memory, but it contributes forcefully to my rising disenchantment with the place), so I used to drink mostly Beer Lao there - of which they had, for a time, both the stout and regular strong lager varieties, and their new premium offering, Beer Lao Gold, with its stimulating burst of hoppiness on the nose. There have been some problems with the distributor for these Lao brands, though, and I think they now only have the lager.... perhaps not even that. And no decent local beer either (no Cambodia in cans - why not??). And their novelty cocktails are invariably way too sweet for my taste. So, there's absolutely nothing for me to drink there any more..... um, except spirits, I suppose. In this less attractive drink environment, I find myself more and more pissed off by their too-high bar and uncomfortable, wonky bar stools - things which had previously been only mild irritations to me. I confess also that I'd had a major man-crush on Dave Howard, the brilliant young manager they had last year (my farewell binge with him in Phnom Penh just before he flew back to England was probably the most extreme session I've had in this country!). I like their new staff well enough, but there's just not the magic there was last year. (Also, of course, when I was just a visitor in this town, I always used to stay at The Dragons; so, it was by default my first and last stop every day. Now that it's no longer 'home' - nor even, most of the time, 'on the way home' - I don't have much incentive to drop in there.)

And worst of all, Battambang's richest gem, the Riverside Balcony Bar - the loveliest venue in the whole country, though just a little bit too 'fancy' to be an habitual three-times-a-week type of haunt - has just been forced to close (and while I was out of town, dammit, at the end of October). The owner of the property had died suddenly a few months ago; so, there's probably now some sort of family dispute over what to do with the property (redevelop it, sell it, reclaim it as a family home, tout it as a commercial space again - but at a much higher rent??), and perhaps even some uncertainty as to who the new owner actually is. I had thought Frazer and Frankie, the charming young couple who've made this place into such a beloved institution in the town over the past two years, had another year on their lease; but it seems not. They'd got a bit bored with the place, and were looking to move on anyway. But they had been hoping to get an extension for at least one more year, so that they could sell the bar as a going concern; and that hasn't worked out - so, the place is suddenly derelict. Unbearably sad.

At least dear old Oh Neil's (also in Kampot) is still there, and still as great as it ever was.... although it's gone through some rough patches in the last year or so (being without a kitchen for long periods, and giving up on daytime opening - factors which combined to rob us of Neil's 'breakfast roll', one of my very favourite guilty indulgences: an entire cooked breakfast somehow crammed inside a baguette!), and I gather it is unlikely to survive beyond the end of its current lease.

So, where have I been drinking over this last year or so, as these early favourites faltered and fell?? These are my newer loves - all of them predictably divey!

Froog's New Top Five Favourite Bars in Cambodia

5)  The Roadhouse Saloon (Siem Reap)
Or 'Anna's Place', as I like to think of it. The likeable Khmer landlady is coy as to how this bar came about, where the concept came from. It is such an authentic rendition of a classic American bar (subdued lighting, stone-topped bar, classic advertisements and b&w photos of dead rock stars on the walls) that I am inclined to think that there must have been a foreign partner involved at some point; but she won't be drawn on that, and appears to be in sole charge now. Her house special gin & tonic (a huge measure, with lots of lime juice, served in a brandy balloon) has become my favourite brain-bludgeoner this past year. Again, alas, as with so many of my original picks above, there's not much on offer in the way of beers - which stops this place being more than an occasional indulgence for me. Its other major drawbacks are irregular opening and a complete dearth of customers most of the time. While I have much enjoyed being able to introduce a couple of visiting friends to its charms in recent months, it has been completely deserted just about every other time I've looked in - which hasn't tempted me to stay. Perhaps I've just been unlucky; Anna assures me she's had a number of spectacular nights where large gaggles of visitors kept her up until the wee small hours. This, it seems, is her common excuse for not always opening very early, or at all - she's recovering from one of her big nights (exhausted? hungover? feeling that she's made her money for the week??). With a better clientele (it's got good potential, I think, as it enjoys a very prominent location - on the big roundabout at the start of 7 Makara Street, directly opposite the horrendous Hard Rock Café), and a more varied range of drinks, this could become my favourite bar in the country.... or at the northern end of it, anyway.

4)  Mekong Crossing  (Kampong Cham)
The Mekong Crossing is a barebones little guesthouse that I've often stayed at (well, two out of three times so far) in the quaint provincial capital of Kampong Cham. It's got a great corner location, right opposite the riverfront promenade, with some nice sidewalk seating (and also a narrow wraparound balcony on the first floor, which is scarcely used), and some of the keenest drinks prices I've found anywhere in the country. The food, unfortunately, is not up to much (I prefer the nearby Moon River for that). But they have a really friendly group of staff in there; and I've developed a huge affection for the place in just a few brief visits. (Indeed, Kampong Cham is rapidly becoming my favourite place in the country - largely because it has just about zero foreigners [only a handful of Western tourists at any given time, and it's fairly easy to ignore them; no resident expats that I've ever seen!]. Sometimes, I just get really fed up of the kind of Westerner that predominates here; and KC - just a few hours out of Phnom Penh on a bus - is an excellent place to get away from them.)

3)  Kampot Hilton  (Kampot)
I don't love the name: the reminiscence with the 'Hanoi Hilton' doesn't conjure positive associations (nor, indeed, does any reminder of the ghastly Paris Hilton); I fear the Hilton Hotel chain might sue one day; and, well, it somehow just doesn't sound like a bar to me. But a bar it is, and a very good one. A very new one, too: only open two or three months at this point, I believe. It was always an appealing space, and a promising location (facing the small grassy square just inland from the 'Old Market' on the riverfront); but with its previous incarnation, a would-be New-Orleans-y bar called NOLA... well, that had its moments, but the tenant had got depressed by some bad experiences in her business and personal life, and had rather obviously given up interest in the venture.... It was slowly and painfully dying on its feet over the last year or two. Its revamp - under a boisterous Aussie biker couple, Jono and Ricky - is long overdue, and seems likely to prosper. The newcomers are putting a lot of effort into special events, including some kind of promotion involving cheap drinks or prize draws every night of the week (and putting on a rather awesome brunch buffet for Melbourne Cup Day while I was visiting recently). The major draw, though, is Ricky's pub grub, which is really very impressive (she apparently dumps a full Bloody Mary into every serving of her excellent chilli - which is an inspired innovation, to be sure, although I worry what it does to her profit margin!!). I was in there very nearly every night of a recent two-week stay: it's not often that happens with me.

2)  Elly's  (Phnom Penh)
Just before I grew terminally disenchanted with Phnom Penh and quit at the beginning of this year, I had found myself becoming a bit of a regular at this newly opened bar down in the Russian Market district, at the far southern end of the city (I'd only go once or twice a week; but, given that it's nearly five miles away from where I lived, and I'd usually walk the whole way, there and back, it must have had quite a draw for me...!). It's a classic dive: dark, narrow, barebones, grungy.... cheap. But that's obviously a winning formula for many folks, not just me: this is the only bar I've found in the capital that has established an enthusiastic regular clientele (on Fridays, in particular, it would get pretty heaved out by shortly after 6pm). At first, it was a very Aussie bar (the owner appeared to be an amiable young bloke called Clinton, getting occasional help from his old dad, Don), and that was no bad thing: they do the dive bar well, the Aussies. But when Clinton moved on to richer pastures overseas (and Don also vanished back to Oz for quite a while) at the start of this year, the mysterious Elly - for whom the place had been named all along - stepped forward to take over (Don's Mrs, apparently: a feisty Filipina). The bar food menu (already good under Clinton, who had experience as a chef) underwent a dramatic makeover, going fully Filipino (there are a few other places in PP where you can sample this cuisine; but I doubt if they're anywhere near as good as this!): the occasional all-you-can-eat Pinoy Sunday brunches are particularly good (I'd often find myself the only white guy in the room, as the place had soon become a hub for the city's entire Filipino community during the daytime on the weekends - that's how good the food is!). There are, as ever, quite a few negative points: some of the 'regulars' are a bit obnoxious, all of them smoke an obscene amount, the music they play in there can be sometimes great but rather more often absolutely bloody terrible (I was unlucky enough to catch them on a Cambodian holiday the last time I visited: the usual 6pm crowd had been in all afternoon, chain-smoking, and getting especially obnoxious; they launched into a phase of cueing up electronic dance music on Youtube ['young' people - dontcha hate 'em??!!], which drove me from the bar in despair within minutes), and so on. Ah yes, and the place is romantically disastered for me: I had a brief but ultimately very unhappy affair with a gorgeous American woman I met in there just before Christmas last year. Yet still, despite all that, I am sure to go back there whenever I visit Phnom Penh....

And in the top spot this time, my new 'second home'.....

1)  Ganesha  (Battambang)

This charming little family-run guesthouse operates out of a couple of colonial-era shophouses in the heart of the old quarter of central Battambang. The German owner is a bombastic but mostly lovable old eccentric (German food features heavily on the menu; and the potato dishes - wedges, potato cakes, mash - are the best you'll find anywhere in the country), and his lovely Cambodian wife is my favourite person in the city, one of the nicest people I've met anywhere. The staff are great, too. The booze prices are very keen, and there's a better range of beers available than anywhere else in town: drinkable Cambodia on draft, Klang in cans (tastes about as nondescript as any other Asian lager, but it's a satisfying 1% stronger - hence, my tipple of choice!), and also the handle-with-care Barrley Black (a new super-strong 'stout' from the Cambodia beer people: there's nothing at all nice about it, and it induces hangovers-from-hell, but... it's 8.5% alcohol for only a dollar a can!!). They have a pretty good pool table too (and the owner and his two teenage kids are formidable players), which is, of course, a further insidious attraction for me. They've recently instituted a pool competition on Monday nights, which could become a fixture in my week (except that my mojo has gone walkabout this month; I'm now losing confidence that I'll even be able to give anyone a half-decent game, let alone win the damn tournament outright, before I head off on the road again in a few weeks). Nothing is perfect in this world: the bar is tiny (and often overrun with backpackers staying in the dorms upstairs), the only three stools available are uncomfortably tall,.... and they can't hook up the TV sound to play the commentary during big football games (aaarrgghh!). But despite these considerable demerits, Ganesha has wormed its way deep into my heart. If I'm going out drinking in Battambang (although I have given up for several extended periods since I moved here....), it's highly likely that this will be my main stop.... quite probably my only one.

Top Five Beijing bars I miss

I'm surprised I haven't got around to doing this list before. I really must do it now, since I'm shuttering the blog, and planning to move on from Beijing. In ten years of drinking here, there have only been a handful of bars that I developed a real fondness for; and - such is the way of this crazy city - most of them only lasted a year or so.

Froog's Top Five Defunct Beijing Bars

5)  Handsome Café

In around about 2004, this was the only bar I'd go into around Sanlitun. An awful name, but it had a good vibe: cheap'n'cheerful, with friendly owners. It lasted barely a year, I think. There's something jinxed about that space (the semi-basement below what is now Luga's Villa); despite its very central location, nothing in that building ever seems to prosper.

4)  Yugong Yishan (the original one)

I had a lot more work over on the east side of town in those days ('04-'07, I suppose), so I was quite often passing through the Sanlitun/Gongti area in the evenings mid-week, and whenever I was, I would invariably look in on the cosy YGYS to see if anything was going on. Even if there wasn't (Tuesdays were almost always dead), I'd stop to play a few games of pool with the barman.

3)  Room 101

Some readers might have expected this one to rank higher, since it was my principal resort through much of 2008. However, it was always struggling for direction (haphazard in its food offerings, its 'happy hour' promotions, its staging of live music, and other intermittent special events), and never looked likely to endure for long - particularly after Olly came on board in the early summer and convinced the other partners to try to make it more of a restaurant. The tiny stage in the corner was kind of fun. It had a beautiful little island bar - the only one I can remember in Beijing. It had a great music selection (much of it dictated by - and, indeed, donated by - me and my main drinking buddy of that year, Crazy Chris). And, for a while, it had the cheapest draught Stella in the city. But I really only dug the place during the few months when my old pal Jackson Bai was running the bar.

2)  B2M (aka 'The Moatside')

The first - and best - of many out-of-the-way hobby bars I've happened upon over the years, and subject of one of my earliest posts on here. It was tiny, difficult to find, far off the beaten track - and only survived on the custom of friends of the owners. But it was a homely little space, and a regular hangout during the '03-'04 winter. The Chairman and I gave some very serious consideration to taking it over when its original begetters, an Australian girl and her Chinese fiancé, departed on their epic bike ride from Beijing to Melbourne (the source of the bar's cryptic name).

But in the top spot we have...

1)  Huxley's

Its second incarnation on Yandai Xiejie, that is. Yes, of course, it's still there. But, really, it's NOT. Nowadays, the booze is mostly fake, the staff are charmless and often downright surly, and the clientele is mostly tourists or American high schoolers (it seems to have become the Houhai counterpart of the horrendous Pure Girl). It has lost the unique ambience that made it the best bar in the city during its first couple of years ('05-'07), when Jackson Bai was running it. Ah, I miss those days. I miss being serenaded by that Norwegian girl who was an operatically-trained semi-professional singer. I miss discussing the future of the planet with a young German climate change scientist. I miss wooing The Poet there (and then losing her again!). I miss staying up all night in there with Nick O'Pix and Tennessee Tom. I miss the free shooters that Jackson would dispense whenever it appeared that we weren't getting drunk fast enough. If they'd had draught beer, and if Jackson had stayed there a bit longer, that place would have been my favourite Beijing bar of all time; as it is, it's only just behind 12 Square Metres and the Pool Bar (which, mercifully, are still with us... though perhaps not for very much longer).

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.

After-crawl

I only put myself through 15 hours of shopping and 15 hours of prep in the kitchen to distract myself from too much brooding on decay and death at the end of last week. The real party happened afterwards - the dwindling gaggle of 'survivors' migrating around the Gulou area: Chill, Mai, 12 Square Metres, Salud, and, finally, of course, the Pool Bar. 

It was nearly dawn when I got home. Well, it was dawn when I woke up on the infamous Man-Eating Sofa.

And then Sunday was one of those wretched grey drizzly days: when I got up at noon to begin tidying up, I swear it was darker than when I'd gone to bed. After another heavy night last night (rum specials at MaoMaoChong, and making a first dent in the ridiculously generous tab The Choirboy left for me at 12SQM), I am now thoroughly jet-lagged. I fear it's going to take me at least a few days to get back in the right timezone!

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.

I have often walked down this street before...

Some years ago, I had been spending quite a bit of time in the Pimlico district of London, just south of Victoria. Well, I had been a permanent resident there for 18 months or so after my return from my backpacking year, bunking with an indulgent college friend; and I'd been a frequent visitor for a few years prior to that. 

One bright sunny morning, a cute young German girl - probably a backpacker herself - accosted me on the street and asked, "Are you well-known around here?"

An odd question to ask a stranger! But I quickly realised that she probably meant to ask whether I knew the area well. Indeed, she was seeking directions to the nearest laundromat.

I couldn't help thinking, though, that by now, within this narrow web of streets, I probably was becoming known by sight to quite a lot of people. And in a few of my most regular haunts - the excellent Marmaris kebab house, the Indian corner shop where I made most of my small grocery purchases, the Spread Eagle pub where I played pool at least a couple of times a week - there were people who knew me by name. And I found that cosily reassuring.

I've never felt quite such a sense of 'home' with Beijing - probably because my 'territory' here is far more spread out (although I spend 90% of my time within the area of 4 or 6 city blocks I can readily walk to, even that is much bigger than Pimlico; and I do also range further afield, out east to Sanlitun, Sanyuan Qiao, Chaoyang Park, or Lido, or north-west to Wudaokou, and sometimes even to the more distant 'burbs like Caochangdi and Shuangjing). Another likely reason is the fact that there's such a terrible air of impermanence about everything: favourite bars and restaurants are often forced to relocate or close down altogether within a few years, and the expat community itself is in a state of constant flux.

Even with this much wider geographical range and a dwindling circle of friends, though, Beijing is the kind of place where you do tend to bump into people you know very frequently. When I first got back here 4 or 5 weeks ago, I didn't go out much at first, didn't announce my return to very many people, was trying to keep a 'low profile'. And yet, within my first few days in the city, I had run into (in a variety of locations).....  my old pool-playing mate Ben the Jerry, musician buddies Fluffy and Dan the Man, local bar owner Jeff Ji (not in his bar, just walking down the street), and a raft of other people. So much for my plan of living in seclusion for a while!!

Hmm, this post title sounds like a cue for a song, doesn't it?

Recommended Posts, April-June 2011

A selection of favourites from the middle of last year (a relatively quiet spell on here)...

Guided Tour - recommended posts from the 2nd quarter of 2011

1)  Weekend Musical Interlude  -  1st April 2011

Middle Eastern musician Abaji visits Beijing with his amiable style of 'world music'; I offer a micro-review, and a couple of nice YouTube clips of his playing.

2)  Is it really that easy?  -  8th April 2011

An intriguing discovery from a recent holiday in Malaysia: a cheap knock-off 'whisky' with a beguilingly simple recipe.

3)  The Parting Glass  -  9th April 2011

Another in my 'Great Drinking Songs' series: three great versions of the poignant Scots/Irish leaving song.

4)  The Beatles, but not as we know them  -  23rd April 2011

Another musical oddity - a version of Come Together performed by Siberian folk-rock throat-singing band Bugotak.

5)  It's déjà vu all over again  -  25th April 2011

I lose patience with the annual farce of The Beijinger magazine's Bar & Club Awards... and offer up my own shortlist of contenders (not actually bars that I like myself, but the bars which would be appropriate for consideration for such an award). I later nominated some more detailed 'alternative awards' here and here.

6)  Top Five reasons to skip festival-going this year  -  29th April 2011

The May holiday brings the first of the year's outdoor music festivals in and around Beijing... but I find I'm not enthused this year.

7)  The worst pool tables in the world?  -  12th May 2011

The chance discovery of some spectacularly grotty outdoor pool tables (long a rarity in Beijing) reminds me of some of my earliest experiences of playing pool in China.

8)  HBH 233  -  13th May 2011

One of my better haiku, celebrating the sublime meditativeness sometimes achieved on the long stagger home.

9)  Skipping the Party  -  28th May 2011

This year, I gave the 2 Kolegas Birthday Party a miss. For a long time it was my favourite live music venue in the city, but lately I'd been losing the love.

10)  Saving a tailspin  -  30th May 2011

A really horrible day is surprisingly redeemed by a chain of improbable experiences in the evening - such is Beijing life! (And here's a more thorough example of the sort of fortuitously wonderful day I sometimes enjoy here.)

11)  Wisdom of the Froog  -  7th June 2011

Some more of my insight in the matter of hangovers...

12)  How to hold a music festival (or not)  -  9th June 2011

The new Kama Love Music Festival was - even by Beijing/China standards - one of the most spectacularly ill-organized I have ever experienced. At least it provided me with a template for how one ought to do things right at these events.

13)  More musical magic  -  21st June 2011

I am bewitched by a recital by the lovely Lan Weiwei, a virtuoso of the pipa (Chinese lute), at The Bookworm, and turn up this YouTube video of a masterclass of hers.

14)  Dazed and, er, 'feasted'  -  28th June 2011

A celebration of the superb party which was the inaugural 'dazeFeast one-day music festival at 2 Kolegas (and some thoughts on the superiority - for all concerned - of free gigs).

15)  Mogwai!  -  29th June 2011

My slushy side is revealed by the impromptu rescue of the world's ugliest kitten.

A decade of change (Part III)

The last ten years have seen a lot of changes in Beijing, and in its bar scene. I've reflected on these transformations a number of times before (for example, in considering the evolution of my own drinking habits, in reminiscing about the SARS summer, in categorizing the various expat 'types', and in satirizing the life-cycle of the 'hidden gem' bar). However, having just gone through my China Meltdown Moment and quit the country, possibly for good, this seems like an apt time for one last review of the major nightlife phenomena I witnessed during my time in The Jing.

This is the final part of a three-part series begun last Tuesday and Thursday.

The burgeoning of the music scene (and the bursting of the bubble?)

Back in the day.... we had Get Lucky bar (which was awful), Nameless Highland (which was rather good, but remote and difficult to find), River Bar (which was a bit small), and What Bar (which was - is - tiny). That was about it for live music venues. All except What had succumbed to the chai by the mid-Noughties. Yugong Yishan forerunner Loupe Chante was great, but lasted barely a year from its 2003 opening. But then, in fairly quick succession, we got the first Yugong Yishan appearing in the Gongti car park, 13 Club and the (recently demised) D-22 opening up almost side by side near Tsinghua University, and the Tango/Star Live club next to Ditan Park becoming the city's first purpose-built 'medium size' venue (early summer 2005; Yugong and Star might have been a bit earlier). The following year, music came to the hutongs, with Jiangjinjiu opening on Bell Tower Square and Jianghu off Nanluoguxiang; perhaps the greatest of all Beijing's cosy, divey music bars, 2 Kolegas, first opened its doors that year too, and the city's best music venue (at least for its sound) Mao Live House came shortly afterwards.

Unfortunately, this brief flowering of the scene got squelched by the approach of the Beijing Olympics: all music festivals in the capital, and very nearly all outdoor performances of any kind, were blocked for nearly two years; foreign acts found it hard to get visas and permits; music bars suffered a lot of harassment about their licences. Not surprisingly, no-one else wanted to try and open a new music bar for a while. However, after three years or more of arrested development, 2010 saw another wave of expansion, with small venues like Zui Yuefang, VA Bar, Hot Cat Club, Tushuguan, and Gulou 121 suddenly appearing, as well as new mid-size event venues Mako Live and The One. And now we've got Temple and (D-22 offspring) XP as well, establishing the Gulou area as the centre of Beijing's music scene (despite rather than because of the proximity of the new Yugong Yishan, which has completely dominated the scene for visiting foreign acts for over 4 years now, but is - I'm sorry to say - a truly terrible venue).

Perhaps, though, as with the proliferation of music festivals in the last few years, Beijing's and China's rock scene isn't yet strong enough to warrant this many outlets: most of the newer openings have failed to establish themselves very convincingly. I worry that this profusion of venues may actually be counter-productive, tending to foster ennui as we see the same rosters of bands appearing again and again all over the city.

The sudden escalation of cover charges (almost completely unknown 7 years ago, and rarely more than 30rmb until about 4 years ago, but now rarely less than 50rmb and often 80rmb or 100rmb) is also harming attendances (many of the visiting foreign acts at Yugong are now failing to attract any Chinese punters - not because they haven't heard of the acts, but because they can't afford the tickets); and I'm not convinced that it's for the good of the bands either (anything that diminishes attendance is ultimately bad for the bands; they ought to be cannier about making money for themselves off merchandise sales, rather than demanding a  percentage of the door take).

The slow development of a service ethic
Back in the early Noughties The Den was the only bar that had a consistently good level of service and English-language skills among its waitresses (though less so with its barmen or doormen). In most of the other foreigner-targeted bars, many of the staff spoke no English at all, few spoke more than a handful of stumbling phrases, and service standards were... pretty wayward. Amazingly, The Den is still leading the field 10 or 12 years on, but the rest of the scene has been catching up, particularly in the last 5 years: you can expect a functional level of English from almost all customer-facing staff in Western bars and restaurants now. The service standards, though, are still decidedly iffy. Staff training may have improved, staff motivation (and, hopefully, remuneration) may have improved; the available talent pool has expanded enormously (an awful lot of college graduates are now willing to start off in low-level F&B jobs; but the migrant workers with little education who study English for hours in their spare time to get a better job are the ones who really impress me); but a service ethic is still largely absent, I fear. It takes a very long time to develop that kind of culture.

The decline of the taxi service

The number of subway stations has gone up four- or five-fold... but there's still very little coverage across the city centre, and the service starts grinding to a halt around 10.30pm. The buses run an hour or so later at night than they used to, but that still means there's nothing after 11pm. Late-night public transport in this city is non-existent: revellers who've strayed too far from home are utterly dependent on the taxi fleet. This was not a problem at all when there were 80,000 taxis and only 20,000 expats (and hardly any local Chinese who wanted to use cabs late at night). Now the cab fleet has shrunk to about 65,000 (last unofficial estimate I heard), while the number of expats is probably close to or above 100,000 (and huge numbers of young Chinese are now using the new subway lines to venture in from the far suburbs for a night out at the weekends). On top of this, taxi rates have been frozen by the government for the last six years (largely in order to manipulate the official cost-of-living index), with the result that drivers are now struggling to make a living - and hence ill-tempered, misanthropic, and, at busy times, frequently inclined to turn down rides, go 'off meter' to demand exorbitant ad hoc fares, or simply vent their latent xenophobia by spurning (or attempting to run over) any foreigners who try to flag them down. In the past year or two, it has become extraordinarily difficult to get a taxi at peak periods (5pm-7pm or 11pm-1am), and it is often pretty nigh impossible (for a foreigner) to get a taxi from the Sanlitun area at almost any time of the day. I sympathise with the cabbies' plight: bumping up the fares by 20% or 30% (and perhaps introducing tipping??) would be a fair and reasonable solution to the problem.

Oh my, this is far cry from the good old days. Until a few years ago, I'd almost never had to wait more than 15 seconds for a cab, at any time of day, in any part of the city (though, admittedly, I was never trying to get out of the CBD in the rush hour). Recent arrivals find that impossible to credit, but I assure you it is quite true.

I fear the current situation will exacerbate the Balkanization of the Beijing nightlife scene. It's just becoming way too much mafan to travel across town for a night out, with severe uncertainties about how you might get back. People are starting to restrict themselves to bars they can walk home from.

Fragmentation

Several new bar/restaurant areas have grown up across the city during the past 10 years: in Wudaokou, for the student crowd; in the Lido area, catering to the wealthier expats who live in the north-east, or venture in from Shunyi at the weekends on shopping expeditions; in Shuangjing, suddenly a favoured ghetto for the less well-off expat; in the heart of the city around Nanluoguxiang and Houhai (and now rapidly expanding north through the Gulou area and eastwards along the Fangjia and Wudaoying hutongs). People still talk about 'Sanlitun' as the city's nightlife centre, but it's shrunk to the single cramped thoroughfare of 'Back Street' - Sanlitun Houjie and the Tongli Building. And that's overrun with raucous youngsters, and starting to get a very bad reputation for fights and street crime. The Beijing bar scene today is much broader than that; as a whole, it is arguably much classier than it was 10 years ago, and certainly a lot more expensive; it's also become far more differentiated and geographically spread out. There has never again been - and probably never will be - a great mixing pot like the old Sanlitun South Street, which could bring together the entire expat population into one narrow space (if not all into exactly the same bars), regardless of age, income, or nationality. I rather miss that sometimes. But not as much as I miss a 10-kuai gin & tonic.

HBH 286

Our loves go with us,

Great bars linger in the heart;

There's no leaving them.

This might be my last ever 'Haiku Bar' haiku from Beijing. I am planning to come back for a few months at the end of the year, but that idea is likely to get kicked into touch if Chinese visa policy continues as restrictive as it is at the moment.... or if (probably much less likely) I manage to find myself a decent job somewhere else in the interim.

I have a rich stock of memories to take away with me... although very few bars here have attained to 'greatness': the Yandai Xijie Huxley's in its first couple of years; the original Yugong Yishan; Dos Kolegas and Jianghu before they got popular; Amilal and the Pool Bar and 12 Square Metres. That's it.

Still, that's much better than I'd expected before I came here. And much, much, much, much better than any other city in China could have offered - Shanghai included. Yes, many fond memories to treasure.

A Top Five Double Whammy - all-nighters and succumbing to slumber

Since I am contemplating an imminent - and possibly permanent - departure from Beijing, I have been reminiscing about the 'good times' had here in the past, and two related 'Top Five' themes occurred to me in regard to my experiences in bars here.

First, a list of the bars in which I've seen the sun come up, or, more accurately, from which I have emerged into the grey light of dawn.

Top Five Beijing Bars Where I've Seen The Dawn Come Up

5=)  Club Football

This somehow hardly seems to count, since it was a place where one only went to watch the climax of the football season - Champions League games not winding up until 4.30 or 5 in the morning! I do miss it, though: the best - the only decent - sports bar I've known in Beijing; and it had the best pub grub too. I probably had more of those stumbling home at dawn experiences on exiting from Club Football than from anywhere else.

5=)  RBL

Ah, but it's not the quantity but the quality of the all-night experience that really matters. This ill-conceived restaurant-bar-"lounge" project just off Wangfujing didn't survive very long, but I went there half a dozen or so times for music events in its spacious cellar bar. And on one of those occasions, I completely lost track of time talking to a gorgeous young woman and, finding it daylight outside when we finally left, we went to Gui Jie to get some breakfast together. This is a tale that deserves a fuller telling one day - in the 'Great Dating Disasters' strand!

4)  Huxley's (Yandai Xijie)

I'm not sure I ever did stay here until quite dawn, but - in that glorious year or so when Jackson Bai was running the place and it was my first 'local' in the Gulou area - I did several times hang out there until 3am or 4am, and find the sky was starting to lighten by the time I'd finished my 20-minute stagger home. Indeed, one such occasion provided the substance of one of my first-ever posts on here. (I do miss those glory days of Huxley's. It's odd how you can miss something that much more acutely when it's still there, but has now turned to shit.)

3)  The Den

Again, I have reservations that this doesn't fully qualify, since The Den is not the kind of place where one would spend an entire evening (it's too bloody expensive when the 'happy hour' runs out at 10pm), but an enticing final stop - especially for an 'early breakfast' - after a long night of debauch elsewhere.

2)  Amilal

About the only place where you can see the dawn come up while you're still drinking, sitting outside in the little courtyard... Alus curled up asleep on a bench, The Weeble wobbling, The Poet suggesting one more drink...

1)  The Pool Bar

Probably the most frequent (non-football-related) of my all-nighter venues, and the one with the richest trove of memories (and memory losses).

And now a list of bars in which I have fallen asleep...

Top Five Beijing Bars In Which I Have Caught Some Zzzzz's

5=)  12 Square Metres

Scarcely eligible, but I wanted to give it a mention: this was a calculated recharging (quite early in the evening!) in one of the comfy chairs rather than an uncontrolled lapse - which is really supposed to be the theme here.

5=)  Amilal

Only once, only briefly (darn, those armchairs are so comfortable!) - but Alus will never let me forget it.

4)  Reef

Head down on one of the tables outside, for almost the entire duration of one of England's games in the 2006 World Cup. After that experience, I realised I needed to go and see my buddy The British Cowboy in America, so that I could watch the second half of the tournament in a more amenable timezone.

3)  The Den

Hasn't everybody fallen asleep in The Den at least once? That's what it's there for, a temporary haven when you're too tired to go home. I've never been all that fond of the place, but my buddy Big Frank would often drag me there at the end of a long evening's session, and once or twice he managed to exhaust my stamina so completely that I just folded my arms on the table - in the approved style of Chinese office workers everywhere - and gave in to a nice long zzzzz.

2)  Suzie Wong's 

The most unlikely entry on the list, since I would not normally be caught dead in this pretentious and painfully expensive 'nightclub'. Indeed, my impromptu snooze there may have been the occasion of my last visit, and that is some 6 years ago now. It was the farewell bar crawl for my buddy Big Frank (how have I not yet got around to writing up that epic session??), who used to live just over the road from Suzie's in the Green Lake Gardens apartments. We had started at the (old) Goose & Duck, abusing their 4pm-8pm 'happy hour' with numerous draught beers and Jack Daniel's chasers. Frank insisted on checking out Suzie's next. I think it was a Monday, the place was deserted, and we didn't stay very long - just long enough for me to lay my head down on the bar and get in 15 minutes' shut-eye.

1)  The Pool Bar

The most spectacular and abject of my rare public surrenders to slumber: I once passed out spreadeagled on one of the tables (NOT the pool table, obviously; I have far too much respect) for a full 90 minutes.

I don't think there are many other cities in the world - even in China/East Asia - where this kind of all-night indulgence is such a commonplace event. But perhaps I should go and find out....