Another musical era ends

For the past 3 or 4 years, one of the best bands in town has been Panjir - playing Central Asian folk music with sometimes just a little bit of a free jazz twist. A couple of years or so back, they did a long Sunday evening residency in my cosy local music bar, Jiangjinjiu, where I enjoyed seeing them many times. After a bit of a hiatus, they returned there this summer, and have been playing every Thursday for the past few months.

Now, alas, British guitarist David Mitchell, who founded the group with his Uyghur friend Ekber Ebliz, is quitting China in a couple of weeks, probably for good. (Well, he's planning to return early next year for another extended spell of music study and research in the western province of Xinjiang, and he's hoping to take the group touring in Europe at some point - but it seems we'll only see him in Beijing again for the most fleeting of visits, if at all.)

It looks as though Panjir's final gig of all will be on Boxing Day at Gingko (the former Room 101, on Andingmennei); but tonight will be their last performance at Jiangjinjiu, and that, I think, is the best place to see them - their 'spiritual home'.

It could be an emotional farewell.

The 12 Days of Christmas - a year-end review

I've conceived a plan to try to give myself a break from daily blogging over the upcoming holiday by re-printing a selection of the best posts from the last 12 months.

I have endeavoured to contact all of my 'regular' readers (and/or anyone who's ever left a favourable comment!) to ask them if they can nominate one post they remember as a personal favourite - from either or both of my blogs. I already have a number of replies, and a few more promises "to get around to it".

However, I thought I'd make a more public announcement - just in case there's anyone I missed; or in case there are some lurkers I don't yet know about out there who'd like to join in.

Just leave me a comment here (or here) with the name and date of a post you like (and perhaps just a line or two about why, if you can be bothered). I think I'll do this series just on Froogville, but you're welcome to recommend something from either blog.

I'm intending to run this series of re-posts as a sort of End of Year Review from 25th December to 5th January - so you still have plenty of time. Please join in.

Blue Frog - lousiest of the recent openings??

Blue Frog is one of those places it's going to be very hard for me not to hate.

Stupid name, for a start. Stupid level of prices, for another (very nearly twice as much - for both drinks and food - as most of its immediate competitors).

The chain originated in Shanghai. And yes, its first branch in Beijing that opened earlier this summer was in Shunyi - the rich person's ghetto out by the airport. Its second Beijing location is in the huge and soulless new Sanlitun über-mall, The Village. You can see how hard it is going to be for me not to hate this place.

However, it is said to do a rather good burger - so I have been delaying the concluding part of my burger review series until I've had a chance to check it out. Their burgers start at a ludicrous 70-80 kuai each..... but on Mondays, they're two-for-one, which gives them a narrow window of affordability (and, I gather, drinks are also two-for-one during the 4pm-8pm 'happy hour'). I know, I know, I have always tried to stick to the principle that you shouldn't give a place your custom on 'happy hour' if you can't afford it (or otherwise don't like it) at any other time, but.... we are doing our best to be open-minded here, to give just a little benefit of the doubt to a new opening.

I have, in fact, been plotting to go there on a Monday night for the past several weeks, but I can never cajole any of my (equally impecunious) friends into accompanying me.

A few Mondays ago, I was driven to visit the place alone (though, naturally, heartbroken that the second - free - burger would be going to waste). As it happened, it sucked so mightily that I didn't even stay for a drink.

First off, it's pretty damned hard to find. There are (unusually for China!) quite a few maps scattered around The Village - but still not quite as many or quite as conspicuous as you might wish for in such a large and labyrinthine mall, so it took me quite a while to find the place. Blue Frog is on an upper level (and not visible from anywhere down below, as far as I could make out) - where there are an awful lot of unlet spaces, so the general ambience as you approach is extremely drab and uninviting. I had feared there might be a bit of an early evening rush on 2-for-1 Burger Night, but..... NO. When I got there around 7pm, there was only one table occupied.

I was asked if I'd like the smoking or non-smoking section. I was dumb enough to reply "Non-smoking". The sole customers were having quite a loud and obnoxious conversation right in the middle of the non-smoking room, so I didn't want to sit anywhere too near them; the second - "smoking" - room was completely deserted, but the staff would not let me go in there. "But you are not a smoker!" they objected vociferously. Oh, well.

I reluctantly sat down in a corner a couple of tables away from the noisy yahoos. My waitress demanded my drink order almost before the menu had left her hand - again, not a good sign. I asked her to give me a moment to think about it, and she hovered right beside - not a good sign.

Worst of all, the hi-fi was playing some very loud disco-ey kind of number, with a really throbbing beat to it. This "music" was bugging the crap out of me within seconds: it felt like an aneurysm pulsing away inside my skull. I decided to leave without ordering anything.

They did at least ask me if anything was wrong. When I told them I didn't like the music, they made a half-hearted offer to "turn it down". How about turning it off??

This was just not the sort of music they should ever be playing in a place like that. It's primarily a restaurant, not bar or a nightclub, so it needs to go with jazz, or perhaps some classic rock. And the music should never be anywhere near that loud. Maybe, a little later in the evening, and if you've got a big crowd in, you might increase the volume a bit to create a 'buzzier' atmosphere. But early evening, people just want to go there for a quiet after-work drink and some intimate conversation; they do not want (nobody, not even people that like this sort of music) throbbing dance music that's so loud it brings on a headache.

I'm not sure if I should bother to try to include Blue Frog in my 'burger review'. Even if it's the best damn burger in the city (and I'm pretty sure it won't be), it's not going to be worth 70 kuai. And it's not worth enduring the crappy service and the godawful music.

The bargain drinker

I have discovered that Smuggler's, the least objectionable of the cheapo drinking dens around the corner from Tongli (really rather a decent little bar, in fact; although, alas, completely deserted much of the time), has some of the cheapest spirits in town. What's more, I think most of them are genuine; a little watered down, maybe - but not the poisonous fake stuff that most of the low-end places foist on you. Their J & B scotch whisky is particularly convincing, and a mere 15 kuai for a generous shot. Or 30 for a double.

Even better, they sell Yanjing beer. Only in a stubby bottle (and I tend not to enjoy stubby bottles; I imagine that beer - any beer - tastes worse when served in inadequate portions), but it still tastes pretty darn good - way better than the appalling Tsingtao!! What's more, they're currently offering this beer at 2-for-15 kuai. Pretty damned reasonable!

Thus, a mere 90 kuai will buy you approximately 1.5 hours of happiness - while you are, say, enjoying some football highlights on TV on a slow Monday evening.

Best of all, although I've only been in there a handful of times, they already remember me - and what is becoming my regular order! It does feel good to achieve that level of recognition in a bar.

The weekly bon mot

"The pain passes, but the beauty remains."

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Having just endured the departure of another of my (unrequited, of course) amours, I can't help thinking that P-A got it backwards....

Burger blues (pt. 2)

Dicebamus hesterna die....

Even though there are numerous burger options in Beijing today, it's still hard to find a good one.

Amongst the most common problems are:

Lousy buns

(Although there are some foreign-run bakeries here that know how to make good bread, restaurants always seem to opt for crappy mass-produced Chinese-made buns - and Chinese bread always seems to have a nasty hint of sweetness about it.)

Poor quality meat

(I've mentioned before the shitty quality of most of the beef in this country. If you want a really good burger, you're probably going to have to pay a premium rate for imported Australian beef.)

Iffy consistency/excessive fragility

(Even the better burgers here have an alarming tendency to fall apart. Perhaps you need to use a little beaten egg to bind your patties, gentlemen??)

Eccentric sizing

(Either too big or too small - rarely just right.)

Lack of sauces/relishes

(Well, other than ketchup. Or, if you're really lucky, mustard. On the other hand, some places want to use wildly inappropriate sauces such as thousand island dressing! Without asking you.)

Lack of decent fries/salad

(Even when the burger's sort of OK, the accompaniments rarely are.)

Soggy burger/soggy bun

(None of the grill chefs in this town seems to have acquired the basic skill of squeezing the excess fat out of the burger while it's grilling. 9 times out of 10, you have to do this for yourself after your burger arrives - leaving a huge pool of unappetising grease on your plate. Even worse, a lot of the burgers here seem to have a huge amount of water in them [not sure if it's just down to their being deep frozen, or if the meat is being injected with extra water to bulk it up, or...] which leaves an even bigger and nastier puddle on your plate, and/or completely saturates the bottom half of your burger bun. Honestly, some of these buns/burgers you have to wring out like a flannel. It's not nice.)

This is not rocket science - but I'm not sure that anywhere in Beijing has really managed to get it right yet. I'm still looking.

To be continued (again)......

Bad Santa

Having managed to shirk the Santa duties at my girly chums' Christmas Party for the last two years, I suddenly find myself lumbered again with the role - this time in a 'private performance'. This is what you get for being the sole surviving bachelor when all of your friends have young children. I still insist that I am neither old enough nor fat enough (nor hearty enough nor philanthropic enough!) to play the part convincingly - but.... resistance is futile.

Costuming logistics are a bit of a hassle (I have to try to find a bar or a shop somewhere near the venue to do a quick change).... but I'm quite looking forward to it, really. DD - the evil genius behind the plan, hosting an afternoon party for several of her friends with kids - has promised me the traditional sherry & mince pies.

"Mmm - afternoon drinking!"........ as Homer J might say......

Happy Birthday, Club 13

Club 13 (or 13 Club, if you wish) - Wudaokou's better music bar - is celebrating its 4th anniversary tonight. I don't think I shall be able to go, but I wish them well. (I'm surprised by the date: I really thought they launched in the late spring or early summer. Maybe I was just very slow to discover them.)

The place is in almost every way vastly superior to its near neighbour, D-22: better space, better sound, better crowd (still beset by worthless foreign students, of course; but with a much, much higher percentage of Chinese kids among its clientele), less up its own bum about "how important it is to the scene". Only the rather sketchy service and the limited roster of bands (heavy on the metal) let it down. I haven't been out there for a while now. I really should make the effort soon.

(Tonight, however, is the Tag Team Records Christmas Shindig at my favourite music bar, 2 Kolegas - and that, I'm afraid, is a superior attraction.)

Ooops

My negativity yesterday morning proved to be sadly prescient: White - as my buddy The British Cowboy would have it - sucked donkey balls. No percussion, precious little guitar; instead, the two members of the group have both discovered the dubious delights of making bloopy-bleepy noises with synthesisers (that's one of the hazards of being in a 'developing' country: people don't have the opportunity to get this shit out of their system when they're 14.... and may thus mistakenly think it's 'cool' when they're 26 and really ought to know better). Nothing like the stuff they were playing two years ago (which was actually, you know, music). Very, very disappointing.

And, as is fairly standard at D-22, nobody showed up on stage at all until at least an hour after the advertised start time; and we then had to suffer 4 or 5 very mediocre warm-up acts before the main event. And this 'main event' was definitely not worth waiting up until after 1am for.

The one saving grace of the evening was the presence of a 'band' dubbed Beijing Oprah - I really do like that as a band name! However, I rather fear that that isn't really their name, just a joke the bookers at the club came up with. They're just a trio of students - a male and female vocalist and a traditional percussionist - who do straight renditions of Beijing Opera songs. Very well done, and quite a pleasant change of pace from the rest of the programme - although I fear people weren't paying them very much attention.

My fears about a possible relapse into crapness by the bar, though, proved mercifully unfounded. The drinks prices have come down quite dramatically from when they first opened. The draft beer is still cold and - amazingly - clean-tasting. The pair of barmen who so impressed me back in May appear to have moved on, but the three new young guys behind the bar are equally good (well, maybe they are the same guys..... I mean, I only met them once, briefly, 6 months or more ago. I thought I recalled them both as being a bit older and stouter than these skinny youngsters, but..... a change of hairstyle can render a Chinese kid completely unrecognisable!). The sound system still isn't great, but it's a lot better than it was in the bad old days (they seem to have got a new bloke on the mixing desk - who's actually able to make something happen when he tweaks the knobs; the previous sound guy was, for some reason, utterly ineffectual) ; and, once again, no equipment failures. Even the levels of smugness that the place tends to exude were a little more muted last night.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, it's never going to be a great space for live music - too narrow and cramped: if you're more than a few yards back from the stage, you can't see a bloody thing (most of the Chinese go upstairs on the balcony, where you get a better view.... and don't feel under any pressure to buy drinks; I think they're on to something!). And the acoustics of the room are pretty muddy.

Moreover, I don't like the fact that the place is so dominated by laowai. Last night, at least 95% of the people in there - at least, downstairs - were foreigners. Worse, I'd bet that almost all of them were language students - not a demographic that I warm to. I could probably vent in several long posts about why I hate language students so much.... but, in a nutshell: most of them are insufferably smug about merely making the effort to try to learn Chinese; many of them in fact make only a very ineffectual effort to do so, and leave after 6 months or a year with no worthwhile language skills at all; and a very high proportion of them are wasters and dropouts who have no job back home and no idea what to do with their lives but are naively optimistic that learning a little bit of Chinese will somehow open up all sorts of new opportunities for them. That's right, you know the type: never had a proper job 3 years after finishing college, or perpetual mature student on the run from study loan repayments*, or tried and failed to run a one-man IT consultancy, or..... Yes, the kind of loser you try to avoid in the pub back home; and often a self-important twat along with it. Imagine a whole community of these people. This is why I don't go to Wudaokou very often.

D-22 looks as though it has managed to transform itself into a very good bar. My congratulations - this is no mean achievement, especially after such inauspicious beginnings.

Unfortunately, it's too far away, in the wrong part of town.... and really not much of a music club.

* Yes, yes, I know - pot & kettle. But at least I'm not dumb enough to believe that learning Chinese will be a panacea for my fecklessness.

The spirit of scientic enquiry.....

Why else would I consider venturing out to the distant (and largely devoid of decent bars) wasteland of Wudaokou on a Friday evening?

Despite the very favourable impression that D-22 made on me when I last gave it a try at the Ian Sherman Benefit Gig, I haven't found a reason to go back there since, and that was 6-and-a-half months ago. As I noted then, I was a little sceptical as to whether the miraculous changes they seemed to have wrought in the place - reliable mike cables, maximally tweaked sound balance, decent draft beer, impeccable bar service - would long endure. Now, perhaps, we shall see.

The particular draw tonight is the brief resurrection of White, one of Beijing's only genuinely unique musical outfits - often given the unappealing tag of being a 'noise' band, but I'm not sure that that really covers it too well: it's experimental, largely improvisatory, and, yes, oddball and rather self-indulgent, but quite clever, usually surprisingly listenable and even occasionally melodic. It's a collaboration between two of the Beijing scene's most talented musicians - Shenggy, former drummer of the (appallingly named) all-girl band Hang On The Box (although I think she plays a bit of guitar and keyboards too, and, if I recall aright, has a much nicer singing voice than the rather raucous HOTB frontwoman, Gia), and Jeff Zhang of the (appallingly named) Carsick Cars, who can't sing worth a damn but plays some pretty nifty guitar. They'd played several rather good gigs a couple of years back - sometimes just as a duo, sometimes with an extended lineup of supplementary musicians - and there was talk of a record; but then Shenggy departed for graduate studies in England. They're getting back together just for a few gigs this December - so, not to be missed. At least, I hope they're not to be missed; D-22 has a long history of disappointing me, even with good bands. And this is perhaps a rather hit-or-miss band.

Now, now, Froog - positive thinking!

HBH 110

Expensive options?
Necessary indulgence!
Cruising the top shelf...

As so often happens in these dry and sore-throaty Beijing winters, I have recently been resurrecting my occasional (costly, but oh so spirit-lifting) malt whisky habit - mainly at the rather excellent 12 Sq M Bar, my new regular hangout in the 'hood.

They're back!

I gather Maggie's finally reopened a few days ago. It's not the kind of place that I would be caught dead in myself, but..... I have been rather missing those 'dogs. They were a favourite on-the-way-home snack after a musical evening at The Stone Boat.

Burger blues (pt. 1)

Now, I am not the sort of person who hankers after 'home comforts' all the time. I am quite prepared to 'go Chinese' (despite the notorious limitations of the cuisine!) for weeks together at a stretch. And when I do occasionally treat myself to something a little more upmarket, it's more likely to be something more richly flavoured, like Indian or Thai food.... or, once in a blue moon, a proper restaurant like Alameda. However, the simplicity of the classic burger is a thing of beauty, and I do from time to time find myself pining for something like..... well, not quite like this meaty monstrosity below (deprivation warps the mind, you know), but a really good burger.

Actually, the template of burger perfection in my mind (never having been to the gleefully over-the-top Heart Attack Grill in the suburbs of Phoenix, which is home to the towering stack of carnivore delight above) is probably the burgers of Pepper's, a little takeaway joint in North Oxford (just past the Phoenix arts cinema, which was a second home to me throughout my student days and in a subsequent period living and working in the city). On my last trip back 16 months ago, I was bitterly upset to discover that the place had suddenly closed, after - I think - more than 25 years of doing business. Burgers, fries, buns, and range of sauces available were all hard to fault - and they were cooked to order, right in front of you, on a grill behind the counter. I have many (not always entirely pleasant) memories of the 'White Shark' - an extra-strong chilli sauce which The Bookseller and I would regularly order as a kind of (foolish, self-destructive!) macho competition between ourselves. Whereas he could often outdo me in smothering a doner kebab with 'special' sauce from one of his favourite 'bab vans, encounters with The Shark usually favoured me. He just wasn't so practised with it. The problem with it was that you were never quite sure what you were going to get: they didn't exactly have a set recipe for it, I don't think; they just seemed to mix it up ad hoc, by adding a random heap of chilli powder to their regular (not exactly wimpy) chilli sauce. It tended to be a brownish colour, rather than red (rather like the colour of dried blood, in fact, now that I come to think of it); and, in its hottest incarnations, it had a thick and gritty texture. I recall one occasion when The Bookseller - despite extensive precautionary anaesthesia - found himself quite defeated by The Shark, and had to scrape the sauce off his burger after just a few bites. He then proceeded to drip blobs of the fiery-hot brown goo experimentally on to concrete paving stones - "to see if it will eat holes in them; you know, like the Alien's blood".

Other glimpses of "burger heaven" in my life have been Fat Burger in LA and Five Guys in DC (in fact, I have come to know and love Five Guys especially over the last decade and a bit because they have a branch in Alexandria, just off King St, barely two blocks from where the old university friend I usually stay with lives; well, he used to live there; at least he's still in Old Town, and within a reasonable walk of FG). Five Guys perhaps suffers from a slightly over-complicated ordering system (you have to pick all your fixins individually, and there's a huge selection), but it's very reasonably priced; and I love the choice of regular or chilli fries; oh, and the sack of free peanuts for you to amuse yourself with while you wait for your order to be made up. Fat Burger I don't remember too much about now, except that the burgers were good, and HUGE. And except that it figured in one of David Letterman's humorous 'lists' - of reasons why it was good to live in LA. And except that in the one I visited (not too far from Venice Beach; and within a few hours of my very first arrival in the States, some 15 years ago) none of the staff and very few of the customers spoke anything but Spanish.

But I digress...... The point of this post was supposed to be to review the burger scene in Beijing (briefly). Expats here have long complained that there is nowhere in the city to get a really good burger (well, nowhere apart from TGI Friday's and the Hard Rock Café, which are not the kind of places I would ever go in..... and the distant 'Little America' of Shunyi township). However, in the last year - indeed, just in the last few months - there has been a veritable explosion of new burger options in the city. I still haven't tried most of these new places. And I'm probably never going to try most of them. There are one or two places getting into a how-much-money-can-we-waste-on-something-as-simple-as-a-burger pissing competion: wagyu steak and foie gras garnish? Oh, please!! I am not ever going to spend that kind of money (200 or 300 kuai!) on a burger, even if my lottery numbers do come up. This is, alas, part of the progressive gentrification - the Shanghai-ification - that has been assaulting our fair city in recent months (something I complained of just the other day). I think this trend can be resisted and repulsed, if we all stand together against it. Unfortunately, I fear, far too many people are prepared to say, "Hey, you know, I'm so desperate for a burger, I'd pay almost anything for one", or "Well, 70 kuai isn't so unreasonable for a burger; I guess I can afford that."

The vanguard of the Nanluoguxiang bar street (it's been there 7 years now, putting it at least 4 years ahead of the trend!) was the Pass-By Bar. In its early days it used to have a burger - a rather good burger, at that - on its menu. I mean, it wasn't anything great, but at that time it was the only place in the city I knew where you could get one at all. In those days it was a pretty low-rent, unpretentious kind of joint - catering mostly to backpackers, indigent English teachers, and the impoverished boho type of expat that lives around the Ju'er Hutong. Susan, the owner, tried to tell me that nobody ever ordered the burger; but that was highly dubious - I ordered it myself quite regularly, and most of the friends I introduced to the place had tried it and enjoyed it on their first visits (as I said, it was just about the only place you could get a burger back then - at least, in our neighbourhood - and so it was an obvious first choice on the menu for expats, especially Americans, who were starting to feel pangs of homesickness). No, cutting their burger from the menu was a statement of intent, the beginning of a push for a more upscale clientele: No Riff-Raff. In commercial terms, it seems to have worked out for them: their original siheyuan café has expanded, and is now regularly packed (though mostly now with Chinese yuppies, rather than the down-at-heel expats the place used to attract); and they've been able to open a more ambitious 'restaurant' branch of the business a few doors down. Good luck to them. However, I do rather miss the Pass-By of old - quaint, rarely crowded, 'my secret'. And I miss being able to get a burger in the 'hood.

It is curious, is it not, that the early wave of gentrification in our city would seem to have involved the eradication of the burger, while the second phase - the Let's catch up to Shanghai phase - involves its reintroduction at ridiculously high prices.

Enough, then, of the historical background. Let's review the burger options in Beijing today.

Well, OK, no, let's not. I've rather run out of steam for now. And I've made myself feel hungry by talking about all of this. Supper calls.

To be continued........

Not quite the same

My pal The Barman is contemplating a possible move into airborne hospitality. He says he figures that being a flight attendant must require a pretty similar skillset to being a barman, and he's got years of experience to draw on now.

"Well, there are some differences," I pointed out. "For instance, if someone's misbehaving, you can't just throw them out the door."

"Yes, that must be difficult," he conceded.

Bon mot for the week

"My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known. No wonder, then, that I return the love."

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

The wind blows cold

I am once again negotiating the anniversary of The Great Breakup, and I fear the savagely cold weather of the past few days has been exacerbating the annual attack of wistful nostalgia. (It's probably just as well she's out of the country at the moment!)

Here's something I scribbled down when in similar brooding mode this time last year.

What she wore

Ours was a wintry affair.
And so, although I've known her
Now in all seasons,
Mostly I picture her still
Layered in wool,
Thickly armoured
Against the north wind's knives:
Knitted dresses, knee-high boots;
That leather jacket;
Gloves and shawls and scarves;
Once, even, a woollen hat;
Those boots.


Seeing her again,
For the first time in months,
On a warm spring day,
I was surprised to find
That sandals and sunglasses,
A floral skirt and loose white smock
Had little power to provoke
My fantasies or haunt my dreams.


These thinner clothes.
It seemed to me,
Left her too exposed:
Showed her more gaunt than slender,
More gawky than skittish;
Less elegant, less mysterious;
More slight in mind
As well as form.


But if I saw her now,
With the weather turning cold again,
Might her winter wardrobe yet revive
My former lust?
Would I claw open
The buttons on her coat,
Run my eager hands
Over the soft, warm wool
Clinging to her body,
Unwrap the muffling scarf
To plant my steaming kisses
On her cold face?

I think perhaps I would
(If she would let me).


I must remember her
In spring and summer,
When she was less bewitching:
Just another pretty girl,
Nothing special to my heart;
An old friend waiting
To have lunch with me,
Nothing more;
Reading a book in a coffee shop
With casual impatience.


I must not see her
On a frozen street corner,
Stamping her booted feet
Amid the snow,
Panting white smoke
Into the icy air;
Waiting for me
With a more pointed impatience,
Waiting for me
With quite a different expectation.


I still have in a cupboard somewhere
One of her winter shawls.

Great Love Songs (12)

I suppose I was first introduced to big band music back in the late '70s or early '80s through Dennis Potter's TV series Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective, which featured scores of popular hits from the '30s and '40s (are those soundtrack albums still available, I wonder - I'd love to get them on CD). My parents had some Glenn Miller, but not much else; at university, the blues became one of my earliest niche interests, soon followed by early jazz. It might well have been my Indian friend, The Younger Dr P (junior sibling of The Egregious one), an idolater of Frank Sinatra (and a passable impersonator of him, too), who first gave me a wider exposure to the other great musicians of that era. As soon as I heard Harry James's trumpet, I was in a swoon. I don't think anybody else has had quite that sound, or has been able to carry a melody quite so sweetly.

This is You Made Me Love You, sung by one of his regular female vocalists, Helen Forrest. It appears to be from an old film, but I can't tell which one. I'm afraid the sound is fairly weak, but it's still a lovely clip.

I think this was one of the tunes used by Woody Allen for the soundtrack of Hannah and Her Sisters (of course, after that, for a little while, everyone was a Harry James fan again!). Other Harry James numbers from that film were, I think, I've Heard That Song Before (again, sung by Helen Forrest; you can see that here, but alas, there's no video with it, only a still from Hannah), and It's Been A Long, Long Time (which I had thought was also sung by Helen, but apparently it's by another of Harry's stable of fine singers, Kitty Kallen; I absolutely love this, and might well have chosen it above You Made Me Love You, but again there is no video accompanying it). And while we're having a splurge on Harry (god, YouTube sucks you in, doesn't it?!), here's a colour clip of the great man playing his Trumpet Blues & Cantabile, from a 1944 film called Bathing Beauty.

What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon???

The hour is at hand.....

The infamous 'Coven' Christmas Party (v. 3.0) will be getting under way in just a few hours.

I suppose I'd better start getting ready. A stodgy, alcohol-absorbing meal would be a good way to start....

And then, darn it, we finally have the official opening party for the re-born Room 101, which I suppose I will feel obliged to pay at least a short visit to. (By the way, chaps, word to the wise: nobody likes the name Gingko; everybody is still calling it Room 101 - this is not a good sign for your re-branding experiment!)

And I have to work tomorrow morning! Bugger!!

HBH 109

Whatever we wear,
The icy wind will strip us.
Saved by the beer coat!

Walking back from Jiangjinjiu last night was a very unpleasant experience. It has got so damn cold, I'm feeling reluctant - afraid - to set foot outside the house. It was only the warming effect of the booze that got me home safe last night.

Ghost malls

There's a whole string of big new shopping malls that have opened around Beijing this year.

Some of them didn't quite manage to open before the Olympics.... but there was hardly an Olympic 'boom' anyway. In fact, overseas tourism in the capital was well down that month (even the official figures admit that it was down by a few percentage points - and I'm sure they're counting all the tens of thousands of people who came as part of the Olympic circus; regular tourists who'd just come to watch the Games were rare as hen's teeth [in fact, I only met one!]). And I think it was always obvious that there was going to be some tailing off in the size of the expat community here around the Olympics, since so many people were here on specifically Olympics-related jobs. And now, of course, the 'global meltdown' is accelerating that exodus. And, even if the affluent laowai aren't all leaving, they're probably going to be a lot more careful about their spending for a while.

Now, I'm sure the property developers behind these projects will claim that they are not relying on the laowai trade alone. Wild optimism! There just aren't that many Chinese who have any money to spend on high-end foreign brands. And even those who do are starting to feel the economic pinch, just like everybody else. These are not auspicious times in which to be opening upmarket malls like these.

The big new complex in Sanlitun, The Village, made a huge push to open before the Olympics (managing it with days to spare; although much of the space is still being finished and/or remains unlet 4 months on) and has been very heavily promoted, but..... well, every time I've been through there (usually late afternoon or early evening on a Friday or a Saturday; times when you'd expect it to be fairly jumping), it has been almost deserted. Heck, there aren't even that many people wandering through - which is really surprising, given that it provides such a convenient shortcut between Gongti Beilu and the Tongli bar enclave immediately to the north of it. And I don't think I've ever seen a single customer in any of the stores (with the exception of the Apple store, of course, which hordes of young Chinese use as a free Internet café).

It's much the same story in the big new mall over at Xizhimen subway station, which I've visited a number of times recently. Numbers of people milling around are slightly higher than at The Village, but I think they're mostly - like me - taking a shortcut to the subway, or just sheltering from the winter wind; nobody actually appears to be buying anything. Solana, the huge new piazza-style mall over by Chaoyang Park, looks to be faring even worse. I went over there during the October National Holiday (which ordinarily sees a big surge in Chinese shopping) and the number of other shoppers I saw in a couple of hours barely made it into double figures. When I went into the New Balance store to buy a new pair of running shoes, I had to go into the back room to locate the only member of staff - who was fast asleep, and evidently bored out of her mind by her non-job. All the other sales staff I saw that day seemed similarly weathered by ennui.

Yes, it's all rather like George Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

Why do I care about the dire straits of developers and retailers who embark on these foolhardy ventures?

Well, I don't, not per se. Of course, I abhor the ugliness and pointlessness of these malls. I resent the months or years of construction work they inflicted on us. And I regret the loss of the neighbourhoods - and the bars - that were bulldozed to make way for them. So I do feel an unashamed thrill of schadenfreude at the possibility of their catastrophic failure.

But what really concerns me most is that they are home to a crop of large, expensive, foreigner-targeted bars and restaurants that are threatening to take this city's nightlife scene more in the direction of Shanghai's.

There is already a place for people who would prefer to be in Shanghai but got stuck with the Beijing posting - it is called Shunyi (a remote 'suburb' devoted to upscale villa developments, gated communities for foreign executives with families [and a few super-wealthy Chinese], that is increasingly coming to resemble an American small town; I absolutely loathe the place). We must do all we can to resist the unnecessary Shanghai-ification of Beijing proper. We really do not need the likes of Blue Frog, Element Fresh, All-Star and Drei Kronen in the centre of the city. Every time one of these places folds, I shall be dancing a little jig of celebration!

"Oh, thank you, Global Meltdown, thank you! Let's keep Beijing's drinking scene grotty and cheap and unpretentious - please."

The Party Season

As I think I've mentioned on here in previous years, the great expat Christmas clearout seems to get under way earlier and earlier each year (with many of the less well-off brethren vamoosing before the airfares take the big seasonal price-hike around the middle of the month). And this means that the Christmas party season gets under way pretty damned early.

This Friday sees the infamous 'Coven' Christmas party - now in its third great year! - organised by a clutch of my girlie mates (with hugs and encouragement and just a little bit of logistical support from yours truly). I am absolved of Santa duties again this year (at least, I am for this party....), so can concentrate on getting well and truly lashed.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China is having its Christmas drinks party the following night. And one of my Chinese friends is having a similar bash slightly later in the evening. It's looking like it could be a stormy weekend.

And then my "teachers' support group" is proposing a Christmas dinner (very early for dinner, surely, chaps?!) the following Friday.

And I haven't yet heard from the Koryo boys, but I'm sure they'll be doing something quite soon - probably something involving a cheap or free bar and huge quantities of toxic North Korean soju.

Ah, Christmas in Beijing.....

Abuse

The number of my friends who are incapable of handling the SMS facility on their mobile phones is, sadly, growing. Indeed, many of them are now exhibiting a similar disability with regard to that other great instant communication medium of the modern world, the electronic mail.

I have developed a new way of dealing with such vexing uncommunicativeness from people. I tersely suggest to them that they should join a support group to get help for their impediment, a group called Can't Use New Technology.

Traffic Report - the blog stats for November

Thanks to my one-off 'Picture Week' (28 pictorial posts, with scarcely a word on them) on Froogville a little while back, last month's wordcount on the blog was well down on recent totals - although still pretty much up to the typical rate of output over the rest of the month.

There were thus a staggering 66 posts on Froogville last month, but only a comparatively modest 10,500 words.

Barstool Blues once again hits its steady average of 40 posts and 11,500 words.

I hadn't previously been paying any attention to the 'Monthly Summary' feature available on my Statcounter traffic-monitoring, but I've just discovered it, and, well,........ it seems that Froogville is pretty regularly drawing 1,200 or more unique visitors per month. Nothing that exciting, but at least twice as many as are getting recorded by my Sitemeter counter. The Barstool is consistently 100 or 200 behind on the 'unique visitor' count, yet, strangely, seems to draw almost twice as many return visitors. I'm at a loss as to why that might be. (I'm rather more concerned - alarmed/disheartened! - that, after a huge spike at the start of the year [when the Barstool was briefly drawing significantly more readers than Froogville!], its numbers have tailed off dramatically since then. Why? Why?)

Nothing very interesting happening lately on the 'visitor map', alas - except for a sudden surge in visits to the Barstool from Canada and the United Arab Emirates! (Once again, I am at a loss...)

Once again, I thank you for reading (if you have been; at all regularly, that is). And if you have been (reading, fairly regularly), I would ask you to contribute to my recently initiated 'review page' - all comments welcome, whether good or bad, on either blog or both.

New Picks of the Month

This month's recommendations from my archive are.....

From Froogville, Messy break-ups - some philosophical musings on the parallels between losing a job and losing a girlfriend (prompted by my somewhat unexpected sacking a year ago!).

And from the Barstool, Zen & the Art of Playing Pool - a classic post from two years ago explaining the central role that the game of pool has assumed in my life.

The weekly bon mot

"If you can't take a holiday, get drunk. It's like turning down the volume on the world for a while."

Froog