Enumeration

Five has been the number of my recent disappointments. To wit.... 1) I had been expecting to hook up with Dr Manhattan for dinner the other day - but he's become rather obsessive (and unsociable) in his devotion to the gym just lately. And whiny about the cold. Looks like I may be dining alone through most of the winter months. 2) My Pool Partner had been promising to try to slip out for a few quick games last night. We've somehow been missing each other for 6 weeks or so now. We missed each other again last night. 3) The rather pretty English girl I met in a bar last week had assured me she was likely to be back in the same bar at the same time this week. She wasn't. I am surprised at the strength of my regret; I fear I was becoming a little smitten. (My own stupid fault for not getting her phone number last week!) 4) I have been trying to track down The Chairman for a week or more now, hoping to discuss arrangements for Christmas lunch with him (it's probably a bit too late now). He's not easy to contact at the best of times, but I gather that his ex-girlfriend (who is still refusing to move out of his apartment) recently commandeered his mobile phone, swapping it for her old, knackered, almost completely dysfunctional one. Santa needs to come early with a new phone for His Chairmanliness! Luckily, I ran into him in one of the expected haunts last night. Unluckily, he was completely off his face, and we couldn't conduct any useful discussion on co-ordinating our holiday plans. 5) The Weeble has long been promising to help fix me up with his highly recommended and very affordable VPN. He had led me to believe that I needed to introduce him to my computer, so that he could set up the account from the actual IP address that would be operating it. Belatedly he informs me that in fact he could have done it all by e-mail from his own computer. Belatedly he also informs me doesn't after all have a functional credit card at the moment (this was the main reason I needed his - or someone's - help!). He tried to pay the subscription by Paypal, but screwed up his password. So, still no VPN for me. And I had to lug my laptop around with me all evening (I purchased a rather heavy and bulky model, because I never intended to use it outside of my home). Ggrrrrr. So, yes, it's been a pretty shitty couple of days in Froogland. The only slight consolation at the end of a particularly vexing and tiring evening yesterday was that the boss at Amilal has just acquired the new Tom Waits live album (I hope he didn't do that just for me; I don't think so - he's quite a big fan himself). Unfortunately, the bar was so packed (mid-week? What's with that??) that I was unable to enjoy listening to it. I'll have to swing by on a deserted Sunday or Monday, so the two of us can have a proper listen.

Great Dating Disasters (5)

As with comedy, the secret of great tragedy is mostly in the timing. When I was working in Toronto a decade ago, I was introduced through a mutual friend to a young actress/singer. I wasn't exactly smitten at first sight: she was a bit short for me, and girl-next-door pretty rather than drop-dead beautiful. Also, I learned early on that she had a steady, live-in boyfriend who was on the brink of becoming a fiancé, so any nascent romantic ambitions I might have had were being firmly held in check. But... well, I met her several times over the next few months, and we got on rather well. I found it puzzling that the boyfriend was never in evidence. She was part of the cast of a long-running musical comedy revue, which I went to see 4 or 5 times (I love the theatre; especially when I'm getting comped!). We would sometimes go out for dinner or a drink after the show (never quite a 'date' - the friend who'd introduced us, or another cast member was always riding shotgun). There was never any sign of the boyfriend. I gathered he hadn't been since the opening night - that's not very supportive; but... yes, maybe he hated the show, or theatre in general. But not meeting her after the show - EVER - that did seem very strange (particularly as the guy was apparently unemployed, and thus not having to worry about being in bed before midnight). I sensed that all was not well in this relationship. Yes, she was starting - in slow, sneaky, almost imperceptible steps - to grow on me. She was girl-next-door pretty, and rather bright, and vivacious and talented (she had a monologue in that particular show that was just brilliant) and amusing and... well, she was quite a package. Reddish auburn hair, too - always a bit of a weakness of mine. And then - surprising no-one except her - her worthless boyfriend did a runner. Very abruptly, with no real explanation. She was a bit of a mess for a while. This didn't seem an auspicious time to be making a declaration to her myself. I didn't want to be just her "rebound". In fact, I think I'd pretty much decided - perhaps even before the breakup - that I wasn't going to pursue this because I was running out of time, I only had a few months left in Canada. But I wanted to be a supportive friend, so I asked her out for lunch one day, to see how she was doing (I had one of those wonderful non-job jobs where I could skive off for a day almost any time I chose). We wound up spending most of the afternoon together in the Queen Mother Café, a well-known eatery on Queen St. - starting early with a light lunch and then just hanging around chatting, ordering some tea, chatting some more, ordering more tea and cakes. The talk flowed surprisingly smoothly: I prompted her to examine her emotional state, without, I hope, being too intrusive; and she talked quite a bit about the arsehole ex, without getting obsessive or overwrought. We talked about a lot of other stuff too: her past acting career, new plans for the future, favourite places to eat around town, and so on. When she finally had to leave, she said brightly, but with evident surprise and relief: "Well, that was easy!" I think she'd been concerned about how pushy I might be in pressing my affections on her. She'd probably also been worried about how she would feel going out with a man alone, about how she would adapt to the single life and dating again after being in quite a long relationship. Yep, I think she had regarded our little lunch meeting as, kind of, a date - potentially some sort of romantic reconnaissance. And perhaps I'd made it so "easy" for her by not treating it as one at all! But if it had been a 'date', it would have been hands-down the best one of my life. It had gone amazingly well. There seemed to be a rapport, a coincidence of interests... and a comfortableness together that I've seldom achieved even after much longer and deeper acquaintance with someone. So.... the hell with "Maybe it's still too early for her". Never mind "I only have two months to work on this". I was going to ask her out again. And this time, it would most definitely be a date - and, hopefully, a decisive step towards initiating a relationship. Dinner and a movie was the plan. But this one didn't go nearly so well. She seemed tense and unhappy. I fretted that she was having doubts about whether she was ready to go out with anyone else yet. It was worse than that - it transpired that the ex-boyfriend had just walked back into her life. In the most devastating possible manner. I shouldn't go into too many details, but suffice it to say that he revealed himself as one of the most feckless, duplicitous, manipulative bastards you could ever imagine, and even if I hadn't had a personal interest in the matter I would have been strongly inclined to take a metal pipe to his shins. In fact, it was probably only my personal interest that deterred me from doing so; I didn't want there to be any risk that mere jealousy was playing a part in my righteous rage against the scumbag. Unfortunately, she was still in love with him, and vulnerable to many of his conniving little tricks. She was tempted to take him back, but knew it was a very bad idea. She was in emotional turmoil. I knew I had to back out of the way a little, until she got her head straight about all of this. I tried to let her know how warmly I felt about her, that I was there for her if she needed me - whether just as a friend and confidante, or as something more. Things were looking pretty hopeless for me, though. The mess just dragged on and on, and kept on getting worse and worse. It broke my heart to see her so unhappy, but there was nothing I could do. It was perfectly understandable that she collapsed into an "all men are BASTARDS!" frame of mind for a while; but I fear I caught rather more of the fallout from that than the ex. The last time I tried to speak to her, she slammed the phone down on me - twice (though, I think, without even realising it was me at the time; she subsequently told me - in an explanatory but not really apologetic e-mail - that she had been in the midst of a climactic row with the not-quite-ex and couldn't bear any distractions.... alas, that, perhaps, is all I'd been to her all along: a pleasant distraction at first; but at the end, through no fault of my own, an unpleasant distraction). And it had all spiralled into disaster for me, the situation transformed in a trice from a very promising prospect to a raging shitstorm, during that wretched Sunday evening date. Even the title of the film we'd chosen seemed to be making mock of me, pouring salt on my wounds; as I observed in an e-mail home shortly afterwards, "It's probably not a good idea to take a girl you are falling - inappropriately - in love with to see a film called Deep Impact." (One of those comet-strike-about-to-destroy-the-Earth films. Actually, not too bad - much, much better than the Bruce Willis vehicle Armageddon, which came out about the same time. I like to think that it may have played an important part in paving the way for Barack Obama's election, since Morgan Freeman made the idea of a black President thinkable - and desirable! - for the first time in a major film.) There was a final corollary to this unhappy story, a real "Do I hear the distant laughter of God?" moment. In my last few weeks in Toronto, they started running a TV ad for the provincial lottery in which she appeared. It was shown a lot: it seemed to be on almost every time I switched on the TV - I must have seen it dozens of times in just a couple of weeks. A girl on a trolley-bus was about to check her scratch-card ticket and started fantasising about what she would do if she won. My heartbreaker was not playing the girl on the bus. They had got a similar-looking but slightly dowdier young actress to play her; no, my girl was playing the fantasy - beautiful girl driving an open-topped Ferrari. We only saw her from behind, wind streaming through her gorgeous auburn hair.... as she drove away. Yes, yes, I get the message.

An excuse for "an early night"

Since it seems that I am now unlikely to have any more work for at least the next two weeks.... this could become my only pretext for heading home at "a sensible time".   Oh dear.  December's always a bit of an assault course - for the liver and the psyche.

Froog Solutions (6)

Froog's solution to... the annual torment of the perpetual tickly cough we know as 'Beijing throat'.   Self-medicate - with nice whiskeys. (It may not do much for the discomfort in the throat, but it makes me feel better.  And helps me sleep!)

Bon mot for the week

"Old and young, we are all on our last cruise."

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Improv

I'd decided against joining the foreign journalists' Christmas bash at The Bookworm on grounds of cost (and value). I'd run into Abigail Washburn at the Tag Team Records party on Friday, and learned that she was playing a Saturday night gig at Yugong Yishan. That was very tempting - but then I remembered the misery of the last time she played there: the acoustics are so poor, and the background hubbub from the bar/lounge area at the rear of the room so loud that acoustic bands (and even some of the quieter electronic ones) get drowned out; Abby performed there a couple of years ago with some Chinese traditional musicians, and they were struggling to keep playing over the din, they couldn't hear themselves. Wretched. I gave up and left. So.... I didn't fancy suffering that experience again (even though the sound system is somewhat improved at YY these days, the background noise problem isn't). Luga has been advertising another of his Chinglishly titled 'Football Watch' parties, since there are a number of big match-ups in the English Premier League this weekend. Again tempting - but no early kickoffs on Saturday, alas. I could have sworn Luga had published a programme of games spread throughout the evening - maybe he's showing re-runs on Sunday?? Ginkgo was having an "Arabian night", with a guest chef and belly dancers. That sounded like it might be fun (and it is a conveniently short walk from my home), but their erratic marketing may have let them down again - the place was near deserted when I wandered past mid-evening. So, I was rather at a loose end.... until.... .... I discovered that Mao Mao Chong was closing down (I'd met the owners a few times at 12 Square Metres; they're friends of the folks there). Well, moving out, I should say. They've found new, larger premises just off Jiaodaokou Nandajie, and are aiming to relaunch by the end of the week (so, another party on Friday....). Their initial venue has been on the aspiring-to-be-trendy Wudaoying Hutong; a curious concept - a t-shirt boutique that also has a small bar.... and a very fine selection of unusual spirits and imported beers. (Their new place, I gather, is going to emphasise the bar aspect more than the t-shirts, and is also going to be a pizzeria. Proper pizza, just off Nanluoguxiang??? Now, that I'm looking forward to.) Their idea last night was that it was going to be a pain-in-the-arse to carry all their stock over to the new place, so they would invite a few friends over to try to drink up as much of it as possible. Half-price (or rather less than half-price) on everything all night. Oh dear. Even I was feeling quite giddy, after 7 or 8 strong ales (one easily loses the knack of drinking proper beer in this country). One of my friends drank about two-thirds of a bottle of whiskey, and then forgot his own name. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..... Maybe I would have been better off with midnight football or inaudible folk music or belly dancers....

Price resistance

I think I'm going to pass on tonight's Christmas Party for the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China.   Feeling a bit pooped after a more-than-usually gruelling week.  Ill, too.  And it seems as though none of my friends are going, either.  I realise, in fact, that I'm not that well connected in that crowd any more - there was a big rotation of personnel after the Olympics, and the journos I knew best have all now left.  I suppose I should be starting over and making new contacts... but I just haven't got the energy at the moment.     Mostly, though, I'm put off by the price tag.  I suspect others of my more impecunious friends will have been as well.  In fact, anyone who cares about value-for-money is likely to be given pause.   200 kuai??  (250, if you're not up-to-date with your subscription.)   That's a big chunk of change.   And for what?  If it were a completely open bar and food were laid on, it would be an appealing deal.  (They had a summer party a year or two ago on the roof deck at Obi-Wan, where there was a completely open bar and a decent buffet barbecue for several hours.... for 100 or 150 kuai, I think.  Good times!)  But this time, it seems, only beer and house wine are on the open bar - no spirits or mixed drinks at all.  Tsingtaos and house wine are pretty cheap at The Bookworm anyway; and usually they offer a small additional discount (on mixed drinks too!) for FCCC events.  At the Worm's own 'murder mystery' panto last month, there was a completely open bar for a couple of hours (well, not the top shelf, of course; but I wound a few regular blended whiskies into me) for only 80 kuai.   On this occasion, it seems, we are being asked to pay merely for exclusive use of The Bookworm.  And I'm afraid that just ain't worth it.   Most open bar or all-you-can-drink deals around Beijing (or, as the Chinglish often has it, 'Open Mouth' deals!) these days are in the 80-100 kuai range; some are as little as 50 kuai.  If things get much more expensive than that, you do start asking yourself if it's going to give value.   I very seldom spend more than 200 kuai in one night.  Not unless I'm drinking spirits or cocktails, anyway.  Given that a stubbie of Tsingtao is usually only 15 kuai (and would probably be reduced to 10 or 12 for an event like this), I'm thinking I'd have to drink something like 20 bottles of that fizzy crap to "make a profit".  Could I do that?  Well, maybe - but it would be a stretch.  And I'm not sure I'd want to try.   No, I'd inevitably feel the need to mix my drinking up with a few whiskies or G&Ts, which I'd apparently have to pay extra for.  And no food either??  So, add in dinner beforehand.  And a taxi home.  That's going to be a 400 or 500 kuai night out.  Er, NO, thank you.   A properly open bar (and maybe a little bit of free finger food) would make all the difference here; if I could chug a Jameson's or two each hour, I'd be a happy camper.  (And The Worm wouldn't lose money: a bottle only costs a little over 100rmb; less, if you've got a good wholesale deal.  And I'm not going to get through more than half a bottle, even if I'm really going for it!)     I can't help feeling that The Bookworm is being a little bit greedy here.  Saturdays are usually a bit of a dead night for them.  And I'm sure their average punter spends much less than 200 kuai per visit, even if they order food.   Or maybe they're afraid of the notorious thirst of journalists??   That may be the case; but if so, I think they've exaggerated, miscalculated that risk.  I mean, for that sort of money (wholesale cost) you could provide 2 bottles of whiskey OR 2 or 3 (or maybe even 4) bottles of semi-decent wine OR 3 or 4 bottles of gin or vodka OR 4 barrels of cheap local beer.   Not even a journalist can drink that much.

"... but some of us are looking at the stars..."

A  bitterly cold night in Beijing tonight (allegedly only -5 C, but feels much colder).  However, the fug has lifted, and we have one of the best starfields I've seen in a long, long time.

Froog Solutions (5)

Froog's solution to the problem of not being able to decide which of two women at the bar he is more attracted to...   Talk to neither of them.       Ah, celibacy - it's hard work, I'm telling you.  You need craft, dedication.     [Dr Manhattan's solution:  "What, you didn't ask them for a threesome, right off the bat?  No, really - you didn't ask??"   "Engagingly direct" or "uncouth" - it's a fine line with the Dr.]

HBH 161

A change in the world Relief balances despair News of her leaving     One of the sirens who has so thwarted my desires and sapped my confidence over the past few years has decided to quit Beijing - partly, she tells me, because she can't find a man.  I fear she is sadly misguided if she thinks she will have more luck in rural England!  And, as it happens, she has men, plenty of men (not just me!) falling at her feet here in Beijing, but she fails to notice.  Her problem is not 'the scene' here but the lack of space in her life for a man; and her failure to look for, or inability to see the eligible men in the community around her.  Silly, silly girl.   I should be gladdened at my release from the near-daily reminder that one person finds me the the most unfanciable man on the planet - but damn, I will miss her all the same.

The PARTY season is upon us!

I had been a bit uncertain as to when the great annual Christmas party for local indie record label Tag Team would be this year.  Usually a Saturday, but one of the listings magazines confusingly had it down for both Friday and Sunday!  A three-day party this year??  An appealing but unlikely thought.  A quick check on their website reveals that it is in fact on a Friday this year: tomorrow, at 2 Kolegas.  An excellent line-up of bands, and much other frivolity.   And then Saturday is the bash for the Foreign Correspondents' Club (of which I have become a regular hanger-on in the past two or three years).  And then next week....   Oh, god - it's wall-to-wall parties for a while....

"A Brazilian? I don't even know how many that is...."

We are set to continue our spree of round-the-world gourmandising tonight.... with a 'Brazilian' barbecue. We do not expect any genuine Brazilians to be involved in the cooking or serving of our repast. (Tibetans dressed as gauchos is the norm in Beijing's numerous cod-Brazilian eateries.) But we do expect meat. Lots of meat.

The veil pierced?

I had a worrying encounter the other day.  Someone purported to recognise me as this blog's author (well, he didn't name this blog specifically - but how many blogs about drinking in Beijing are there, really?).   Worse still, it was a bar owner.  The owner of a bar I was thinking of writing about.     And now I feel inhibited.    I don't want to receive friendlier service or complimentary drinks if I write something nice.  [Hey, yes, it's always nice to receive that kind of special attention - but I'd prefer it to be just because I'm a good customer, rather than because I gave a place a favourable mention on the Internet.  And I really should point out to any bar owners thinking of trying to get a plug on here that - on a good day - this blog is only read by about 20 people, the great majority of whom are old college buddies of mine who do not live in China.  So, my promotional value to you is just about ZERO.]    Even more importantly, I don't want to suffer complaints and resentment if I write something unfavourable.  And that is, in almost all cases, far more likely: I am by nature a critic, a nit-picker, a fault-finder.  I am also a humourist - and it is damned difficult to make jokes about good stuff.  So, even with my very favourite bars, you may find as much bad as good in my comments.  [The Pool Bar, outbreaks of fake booze and deteriorating condition of the pool table; Amilal, lack of bar vibe and preponderance of poncey Europeans among the clientele; Jianghu, rising prices and compromised ambience after moving the bar into the courtyard; 12 Square Metres, eccentricities of the music playlist and obstinate refusal to lower the price of Harbin pijiu; Jiangjinjiu, often painfully overcrowded on gig nights and absolutely no ventilation; and so on and so on.]   If the proprietors of Paddy O'Shea's or Danger Doyle's or Drei Kronen ever discovered who I was, I'd be a dead man.     So, this is a worrying development.  And I wonder who might have been responsible for compromising my cloak of anonymity.  There are only about half a dozen of the Beijing laowai bloggers' community who know me, only a couple who know me well; and I don't think any of them would grass me up.   The only person who has cracked the "Who is Froog?" mystery by deduction alone is JK, the boss of 12 Square Metres - but that was relatively easy for him, because he doesn't have that many regular customers, and I don't think anyone else has written about his bar online (as much as I have!).  I can rely on his discretion.   So, how did my secret leak?   I shall find out.  My spies are everywhere.  Inquisitors and assassins have been despatched.  The blabbermouth will suffer an excruciating fate... pour décourager les autres.

Don't be a Chinese child

Today is a sad day - the 15th anniversary of the Karamay theatre fire, one of the worst man-made disasters in China's recent history, which left 325 people dead, most of them young schoolchildren. I've written about it today on Froogville, too.

This is the very cool Chinese folk singer Zhou Yunpeng (who quite often hangs out at favourite neighbourhood music bar, Jianghu) performing a particularly savage piece called Don't Be A Chinese Child, which references the Karamay tragedy along with a number of other notorious stories of the abuse or death of children. [It's quite a long clip; the first song is the Karamay one.]


http://www.youmaker.com/video/sv?id=073f9470162b49feaf7c8686a492bd03001

Here's an English translation of the lyrics (via the Wikipedia article on the Karamay fire; unfortunately, the translator is uncredited):

Don't Ever Be A Chinese Child

Don't be a child of Karamay,
whose burns would scorch a mother's heart.
Don't be a child of Salan Town
who finds no rest beneath dark waters.
Don't be a child of Chengdu
who waits for mum's return
after her week-long binge.

Chorus (children laughing)

Don't be a child of Henan
where AIDS cackles in the blood.
Don't be a child of Shanxi
where mines turn dads
into baskets of coal.

Chorus (laughter)

Don't be a child of Karamay
Don't be a child of Salan Town
Don't be a child of Chengdu
Don't be a child of Henan...

Don't ever be a Chinese child,
or the grown-ups will
eat you when they starve.

At least in the wild, mountain goats
are fierce enough to protect their kids.

Don't ever be a Chinese child,
because mommy and daddy are cowards;
when the theatre caught fire,
they steeled their hearts
and let the cadres exit first.

12 Square Metres - The Movie

For those of you curious to see the little bar I've been banging on about so much over the past 15 months - 12 Square Metres, "Beijing's smallest bar" - this short film about the place was recently posted on the Chinese Web portal 163.com.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any facility for embedding the video directly in my blog here - but I do encourage you to click on the link: it's a charming little feature that captures much of the magic of our favourite watering-hole.  Highlights include Li Mei, our friendly hostess, mixing up the 'house cocktail', a Beijing Sky, and the rather gorgeous presenter tentatively trying the 'house snack', an Aussie meat pie.  The only thing it's lacking is the wombily cosy gloom we so love about the place.  The film was shot on a bright summer's afternoon, so it misses the nighttime ambience.  Ah well, the other thing it's missing, of course, is JK, the camera-shy owner, who was grumpily skulking over the road throughout the filming.  Oh yes, and it's missing myself and Dr Manhattan and the other regulars too.  Not so much custom during the daytime.  Only one actual customer appears, and it's not anyone I know. A fine introduction to the bar, though: if you're outside of Beijing and can't visit in person, this is almost as good as being there.

Bon mot for the week

"A promise is a promise. Just because I made it drunk doesn't mean I won't stand by it sober."

Froog

Swooning again

A First Anniversary Party at Ginkgo last night, with chansons from The Sexiest Woman In Beijing - the lovely Marie-Claude Lebel (on whom I have had a hopeless crush for... oh, four or five years now...).   The music aside, I found little cause to celebrate.  Poor old Ginkgo is a bit of a car-crash of a business, a muddled and misguided concept of a bar/restaurant which succeeds as neither.  It's something of a surprise that it's kept limping on for a full year; I wouldn't expect it to make it to a second anniversary.

The circuit

Last night, we welcomed Dr Manhattan back from his brief holiday.   After eight days in Thailand, he was even more sensitive than usual to the chill of the Beijing winter.  And with those bitter winds driving down from the north-west, I too - Arctic Gnome though I am (a disparaging nickname from my college days, suggested by my propensity to continue going about in my shirtsleeves even in the depths of an Oxford winter; well, the depths of autumn, anyway) - was finding myself reluctant to expose myself to the outdoor environment for more than a few minutes at a time.   So.... we found ourselves improvising a classic Nanluoguxiang bar crawl, ducking inside for a quick 'warmer' every few hundred yards.  Setting out from 12 Square Metres, we were wilting badly by the time we got to Salud and had to pop in for one of their flavoured rums.  Then we looked in at Reef for a quick whiskey (their pours seem to have got a bit stingy; but at least this occasioned a lively conversation on the merits of free pouring over the use of a measure).  And then likewise at the Pool Bar.  From there, but a short stagger to Amigo for some hearty comfort food.  (The food at our neighbourhood Mexican joint seems to have improved somewhat over my last visit: the rice on this occasion was moist and fluffy, rather than desiccated by multiple reheating, as in the past.  One of my companions was aggrieved that his refried beans had been omitted from his plate, but this oversight was eventually rectified after introducing the staff to the menu.  And my chimichangas were over-fried, and contained precious little chicken.  The rest of the meal, though - and we had a lot - was mostly pretty good; the jalapeno poppers especially so.  The margaritas, alas, are less sour, more sweet than before, though still impressively strong.  I imagine they have given up using real lime juice and - like everyone else - are now making do with the much-easier-to-source lime cordial.)  From there, an even shorter stagger to the cosy environs of Amilal (and a chance to boost depleted endorphin levels by playing with the kittens for a while).  After all that - and with the wind now at our backs - we were sufficiently proofed against the weather to brave the rather longer walk down to Jianghu (where the brewed-on-site Gleckes is a prime attraction these days: I'm not usually a fan of the weissbier style, but this is a very tasty beer, and quite a bargain at only 20 or 25rmb for a half-litre glass).  And thence back to 12 Square Metres, completing the circle.   A very fine peregrination indeed.  I'm not sure that I've ever done ALL of my favourite bars in one evening before.   The walk back home afterwards must have been absolutely freezing, but I remember almost nothing of it.

There goes the neighbourhood.... 1), 2), 3) and 4)

It seems there's never any good news from Nanluoguxiang. Since this little street (barely 15 minutes' walk away from where I live) is home to a number of my favourite bars and restaurants, suggestions of imminent disruption and change are most unwelcome to me. But that's all we ever seem to get. 1) Well, the emergence of Nanluoguxiang in its present form was itself a kind of cultural vandalism, and not something I felt very comfortable with at first. As the street got prettied up over the last three or four years, and progressively taken over by coffee shops and boutiques, almost all the old traditional businesses (the impressively dilapidated tofu factory in the middle of the street is the last survivor, I think), xiaomaibu and hole-in-the-wall restaurants were driven away. We lost our Kebab Queen, a favourite Muslim hangout; and many more besides. However, now that we've got used to the transformation, we're starting to feel a certain affection for the place again. The widening and repaving of the street has given it an appealing atmosphere, ideal for summer evening strolls (if only they would properly pedestrianize it, that is!). And amongst the crop of new bars to open down there are two of my great favourites, Salud and 12 Square Metres. 2) Then they decided to build a new subway station down at the south end of the street. Most of the bottom block has been demolished, not just on NLG itself, but all along Dianmen Dongdajie, to facilitate the construction of a new east-west line. So, we face two years or so of dust, noise and eyesore. And then a further massive influx of yuppies and tourists (as if we don't have enough already!!). At present, the construction site stops just short of my dear 12 Square Metres (making it the first bar on the street, if you're coming up from the Qing gate at the southern end). However, there are worrying rumours that the original plans for the subway station are being expanded and that the next block north might go as well. (I haven't seen the 'latest' version of the projected Beijing subway map; the planners seem to change their minds every few months, and a number of radically different maps are in circulation on the Internet. However, one rumour I've heard is that Nanluoguxiang South is going to be a double station, with two new lines intersecting there. If that's so, it almost certainly will displace 12 Square Metres. And you'd think that, logically [not that logic ever seems to have much to do with the way they do things in China!] the other new line would run more-or-less north-south - which might wipe out, or at least cause serious disruption to, a large part of the street and/or its surrounding hutongs.) 3) Two or three months ago I was walking down Nanluoguxiang from the north end (where I live) towards 12 Square Metres and was shocked to discover yet more demolition in progress at the bottom of the street. For a heart-stopping moment I thought that the threatened expansion of the subway station works was going ahead, and that my best beloved bar had been chai'd with no notice at all. In fact, it was just the landlord of the restaurant next door hatching a half-baked scheme to rebuild his property with a second storey to try to earn a higher rent. He probably did this without permission, and work on the proposed new structure seems to have been suspended. Being sandwiched between two piles of rubble doesn't exactly enhance the appeal of my favourite bar (unless you go for that Sarajevo chic; some people do, I suppose); but we soldier on as best we can. 4) And now, the worst news of all: according to a worrying article in the English-language state newspaper China Daily last week, the dingbats in the local government who "manage" the Nanluoguxiang area are dissatisfied with the area's development and have conceived a brand new plan for it. (Almost everyone else seems very happy with the way things are now: landlords are making out like bandits; proprietors of businesses are mostly making enough money to satisfy their bandit landlords; and the area has become a prime destination for both tourists and locals. But, like I said, these CCP goons who run the show are complete dingbats. Or, as my good friend The British Cowboy would have it, assclowns.) This plan involves limiting the number of bars and restaurants ("Because fun is BAD, m'kay??"), trying to flush the small, "family-run" businesses out of the area (because these guys don't make any real money; or, more to the point, they don't pay very much tax!), and ploughing a supposed 13,000,000 RMB into redeveloping the place as a "culture-themed" street. I suppose they envision something like Shanghai's tackily fake-Imperial nightlife zone, Xintiandi. And I'm quite sure that at least half of that 13 million will wind up in the pockets of the arseholes who dreamt this scheme up. There goes the neighbourhood, indeed. If the China Daily piece can be believed, this 'master plan' is supposed to come to fruition by 2011 - which presumably means that the purging of the street as we know it now will begin some time next year. Unless someone has the sense to quash this ludicrous proposal (and you figure, once it's been trumpeted in the state-run media, it's got the green light), we could be living through the last few months of Nanluoguxiang as we know it. Depressing times.

HBH 160

Too busy, too poor; Endless pretexts for delay; Overawed by her.     I have met a woman with the most amazing eyes, but.... yes, dammit, I am too timid to ask her out.  Confidence, like a tree, withers in a long drought; and my drought here in China has been very, very long.

Job done

Well, last night I successfully completed my personal challenge to drink in 12 Square Metres every single night for a week (and on 9 days out of the last 10... and 12 days out of the last 14...). So.... I really have no reason to go back there now.... unless I can come up with another bizarre and arbitrary goal. I think I probably can. I have something in mind already....

Traffic Report - the blog stats for November

Well, despite the distractions of the big MOVE, last month was another bumper month for my blog output. There were 56 posts and around 18,000 words on Froogville. There were 41 posts and 10,000 words on Barstool Blues. I really am trying to cut down, you know. Trying. (An improved Internet connection and a desperate shortage of work this month probably won't help...) Nothing very exciting happening with the traffic figures, except that for some reason, just recently, nearly all of the visitors to both blogs have been emanating from the USA. Odd.

Great Dating Disasters (4)

Reminiscing last week about the Bus Bar (second version) and the good ol' days of the "Devil's Triangle" (in the old Gongti Beilu car park) brought to mind another of my Great Dating Disasters. Well, I suppose it wasn't so much a 'date' as an accidental amorous encounter. In Yugong Yishan (the old, good one) for a gig one mid-week night four years or so ago, I happened to bump into a rather gorgeous lady lawyer I'd just recently met. We were both rather drunk, and she was getting very flirtatious. Great Odin's Raven! That kind of thing just doesn't happen to me very often: someone I fancy turns out to fancy me; we meet by chance, without having any of the anxiety of trying to set up a formal 'date'; and she makes all the running. I was thinking I'd died and gone to heaven. So unused was I to such a happy combination of circumstances that I made a near-fatal blunder almost immediately: as soon as the gig finished, I said, "Hey, let's go to the Bus Bar." Was it inexperience? Or recklessness? Or a perverse sense of fun? Or some obscure self-destructive impulse? Whyever would I have supposed that a mature, glamorous, professional woman would enjoy a pit of sleazerie like the Bus Bar? I think I had tried to explain to her what it was like beforehand, had given her the opportunity to opt out - and she said she was willing to give it a try. I loved her for her daring, her openness to new experience, her lack of prissiness. Maybe my powers of description had let me down on this occasion. Or her powers of imagination had. Or maybe she thought I was just joking. The reality of the Bus Bar - on a particularly bustling early-Thursday-morning - was obviously far, far below her very worst expectations. She responded to the spectacle with a look of pure horror which haunts me to this day. What had I missed out? Windowless, claustrophobic, undecorated hellhole? Walls clammy with condensed sweat? Thick clouds of cigarette smoke scented with ganja? Packed to the rafters with African drug dealers? No, no, I'm pretty sure I'd mentioned all of that. All part of the place's distinctive 'charm'. But they were playing some good music on the speakers, and the place was buzzing. She gamely agreed to stay for one drink. I left her unattended for a couple of minutes or so, while I did a quick tour of the bar greeting friends. When I came back, she was deep in conversation with a huge Nigerian who was apparently very keen to develop some kind of import/export business with her (I rather think this was just a euphemism for sex, but she seemed to be taking him at his word). I managed to extricate us from that situation without causing too much awkwardness. And we left soon afterwards. Yes, in fact, this night can probably be accounted one of my (rare, rare) great dating successes. But I did come perilously close to blowing my chances by succumbing to the siren call of the dive bar. There are fairly few women who can even tolerate, much less appreciate the dive bar experience; and this lady was not one of them. It was pure good luck for me that her gratitude for being 'rescued' outweighed her resentment at being taken there in the first place. There's a Gary Larson cartoon I particularly love (but have never been able to find on the Net): Two big sharks in the shallows just off a desert island are watching a swimmer scramble up the beach to safety. One suddenly remarks to the other, "Hey, our dorsal fins are showing! I wonder how many times that's given us away?" It's a telling metaphor, I feel. With me, the great overlooked failing in my sex life is a tendency to let the possibility of a good bar experience distract me from closing the deal. Repeat after me: When a woman starts indicating a willingness to go to bed with you, do not suggest a last drink on the way home. Especially not in a dive bar.

Pursuing another record...

Oh, I do like to set myself these arbitrary little challenges!! Last week, being in the throes of moving and thus with my apartment (both my apartments: for four or five days I had overlapping leases to facilitate the move) so full of boxes of packed possessions that I could barely even see the TV (and had packed away all of the DVDs I might have wanted to watch, anyway).... and so, I found myself heading out to a bar every evening. My typical first (and often only) stop was, of course, my beloved 12 Square Metres. And this Sunday, I was thinking to myself that I'd now been in every single night for 7 straight days. But then I recalled that on the previous Wednesday I'd gone to "The Pakistani" with The Choirboy, preparatory to attending the Koryo Tours 'Winter Party' at Tun... and had then gone to a friend's birthday gathering at Jianghu... and had then gone for a late nightcap at Amilal... but had entirely missed out poor old 12 Square that evening. So, if I'm going to set that every-night-for-a-week record, I really have to go back there for the next two nights as well.... Oh well, it's not as if it's any great hardship!

A nasty moment

On Saturday, I hooked up with The Chairman (and his brother, Terrible Tes) for the first time in ages.   We dined at a favourite little Hunan place; but, arriving in the midst of the early-evening rush, we got stuck with the very last table, right inside the extremely draughty double swing-doors.  I self-sacrificingly took the seat right next to the door (it was a bitterly cold night, and my companions, slightly senior to me, are more sensitive to this).   So, when my chair suddenly broke - as Chinese-made chairs are wont to do - it pitched me, more sideways than backwards, through a plate-glass swing door (luckily, it swung fairly easily!) and down a steep flight of cement steps on to the street outside.   A nightclub bouncer could not have done a better job.   It was fortunate that I was in an ideal state of inebriation to minmise the chance of serious injury: still alert enough to roll, and protect my head with my hands; but relaxed enough to slither and bounce very yieldingly.   I was physically completely unscathed; though my dignity, of course, had taken yet another battering!   It was one of the most disturbing spills I've had in quite a while, though...  I hope that's seen off my ration of bad luck for the year.