I'm not finished with that yet

Anywhere you go in China, there are going to be wrinkles with the service.

The lasses (and lads) at Fubar, for example, charming though they are and trained to a much better standard than usual, are still prone to occasional lapses into unwelcome Chinese foibles - the girls stroking each other's hair, for example (not great for hygiene). And last week (on a day when neither of the bosses was around) it took me about 5 minutes to get anyone's attention to order another drink because they were all lollygagging down at the far end of the bar, taking each other's photos in Christmas hats, and such.

And the thing that really bugs me..... they have an irksome tendency to remove the drinks menu from you as soon as you've ordered. (And surreptitiously, without asking you!)

It's quite a long menu, with a number of unusual or unique drinks. Making choices there is not easy. It takes time and deliberation. Moreover, I am a quick drinker. Look, people, I'm going to be ordering something else in 15 or 20 minutes, and I'm quite likely to spend a good portion of that time reading the menu - please leave it.

I could understand it if they only had a few copies of it and they were busy. But they have plenty of copies, and the place is seldom that busy when I look in. What is this obsession with sneaking the menu away every time?



Danger Doyle's, of course, manages to go one worse (yes, I ventured back there the other day - just to reaffirm my dire first impressions of the place). They appear to only have one copy of their drinks list, and they really don't like to give it out to people - they look shocked and surprised if you ask to see it. Now, they have a very long list of drinks, especially the list of rare, imported bottled beers (ridiculously long, unwieldy); and the prices aren't on display anywhere else (I don't see the problem with having a board displaying prices [of the most common drinks, at least] and/or tags on the taps and the bottles - but nowhere in Beijing does it; and it's a pain-in-the-arse having to ask the price of everything serially!): Doyle's should really be keeping umpteen copies of that drinks list - and handing one to punters as soon as they come in.

(One brownie point for them, though. I went in there to watch a football game over the weekend, and found the place nearly deserted [no surprise - it's a shitbox, in a mall]; but they did at least accede to my request to turn on the commentary for the game.... and to turn the annoying music down, though not off. That gives them a huge edge over most other Beijing bars - particularly The Den, where any request to change anything about the music or the TVs is treated as an act of lèse-majesté against Paul.)



There's a similar reluctance to let you hang on to the (full of diverting reading matter) menu at The Drugstore. Is this becoming a universal vice? Presumably they're worried about running short if there's a sudden rush. Odd that this should be particularly a problem in places that rarely have much of a rush!

Two simple tips, guys:

1) Print more menus.

2) If you must have your staff restore menus to the stack on the bar as regularly and swiftly as possible.... at least get them to ask customers if it's OK to remove them, rather than just whisking them out from under your nose.

It's not rocket science.

And later....

The final text message of a strange night:

"In Amilal. Alone. Listening to Nick Cave. Ah, melancholy!"

More txt msg wistfulness

My friend Leather Britches, only just returned from Europe, still on his way in from the airport, deflected my entreaty to join me for a drink tonight with the words....

"Afraid I can't tonight. Have to meet girlfriend."


My reply:

"Me too. Any idea where I can find one?"

Dark days

Dr Manhattan and I swung by The Drugstore (as we like to call Apothecary) last Monday, and found it CLOSED.

This seems an odd policy, especially when the place is new, fighting to establish itself. And it has been drawing reasonable numbers on almost every night of the week, from what I've seen. The Dr and I were not the only ones in a grump about finding the place dark on a Monday. (I suppose this is one of the drawbacks of only having one barman at the moment. The great advantage of the George & Echo double-act in their early days, at Midnight and so on, was that they could swap shifts around or take alternate days off in the slow first half of the week.)

Last Wednesday, the Bar Uno hotdog stall half-way down Nanluoguxiang - a rather too regular refuelling stop for me over the past couple of months! - was also inexplicably inoperative.

Shortly afterwards, I discovered that Salud had decided to discontinue its Wednesday live music nights until after the holidays. (Why??? They're still drawing in pretty fair crowds, despite the holiday absentees. Maybe it's that all the bands have gone away....)

Things get shit in this town around Christmas.

Fubar

I've been meaning to write about Fubar for a while, but somehow keep on failing to get around to it. (And I've been meaning to ask the owners for my royalties, but somehow keep on failing to get around to it.)

There are a lot of things about it that don't quite work for me (not the least of which is that it's in the Sanlitun area, and I hardly ever go there), but it is the best of the year's new bar openings, and is enticing me in whenever I am over in that part of town (an ideal pre- or post-Bookworm drop-in).

Its USP, of course, is that it's a "speakeasy" - concealed entrance, no publicity, strictly a word-of-mouth kind of deal. Now, in general, I find the speakeasy craze which has overrun America in the past few years to be pretentious and irritating (you may remember my diatribe this summer against the would-be super-trendy PX cocktail lounge in Alexandria, VA): usually the pretence of 'exclusivity' is just being used to jack up the prices to stupid levels. Here in Beijing, though, I am willing to indulge the concept, to welcome the novelty - even a certain quaintness - of it. And Fubar's prices are not unreasonable.

The considerable pluses include the drinks list (all genuine booze, and a range of different brands for the standard spirits; a small but good selection of single malts; a short but good list of classic cocktails, with a few surprisingly effective inventions of their own [that one where the unlikely combination of Tsingtao and orange juice ends up tasting like grapefruit is very more-ish!]), the prices (much keener than their chief competition, Apothecary and Q, even at the regular tariff; decidedly alluring on 'happy hour'), the music (played at an appropriate volume, and [mostly - there have been aberrations] classic jazz and blues), the friendly welcome of the owners Chad and Kevin, and (yes - sexism alert) cute female bar staff in neat black uniforms.

Ah yes, the Happy Hour. It's not completely happy - variable and non-standard price reductions, considerably less than 50% off - but still, the discounts are large enough to make it the most economical place to drink in the neighbourhood early evening. Their standard Happy Hour runs until 9pm, but they've recently introduced an ingenious 'Headhunter' promotion (for the slow first half of the week) where they'll extend it by an extra half-hour for every ten people in the bar at the end of the regular discount period - a good excuse to phone up your mates and get them to join you. Chad has been very generous in his headcounts, and the last couple of times I was in on a Tuesday night, the Happy Hour went to 10pm or later, even though there were really only a handful of people in. Also, I hear they've recently started opening in the afternoon (at 2pm or 3pm?), with Happy Hour prices all the way through till 9pm (they used to only open from 6pm, and there was never anybody there before 7pm).

On the downside, though..... there's the unappealing location - hard to find, inside the Worker's Stadium complex, quite a little trek from anywhere else you might be visiting in the neighbourhood (and, of course, it's been subject to numerous hassles and forced closures this year during rehearsals for the October 1st celebrations; I hope the new football season won't be similarly disruptive). The decor - nice muted colours, but very bare: they need some soft furnishings in there, and something on the walls, even if it's just a FU (福) symbol. The light array over the bar - I think they've toned down the brightness a bit on my last few visits, but it's still a bit overpowering near the bar (you can see the neon strips blazing through the shade); and some people find the design of the lightshade itself (a huge sort of Art Deco stepped pyramid affair) a bit unsettling, looming over you like a sword of Damocles (it doesn't bother me, but I've heard it said). And the bar itself - that, I'm afraid, is my main gripe: it is way too high for standing or sitting comfortably at (it's almost at armpit-height - and I'm a tall guy); it creates too large a barrier between you and the staff, it's impersonalizing (you can hardly see the diminutive barmaids over the top of it); and, worst of all, it creates the problem that you can't see your drinks being made (I think I trust Chad and Kevin and their staff to be using full pours; but even so, in Beijing there isn't usually that trust, and you get used to being allowed to watch what and how much is going into your drink; having the drinks mixed on a low counter behind the bar rather than on the bar itself seems surreptitious, underhanded).

Fubar deserves to succeed - it's a cosy little spot, serving good drinks at sensible prices; and Chad and Kevin are a likeable pair who are really committed to trying to do things right. That bar, though, is for me a big, big problem. I would be inclined to rip it out and replace it with something a good 6" or 8" lower. Either that or (possibly simpler, but apt to create a trip-and-fall hazard) build a platform, a raised cement step on the customer side. (Hmm, that still wouldn't solve the problem of the staff not being able to see over the bar, or mix the drinks on it; you'd need to build up their side of the bar too - probably by at least a foot. No, I think basically that bar has to go.)

They only opened up over the summer (when I - and most of laowai Beijing - was away), and then had a pretty miserable September and October of random closures imposed by the government. You might say they've only been properly open and running smoothly for 8 or 10 weeks. The custom seems to have been growing slowly but steadily during that time, and I'm told they've had a few very big weekends (I wouldn't know; I much prefer having the place almost to myself on a quiet midweek early evening). I wish the guys luck in building on that success in the year ahead. But I hope they change the bar.

A bon mot for the week

"I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing."

Pat Conroy (1945- )

Sometimes a song just ambushes you, doesn't it? Leaps out from behind the door and starts beating you with a baseball bat....

Little Frank (A Christmas tale)

The recent arrival of a perky little stray pup in my favourite bar has reminded me of my first Christmas here in Beijing (another reminiscence over on Froogville - I'm in nostalgic mood!).

It was a glum time for me: my mother died suddenly, just a fortnight before the holiday, and I hadn't been able to go home for the funeral. I hadn't wanted to share my grief with a bunch of colleagues only a few of whom were friends, and none of whom I'd known much more than three months, so it was all bottled up inside. I was emotionally a bit of a mess.

More than ever, I depended on the reliable haven of the 'Legitimate Businessmen's Club', the grotty but cosy little neighbourhood restaurant that was my almost nightly resort during my first year here. In the run-up to Christmas, I was hanging out there every night - with my two closest buddies 'Big Frank' and 'The Chairman' ('The Three Amigos'), and the familiar gaggle of Chinese regulars.

And during this period there was one notable addition to the usual dramatis personae - an adorably cute little puppy. It appeared that the restaurant's owner had agreed to look after it for a friend, but it didn't receive a lot of affection from him or his staff (we worried at first that the poor little guy was intended for the cooking pot!), nor from any of the other regulars. In fact, he was a nervous little critter, very shy of going near anyone. Frank and Tony made brief efforts to win him over, but he was suspicious and aloof.

But me - I've always had that 'dog thing'. Supposedly unstable and dangerous dogs break into my bedroom..... and lick my face (ring any bells, Mothman?). It was much the same with the pup at The Legit - he warmed to me instantly..... tugging playfully at my trouser-legs, and soon graduating to sitting on my lap (a sign of honour he wouldn't consider bestowing on anyone else). 'Warmed' is probably the key consideration here. It was bitterly cold that winter; the restaurant was draughty; the tiled floor was freezing cold, and I don't think the poor little dog even had a blanket to lie on - he was shivering miserably most of the time.... unless he was sleeping in my lap. I often felt bad about displacing him when I finally had to go home - at 3am or 4am.

He didn't appear to have a name - at least, no-one in the restaurant was using one. So, in honour of my burly bruiser of a drinking chum, whom our Chinese colleagues had dubbed da fa lan ke, we called the adorable little doggy xiao fa lan ke - Little Frank.

Unconditional affection, so simply given and received - it's a wonderful thing. Pets are such a tonic for the emotional and mental health. I really think that little dog saved me from a breakdown.

I was terribly upset when he disappeared again a couple of weeks later. I hope he went back to his owners, and not into the pot.

A lack of Christmas cheer

I have the peanuts and the small sweet oranges
But no tinsel or Christmas tree
I have the bowl of candies
But no holly or mistletoe
I have DVDs of slushy films
But no ‘Christmas Specials’ on TV
I have the self-gifted bottle of whisky
But no other presents
I have the empty spaces
Where my family used to be

Elements of a fairly good Christmas Day

1) A BIG meal
Not quite as good as this year's Thanksgiving repast (very niggardly with some of the vegetables; and disappointing puds - and no stuffing: what happened to the stuffing??), but a very generous helping of turkey - producing an appropriate holiday bloat.

2) An unexpected piece of 'good luck'
I won a ticket (quite a high-value ticket) to an acrobatics show in a Lucky Draw at the restaurant. I'm not that enthused about the show (and it's a bummer that it's only one ticket - I don't fancy going on my own!), but just being lucky gave a needed lift to my sagging spirits.

3) A friendly welcome (and a cat)
This was the coldest Christmas Day I have known here, and my companions and I were desperate to find somewhere to shelter from the lacerating winds. Unfortunately, most of our regular haunts - like Amilal and the Pool Bar - aren't open during the day. We tried our luck at Treehouse - and Sophie, the owner, was kind enough to invite us in, even though they weren't really 'open'. Fondling her gorgeous cat for half an hour gave a further lift to the spirits (the emotional satisfaction made it worth enduring the slight allergy problems I suffered subsequently - I have, alas, become acutely sensitive to cat hairs over the last 10 years). Unfortunately, Treehouse is not well-heated, and it was absolutely bloody freezing in there yesterday afternoon (and also deafening, since someone was working with a masonry drill on the front of the house directly opposite); thus, regretfully, we soon moved on again.

4) An early start at 12 Square Metres
My 'second home' has just started opening in the afternoons again, so around 5pm we took refuge there. An hour or two later, they started rolling out their Christmas evening buffet. I was still feeling utterly stuffed from lunch, but.... the garlicky chicken legs smelled just too wonderful to resist.

5) And so to the Pool Bar...
Our favourite little bar was soon getting a bit too packed, so around 9.30 the Chairman and I decided to try and get in a game of pool at the Pool Bar. Our timing was good: the bar was fairly empty when we arrived, so we were able to get on the table almost at once; however, the place started filling up almost immediately after that - with the dreaded 'Rock Star' making an appearance (the guy who's so much better than everyone else that he plays one-handed most of the time, to give you a chance), as well as The Chairman's brother, Terrible Tes, and a couple of young Brits who proved to have very strong games. Ah, where did the next 4 hours go?? Always good times in the Pool Bar! (And, oh my god, Luke has recently bought a new table: well, it looks like he kept the old base, the legs, but it's a complete new top - slate, baize, rails, pockets, everything. And damn, it's playing well. It's rather discombobulating, in fact, to play for once on a dead straight table - no quirky drifts into certain pockets, no tricky variations in the speed of the cloth, no irregular bounces off the cushions. It takes some getting used to, but.... ah, pool heaven. And I think I'm getting my mojo back...)



The day didn't start out so well, but it just got better and better. Bars, I realise, have become not just my home but my family.

Elements of a dire Christmas Eve

1) Unreliable friends
The Chairman, 'surprised' by the bad traffic, was running an hour-and-a-half late for our scheduled early evening rendezvous. A couple of other people he had said would be there, people I hadn't seen for a while and was keen to catch up with, also failed to appear. I gave up on them and went elsewhere.

2) My 'stalker'
An ex that I prefer to avoid had - yet again - insinuated herself into the party I was supposed to be meeting. I couldn't face her feigned surprise, the tired old "Oh, what a surprise to see you here!" rigmarole. Yeah, right. You know these are my two closest drinking buddies; you know they're the only people I know still left in town; where the hell else would you expect me to be? Another reason to leave...

3) Thin crowds
Not much fun to be had anywhere around Sanlitun, it seemed. Everyone's gone away for the holidays. I checked out Fubar for a while, but it was pretty dead.

4) Chinese revellers
Well, thin crowds of foreigners, that is. Most bars and restaurants were thronged with young Chinese partiers. I knew from bitter experience that it wouldn't be worth trying to get in the door at most of the places I usually like to hang out around Nanluoguxiang, like Reef, or Jianghu, or the Pool Bar.

5) Appalling traffic
The huge enthusiasm of the Chinese for Christmas Eve parties meant that all the roads around the centre of the city were log-jammed for hours, and it took a long wait to get a taxi. I had been planning to go to the Christmas Eve gig at 2 Kolegas, but my enthusiasm for the idea waned as I contemplated the possibility of having to walk all the way there..... and maybe having to walk all the way back too.

6) Appalling weather
The previous 48 hours had been very mild. Unfortunately, low wind, damp air, and a temperature inversion had cranked pollution levels way up; and a long spell with no precipitation has built up huge amounts of sand and dust in the streets. On Christmas Eve, the wind started blowing savagely out of the northwest again, plunging the temperature well below freezing and scouring your eyeballs with sand. I had elected to walk home from Sanlitun - ordinarily a not unpleasant 80 or 90-minute stroll, but on this occasion an exhausting, dispiriting trudge into the teeth of the gale.

7) Luck
I might perhaps have salvaged something from the evening if I'd just gone to 12 Square Metres (comme toujours), but I had decided to surrender myself to the dice life. Not having a die on me, or a coin, I texted a friend the query 'Heads or tails?' (Try this sometime. Very liberating! You have to be disciplined about choosing your options first and sticking to them. And no "Best of three..." get-outs!) Unfortunately, he gave me the wrong answer.

8) More Chinese revellers
So, I went instead to check out my jazzy friends the No Name Trio playing at Trainspotting, a little restaurant/bar in the Fangjia Hutong development just off Andingmen. Alas, it was a thinnish crowd. And entirely Chinese. And entirely under 25. I was not inspired to stick around. I had been drawn to the option largely by the prospect of being able to have a catch-up with Terry, the barman there (an old friend from Obiwan and Room 101) - but he seems to have left.

9) Gathering gloom
I still had plenty of time to head back to 12 Square. Or Amilal. But the evening was going so poorly that I suffered a mounting pessimism that even these reliable standbys might prove to be disappointing on this night. I actually walked right up to the door of Amilal.... and coudn't bring myself to go in.

10) Inaccurate listings
I still had one hope of some entertainment. My last stop on the way home would be Jiangjinjiu. It's a Thursday, after all - Panjir should be playing. They were advertised as playing in all the listings magazines. But regular listings often get disrupted by the holidays; and repeat events tend to get hardwired into the listings, regardless of whether they are still ongoing. No Panjir this night. No band at all. Home it is, then. (Actually, Panjir don't seem to have been playing their Thursday spot there for a few weeks now - must check what's going on with that.)

11) A blast from the past
I'd just got home when Fate taunted me with a text message from one of the great loves of my life, asking if I was out. No, indeed I was not. I think she was seeking a bar recommendation rather than urging me to join her. She'd just been to a gig, so was likely to be playing the groupie with her rock musician friends - I endured enough of that when I was going out with her, thank you. A brief heart-lurch, nonetheless. What is it about Christmas that so distills the devastating sense of loneliness?

12) Pining (1)
The heart-lurch over the ex wasn't as bad as it might have been because I at least have new foci of romantic disappointment in my life these days. I realised the person I would most like to have been with, or at least been in touch with, this Christmas was The Bombshell, the lovely Swedish visitor who stole my heart back in March.

13) Pining (2)
Although I am, on balance, relieved at the news of Madame X's intended departure from China, glad to escape the prison of thwarted infatuation and the confidence-crushing torture of her perpetual spurning.... well, there is also a keen sense of regret. I miss having her here even when she's just gone home for Christmas. How much worse will it be when she's gone for good?

14) Guilt
Probably one of the key underlying reasons for my low mood on this night was the niggling sense of shame at having omitted to send Christmas cards to my young nieces this year. At least getting home by 10.30pm enabled me to arrange e-cards for them (but they're not big computer users, so I'm not sure when or if they'll ever see them).

15) No booze in the house
How could I have no booze in the house? There should always be a bottle of good whisky on hand to console you through these dismal holiday doldrums! A major oversight.

No, Christmas Eve is rarely a good night in China; but this year it was a very, very, very bad one.

I think Mr Garrison says it best

Or maybe these guys....

A mooning Christmas and New year to you all!

A Christmas Story (Great Dating Disasters [6])

I met a traveller on the Oxford Tube
Who said, "'The Lights Going On And Off'
At the Tate is somewhat ill-named,
In that the lights are mostly 'off'...
Unless you ask the attendant
To switch them on."

Strange, but true. This is not quite a 'dating disaster', but it fits with the general theme of possible romance thwarted by malevolent Fate. This happened a few days before Christmas in 2001 - the year before I moved to China.

My travelling companion was an improbably pretty – but ridiculously young - art student (an aspiring sculptor, no less) who took the seat opposite me on the bus just before Christmas. I am ordinarily a rather curmudgeonly traveller, taking the traditional English 'reserve' to extremes. But this girl made two or three attempts to get me chatting, and eventually I gave in.... and had a surprisingly good time! Her witty and irreverent take on the controversial 'artwork' then on show at the Tate Modern Gallery utterly won me over. And things just got better from there: it was one of the pleasantest bus journeys I have ever taken.

Alas, she was running late on an urgent errand to deliver a package to a swanky shop in central London (very mysterious - what a splendid MacGuffin!), and when the bus started getting bogged down in late afternoon traffic on the outskirts of the city she had to hop off in haste to try her luck on the Underground. Such haste, indeed, that we didn't get around to telling each other our names, let alone exchanging contact details.

Now, before the storm of nudge-nudge-wink-winks begins, I must make it clear that she was not at all my type physically (far too petite, and far too YOUNG: late teens or early 20s, but looking scarcely fifteen or sixteen…. and, at the time, I was already in my mid-30s. Impractical, indecent, unthinkable!). However, I had very much enjoyed her company, and I thought it was a shame that I didn't even know her name - particularly so if she were going to develop into one of our great artists of the 21st Century. So - uncharacteristically - I determined to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

My only lead was the name of the shop she was delivering the package to, a place where she apparently had a holiday job: it turned out to be a hugely expensive perfumier on the Burlington Arcade, an ultra-ritzy mini-mall just off Piccadilly.

Christmas crowds - and my own packed schedule - almost thwarted my resolve. On the first attempt to drop in there the next day, I was running badly late for another appointment by the time I managed to find the place, and I wasn't able to go in. (Not just cold feet, honestly! Well, maybe just a little bit.) The day after that, I was frustrated by the absence of any shops selling Christmas cards in the vicinity (can't give just any old card to an artist, can you?); I eventually found something suitable, but was then frustrated by the absence of anywhere to sit down to write in it (no pubs in that locale either!); I think I eventually took refuge in a large bookstore, where I could take some time to compose a suitably charming, friendly, low-key, non-stalkerish message. That took quite a while – but I finally made it to the store with my card just before closing time.

I waited patiently amid all the mink-wrapped matrons spending hundreds of pounds on their seasonal toiletries. Then, when I finally got my turn at the counter, I explained my mission as delicately as possible - not wanting to embarrass the artist or myself. And of course, the shop assistant had no idea who I was talking about! I persisted gently, and at last it transpired that there was a sister store in Bicester (just north of Oxford), and that an assistant from that branch had delivered something from there on the day and time in question. The assistant told me the Christian name of the girl, though she didn't sound too confident about it [and I, alas, have now forgotten it], and promised to forward my card to the Bicester shop.

I had no great hopes that my message would reach the girl, and even less expectation that she would bother to respond (although I had, in a rare gesture of optimism, included my e-mail address). But this was more of an effort than I have ever made, before or since, to try to make contact with a girl I’d only fleetingly encountered - a marked divergence from my usual bumbling shyness and hopelessness.

As I was leaving the shop, one of the matrons remarked to me (oh, they must all have eavesdropped on my little saga - it's a tiny, tiny shop), "Well, that's a lovely story, anyway..."

I replied, "Thank you, but I think at present it's only a good beginning to a story."

* The Oxford Tube, for the uninitiated, is an express coach shuttle service between Oxford and London. It was launched during my student days in the mid-1980s, and, since most of my old college friends still live in Oxford (or else in London), and since I have often been working in London (or in Oxford), it is a service I have used many dozens, perhaps hundreds of times over the past twenty-odd years.

'The Lights Going On And Off' by Martin Creed (a Brit of about my own age; oh what strange 'careers' we '60s boys have charted for ourselves!) debuted at the Tate Modern gallery in London that year (and has since been recreated in a number of other leading galleries), one of the more notorious works of contemporary 'art': an empty room in the gallery, bare floor, featureless white walls, and a large overhead neon light that intermittently plunges you into darkness. You'd think that at least the switching on and off would be electronically controlled in some way - perhaps with some subtly signifcant pattern of changing intervals; or with a purely random interval; or maybe in some way interactive, triggered by the entry of a spectator into the room (or how many spectators were in the room, or where they were stood, or their heartrate, or something). Well, I gather it was supposed to be just on a fixed timer, changing every 5 or 10 seconds (rather boring!); but for a while this mechanism had broken, so the lights were on (or off) all the time - unless you had the gumption to ask the attendant what was going on; at which point he could participate in the 'artwork' by turning the lights on (or off, or repeatedly on and off) for you. Maybe it was better that way....

Thrice nay!

I am, I fear, in the grip of mid-winter randiness. My asexualist ideals abandoned, I have been trying to revive my love life. Yes, really - I have been taking an interest in women again. I have, in fact, even gone so far as to try asking them out.

Of course, it's not going well. Perhaps my efforts have been too diffuse: as so often, I find myself distracted in three different directions at once.

But one of them has just flown home for Christmas.

Another probably has (this is the one I didn't get a number for!); international school teachers, they tend to do that.

And another is just oh so busy with friends.... for the next week-and-a-half.

Dag nabbit!!

Two dinners

JK and Limei at 12 Square Metres had been planning to take a break over Christmas, but.... the unhelpful rules of the Chinese state bureaucracy derailed that plan; they've had to defer their trip for a few days. Well, it'll be nice to have them around for the holiday.

And they have - rashly - promised to lay on a cold Christmas buffet tomorrow evening.

This is too kind an offer to spurn, but.... well, The Chairman and I (and Dr Manhattan.... and anyone else who hasn't left town...) will be doing our traditional Christmas pig-out at lunchtime. After that, it is questionable whether we'll be wanting to look at food again for another 48 hours or so.

There's an O. Henry short story about a tramp who gets treated to two Christmas lunches (or is it Thanksgiving??), feels unable to decline the kindness even though the food overload nearly kills him. I did this once before, 4 or 5 years ago - thinking I could do the traditional lunch (with Big Frank, and my girlfriend of the time, The Buddhist) at the old John Bull Pub (much missed), and then have a few hours to "walk it off" before attempting another Christmas meal in the evening with married friends over by Chaoyang Park. Lunch dragged on rather longer than anticipated, and the planned "recovery walk" was scuppered by severely inclement weather and heavy snow on the ground. The day only proved survivable because the evening cooking schedule was running badly behind (all pitching in together in the kitchen: chaotic, but fun - I still recall the Buddhist's anguished complaint of, "Don't put a vegetarian in charge of the gravy!"), and we didn't start eating again until 9pm or so. Nevertheless, I nearly bust my gut.

I don't want to be causing myself that much pain again. Pacing. Pacing is the key.

Down to the Drugstore

Five or six weeks ago, a new cocktail bar arrived on our scene: the would-be New Orleans-y Apothecary, upstairs in the Nali Patio mall, next to Mosto restaurant.

If you're a Beijinger, you probably already know about it - the word of mouth has been going very well. The first time I went, barely a week after it had first opened its doors, there were five or six other knots of people in, each of which included at least one person I knew - but from very different circles. The place seems to have immediately entered the collective consciousness of the seasoned expat brigade.

There hasn't been any big fanfare for it; no official launch as yet, I don't think; it's still in an extended soft opening phase - but we're quite liking what we see so far. Well, we're liking the drinks. The drinks are well-made, rather outside of the usual run that we find in most such bars in Beijing (it is the home of my new grand amour, the Black Feather), and quite reasonably priced (most cocktails at 50-60rmb) considering you get at least a double measure of spirits in each. They also play a good selection of classic and Latin jazz, with pleasingly regular injections of Nina Simone and Billie Holiday - loud enough to enjoy, but not loud enough to intrude on a conversation. There are so few bars in Beijing - well, none that I can think of - that get that right.

This is looking like becoming, just possibly, the bar that we hoped Q might be in its early days (and the bar that its George & Echo predecessors, the lovely but relatively little known First Café and Midnight briefly were): a quiet, cosy, classy, intimate retreat where you can get a properly-made cocktail for a not-outrageous price. (I've never really written much about Q on here, because I can't stand the place: it's too expensive, it takes too long to get served, it's too goddamned crowded and noisy - a victim of its own success; these days, at least on busy nights in the second half of the week, it's more of a nightclub than a cocktail bar.)

So, yes, a lot of promise; but, as ever, I have my doubts and reservations. It's not an appealing location (upstairs, in a mall - bad bar-ness!) or an appealing space (too long and narrow; and, although they've added more wooden shelving along the bare white walls and tuned the lighting down several notches since my first visit, it still seems a little stark and antiseptic). The insistence on making their own ingredients strikes me as a dubious and potentially rather irritating affectation, particularly when it doesn't come off - their homemade ginger beer is an unappealing milky colour and has no bite to it at all; their bitters are unremarkable in taste, but a rather too lurid deep red, almost crimson in colour. And the food is threatening to be less temptingly priced than the drinks (the platter of pickled vegetables is indeed a very tasty and unusual selection; but there's hardly anything to it for 40 or 50 kuai!); however, they haven't rolled out their full menu yet, and the (allegedly) homemade andouille sausage gives plenty of hope that the Cajun dishes will be worth trying (hmm, nice bowl of gumbo, just what you need to keep out the winter chill!).

There may be staffing issues too. The long bar could accommodate a lot of drinkers (and it's nice to get your cocktail made right in front of you), and there are quite a few tables as well - but at present, there's only one barman. Since it takes a good minute-and-a-half or two minutes to crank out a cocktail, that means you can be in for a long wait if there's more than about a dozen punters in. You may even be discouraged from taking a group of five or six friends in, knowing that's going to mean a 10-minute wait before you all have your drinks (and if yours was made first, your thirst is going to be going crazy by that time - looking longingly at your lovely drink, politely waiting until your friends have theirs, fretting at all that good alcohol evaporating...). I think, if they aspire to be able to cope with 'crowds' of 20 or 30, or to be able to deal quickly with small groups, they need to get at least one more cocktail barman in. It might also possibly be a good idea to get an assistant to service the mixing station(s) - bring the bottles to and fro, make sure they're re-stocked with plenty of clean shakers and other utensils (a great way to learn the craft). And they certainly need to have some bar staff or waitresses who can fill orders for beer, wine, spirits, or standard mixed drinks themselves. At the moment, it looks as if the poor barman has to take care of everything himself.

I keep my fingers crossed for Apothecary (or 'The Drugstore', as Dr Manhattan and I like to think of it). I admire the owners' enthusiasm, their eagerness to do things right (extensively researched recipes, 'forgotten' classics revived, slices of cocktail history accompanying each item on the menu, promises of seasonal rotation of drinks). And this place provides something we don't really have in Beijing - a straightforward, honest-to-god cocktail bar.

However, my fear is that it won't be able to consistently attract - or deal with - the kind of numbers it needs to be commercially viable (in what is, presumably, quite a premium space), that it will enjoy a brief vogue, and then fizzle. I hope not. We shall see what the New Year brings....

A glimmer of hope for Gingko?

I have tended to be rather harshly dismissive of Gingko, the successor to Room 101 on Andingmennei, which I find to be a sadly characterless and pointless establishment.

However, in the interests of balance, I should record that a number of people have spoken well of the food there recently. A lady I met at a Christmas party a few weeks back fairly raved about their 'white pizzas'. And I gather they currently have a special promotion on Wednesdays, with their steaks being reduced from an already not unreasonable 60-something RMB to a hard-to-resist 40-something. I haven't tried this yet, but a couple of people have spoken very highly of it. One gentleman - whose judgement I respect - has averred that it was the best, and one of the largest, steaks he has ever had in Beijing.

I remain just a tad sceptical. The paninis - which used to be a big draw at 101 - are said by one of their former biggest fans to have declined badly at Ginkgo. About the only food I've tried there is the burger, which I found severely ordinary (again, if anything, probably not quite as good as it used to be in the 101 days, and it was never more than ordinary then), and was further stigmatized by a really niggardly portion of fries and an almost non-existent salad.

Cheap steak, however - that needs to be checked out....

All the birds have flown...

Yes, it's that time of year again - all my playmates disappear.

The Weeble has flown home, and The Choirboy. Stroppy Tom and family. Even the dratted Madame X.

The Film Guy is taking a rather more exotic break for a couple of weeks in Burma.

The Bengali mentioned something about 'colonic irrigation', at which point I stopped listening to his holiday plans.

The Chairman is still around, but might as well not be, since he is perpetually uncontactable and disappears for weeks or months at a time.

The Poet is (for once) still around, but rendered hors de combat by acute cashflow difficulties.

Dr Manhattan is still around, but dealing poorly with the cold (feeble Floridians!); he claims that he has only one pair of longjohns, and is thus confined to his apartment on wash days.

Ho hum.

It's going to be lonely this Christmas, lonely and cold.

Café Bohème

Not its real name, but to me it seems so appropriate.

Treehouse is one of a number of little bars and cafés (and a tattoo parlour!) that have sprouted up over the past year or so on the pokey little alleyway that is the Xiao Ju'er hutong. It might be worth having a little crawl down there sometime - except that only Treehouse and the tattoo parlour ever seem to be open.

Treehouse was perhaps one of the earliest of these ventures, launching itself during the Olympics last year. I don't think anyone noticed it back then, save, perhaps, for a few of the 'locals' from the adjacent foreigner ghetto in Ju'er Hutong. However, over the past 7 or 8 months, several people have mentioned it to me as a worthwhile place to check out, and I finally got around to doing so last month.

On first view, it lacks any obvious appeal. Like most Chinese bars, it comes across more as a lounge/café, with low chairs and tables, soft furnishings, a clutter of homely bric-a-brac on shelves around the white walls (mostly forgettable junk, but there are a few rather fine books of art photography to browse), and a little too much light. It does have a tree growing through the middle of the room (hence the name), but for me this generates concerns about draughts and possible ant invasions rather than any great charm; rather than being a compelling 'feature' attraction, it is a bizarre irrelevance that is easily overlooked or ignored.

However, this little place clearly has potential as a cosy networking centre - and as a dirt-cheap alternative to our usual bars in the area: a sloppily generous pour of JD is a tempting 25rmb, and stubbies of Harbin beer are a steal at only 10rmb. This is the least expensive place to drink in the neighbourhood (well, the cheapest safe place to drink - unlike the 10 kuai bar, the booze is not all poisonously fake). Moreover, they have a hookah pipe, the only one in the Nanluoguxiang area, I think (Dr Manhattan was sold, right there). At present, they only have one variety of tobacco for it, a rather-too-sweet-for-my-taste cherry flavour; but I imagine one of those pipe shops on NLGX might carry other suitable types.

Chief attraction, though, is not the clean nicotine hit or the wallet-saving prices, but the warmth of the welcome. The owners are a pair of attractive young Chinese ladies who speak excellent English, and they really seem to be concerned with creating a welcoming, artsy neighbourhood salon rather than making money (hence those crazy prices!). Indeed, the place is evolving into a collective - with 5 or 6 other friends and regulars having been entrusted with keys so that they can use the space for their own projects during the daytime... or fill in for the owners in attempting to 'run' the bar when they fancy a night off. One near-permanent resident is a mercurial Tibetan who uses the place as a headquarters for the charity school he's just established nearby (providing free English lessons to fuwuyuan from bars and restaurants in the area; expect to be recruited as a teacher if you become any sort of a regular there!).

Good times in the hutong! But only for those who live in the neighbourhood - no 'tourists', please.

A Man After My Own Heart

One night last week, at about 9.30 or 10pm, I saw a middle-aged Chinese man emerge from a 7/11 on Jiaodaokou Nandajie in his slippers and pyjamas and skip across the road back to his apartment building on Dongmianhua hutong.

He had purchased two bottles of Yanjing beer and a small bottle of baijiu.

Obviously you need to be properly stocked up before the evening movie starts; and you can't let temperatures of -15⁰ C deter you from that vital booze run.

I recognised a kinship.

A holiday bon mot

"I'm very clear that everyone in the world loves me. I just don't expect them to realize it yet."

Byron Kathleen Mitchell [aka Byron Katie] (1942- )

"Bark twice if you're in Milwaukee"

Beijing's smallest bar, 12 Square Metres, has recently acquired Beijing's smallest dog - the desperately cute little fox terrier pictured here.   Apparently, the poor little fella was run over by a car (which, of course, didn't stop) on Nanluoguxiang right outside the door of the bar on Friday evening a week ago.  He was yelping piteously and unable to walk; and no-one was coming forward to claim him (it is very possible that a poor Chinese owner from the neighbourhood would disown the animal as soon as the danger of a large vet's bill arose), so JK, the boss at the bar, took him to the vet to get him sorted out.   Luckily, it would appear that perhaps he just got a leg or a paw squished under a tyre at low speed, and, with the bendy bones of a young animal, nothing was broken.  The poor little chap was bruised and shocked, but had suffered no serious harm - and, within a few hours, he was bouncing around again.  Quite literally.  Even by the standards of young puppydom and small dog breeds, this guy has a superabundance of energy.  You can't help wondering if he's got a secret stash of amphetamines up his bottom or something.   Since no owner has come forward to reclaim the pooch, he has been de facto adopted by JK and his fiancée at the bar.  They have provisionally named him Half Square Metre (in Chinese, Ban Pingmi), to fit in with the concept of the bar.  Of course, he doesn't physically occupy anything like that much space at one time, but - like a highly energised particle - though his mass may be tiny, the magnitude of his oscillations is enormous; he does, in practice, (or would, if he were given the chance) take up several square metres of space.  Aftershock was also briefly considered as a possible name - all too appropriate, given the circumstances of his joining the bar's little family (and JK prides himself on being the only bar owner in Beijing to offer the luridly coloured cinnamon liqueur of that name).  Dr Manhattan and I were lobbying for Baxter.  But Half Square Metre is the one that seems to have stuck.   The initial choice of name, though, may become irrelevant if he moves on to a new home.  JK and Li Mei are so busy with the bar (and with their day jobs) that they don't really have the time or energy to devote to the little scamp.  And he is, apparently, quite extraordinarily hyperactive and demanding.  He is also, however, super cute.  (I don't usually have any time at all for small dogs, but even I am quite smitten with him.)  Thus, they've been suffering mood swings about him all week, changing their minds from day to day, and almost from hour to hour, as to whether they should try to keep him themselves.  I quizzed JK by text message the other day as to what the latest reading was on the 'Puppy-o-meter' - love, hate, disgust, exhaustion, ennui??  He replied, "Utter defeat!"  Unfortunately, the two of them are awkwardly out-of-sync in their wavering response to the charming little hairball - whenever one of them reaches a crisis point of exasperation with him, the other seems to be succumbing anew to his irresistible cuteness.   So, if you too are won over by those floppy ears and that adoring stare, drop by the bar and see if he's up for adoption.  On any given evening, there's at least a 50% chance that he will be.

Great bar fights

A little earlier today I put up a post on Froogville about the lovely 1960s singer/actress Dorothy Provine, including a clip of her appearance in the Blake Edwards comedy The Great Race where she delivers a rip-roaring Wild West saloon song.

That song, of course, is quickly followed by a rip-roaring Wild West saloon bar brawl. This one (currently only available on YouTube in French, I'm afraid).


That, of course, put me in mind of this even more outrageous fight scene from a few years later in Blazing Saddles. ("Well, piss on you! I'm working for Mel Brooks!")


Equally memorable but rather more earnest is this contest between Alan Ladd and Ben Johnson in the classic Western Shane, which I watched again just the other night. (It's a pity YouTube doesn't yet appear to have the continuation of this scene where it escalates into an all-in brawl, with Van Heflin joining Ladd to help him face down the entire roomful of cowboys.)


And then there's this, Chuck Connors and Claude Akins grappling to the death in the 1966 Western Ride Beyond Vengeance. This appears to be a fairly undistinguished and now largely forgotten film, remembered chiefly for this great fight sequence (which, unusually, starts outside in the street and moves indoors). [Thanks to YouTube user JMoneyYourHoney - who has posted an impressive selection of great film fights - for these last two.]


And finally, although it's not a Western fight or a bar fight, here's the big fight scene between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in John Ford's The Quiet Man - possibly the most deliriously over-the-top bit of fisticuffs ever filmed (no embedding, unfortunately).

And remember - don't try this at home.

The perfect barmaid

An ideal barmaid should of course be friendly and vivacious and disarmingly pretty, but also quietly efficient at her job. That's not a combination one finds very often. It's even rarer to find one who has the intelligence to engage in genuinely stimulating conversation rather than just idle smalltalk. In addition to its many other virtues, Amilal for a little while earlier this year was blessed with the services of the lovely Lixian, a young American Chinese girl taking a year out before grad school. By day she worked for a film production company, but a few nights a week she would earn a little extra pocket money by helping out at our favourite little courtyard bar. And she was the very embodiment of that Platonic ideal of barmaidliness - not only knee-weakeningly beautiful, but very, very smart, and good at the job too. She was also a young lady of rare taste and discernment, fully able to appreciate the boss's eclectic selection of music and his fine top shelf whiskies, and to banter about these and many other topics. Custom was brisk during that period, especially on those nights when she was on duty. I found myself - quite unconsciously! - increasing the frequency of my visits. I wasn't the only one: I think most of the regulars were at least a little bit smitten. Alas, she wasn't around for very long. She only worked at the bar for three months or so, I suppose; and only for three nights a week (not enough!); and even there, the demands of her day job (actually two day jobs, I believe) often required her to cancel or rearrange her scheduled days behind the bar; and she went travelling out of town quite a lot as well, often disappearing for a week or more at a time, and leaving us bereft. The impact she made on us is all the more remarkable considering that her appearances were limited to only two or three dozen. She's back in the States now, applying to law school - we wish her luck with that. She will always be fondly remembered in the bar. We hope she'll come back and visit again one day.

HBH 162

After long bar crawl The memories jumble and fade - A girl forgotten?!     I met a gorgeous woman last night (and, for once, got a phone number); but it was only some hours after waking today that the recollection returned to me.  Worrying.  Oh, my brain, my brain.   It was an epic crawl, especially for a Thursday - Luga's, 2nd Floor, Apothecary, Salud II, Amilal and "The Muslim": nearly 8 straight hours of over-indulgence!   And that, I fear, was but a modest warm-up for the fortnight ahead...