HBH 260

Familiar faces,
Comforting warmth on chill nights -
The bar's become home.

I should not really have been going out this week, mired as I am in the hell of packing and tidying prior to an imminent change of apartments. But I have found myself strolling down to my favourite ‘local’, 12 Square Metres, almost every night.

Partly, it’s that an apartment full of dust and boxes isn’t a very appealing place to spend the evening. And partly it’s that the emotional stress and physical exhaustion of the packing process do tend to evoke a powerful desire to unwind with a drink (I never like to say that I feel I need a drink, but this week, I have!).

But mostly, it’s because that bar provides a far cosier environment than my apartment – any of my apartments – ever has or ever will. And that’s mostly down to the people there.

The Music Man gives it away

Jean-Sebastien Héry, the seriously talented French guitarist who put together last year’s best rock band, AIS (The Amazing Insurance Salesmen – winners of the Beijing and China rounds of last year’s Global Battle of the Bands), has lately been venturing into ‘experimental folk’ territory. That is to say, he’s using digital loop effects to produce ‘multi-tracked’ live performances. This has been somewhat of an overplayed fad among the avant garde set for the past couple of years – with Xiao He and Li Tieqiao, in particular, going way overboard on the idea. Jean-Seb deploys these gizmos with rather more taste and restraint, but it still – for me – takes away something of the verve and spontaneity of a conventional one-instrument-at-a-time performance.

Interesting stuff, though – if you want to give it a try, you can listen to it for free here and here (along with the rest of his astonishingly diverse 10-year catalogue of music).

Another trivia quiz idea

The Hong Bao Quiz!

Last week, I pondered addressing the widely disparate ability among Beijing’s quizzers with a double quiz – two sets of questions being asked concurrently, one hard, one easy.

Some quizzes tackle this problem with ‘randomising’ elements - such as ‘jokers’ (where you can double your score on a nominated round of questions), ‘penalty’ rounds (where you forfeit your entire score if you make a mistake), or ‘gambling rounds’ (where you stake a certain proportion of your points total on the outcome of a short series of final tiebreak questions). Some have also tried to move away from trivia knowledge altogether, invoking ‘feats of strength’ such as arm-wrestling or downing pints in one, at least for tiebreaks.

But how about simply bribing the quizmaster – paying cash for answers/extra points? It’s so very appropriate for China!

And it would add nicely to the prize fund.

A dream of pies

MaoMaoChong’s Stephen Rocard has been taunting us this month, doing a couple of one-off supper specials based on that favourite Aussie snack, the pie. Last night was a veggie version, but very tasty – indeed, surprisingly enough, it turned out to be rather more filling than the meat pie he served up a couple of weeks ago.

Alas, there seems no likelihood of this becoming a regular offering there. In fact, Stephen and Stephanie are shortly to depart on an extended winter break, so, although friends will be continuing to keep the bar open for them, there’ll be no food there at all through December and January.

Stephen’s little pie treat this November has only served to torment me with memories of the meat pies we used to enjoy – just being downwind of one coming out of the oven was a rich experience! – at 12 Square Metres.

Froog Solutions (19)

Froog’s solution to the problem of having only a week to pack and move (a process which last time took nearer to two weeks)….

Spend the first day procrastinating, spend the second day on a marathon bar crawl ending at 1.30am (well, it would have ended then, if I’d gone straight to bed…), spend most of the third day ‘recovering’ (erm, make that procrastinate some more), then begin the fourth day with a restorative lie-in.

Hmm, the next three days are going to be extremely fraught. But I think I’m going to make it. Just about. I might have to put in an 18-hour shift tomorrow to get back on track. And I definitely don’t have any more procrastination cards to play.

I’d better have moderate night of it tonight!!

I hate staying put in one place, but I hate the process of moving house even more.

Bon mot for the week

"We know both the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together."

Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696)

Top Five Lost Laowai Landmarks

The Beijing I knew in my early years here at the start of the Noughties has long since disappeared.

Here’s a rundown of the institutions that we expats of a certain generation most miss…

The Top Five Lost Beijing Landmarks

5)  The Mexican Wave

Indifferent food, but an essential networking hub for older expats.

4)  Poachers

A crappy bar – but Friday night Party Central!

3)  Nanjie – Sanlitun South Bar Street

As I’ve observed before, it was a great melting-pot. Back then, the city only had a dozen or so decent bars, and most of them were side by side on Dongdaqiao Xiejie.

2)  The Sanlitun Beer Mug

The city’s cutest novelty: a fibreglass convenience kiosk in the form of a giant foaming beer stein.

But in the top spot…

1)  The John Bull Pub

A little piece of London in the heart of the Embassy district.

HBH 259

Young men drink freely

The old must sip cautiously

Whisky grows harsher

It is a sad truth. I remember my father complaining of the same thing. And several of my older friends.

My tolerance for alcohol in general may be very nearly as robust as it ever was, but I am becoming unfortunately sensitive to the after-effects of that best of all drinks, whisky. As I grow older, I find that it dries the throat terribly, and leaves me feeling the next morning as though I’m going down with a wretched cold.

Then again, perhaps I am going down with a wretched cold.

Or perhaps it was the brace of Long Island Iced Teas earlier in the evening that really did the damage.

I would hate to think that I’ve already reached that point of decrepitude where the morning-after sore throat compromises my enjoyment of a fine whisky.

A trivia teaser

When I was helping LJ to throw together some questions for an ‘experimental’ quiz at 12 Square Metres the other week (we’re still undecided as to whether there’s any scope for trying to launch our own weekly quiz; I favour waiting until after the miserable months of winter are behind us), I was reminded of the Wikipedia page on comparative national GDP (nominal) per capita, which I first happened upon for work reasons a year or so ago. The three main rankings are compiled by the World Bank, the IMF, and the CIA World Factbook. Because of differences of methodology in drawing up the rankings (e.g., over whether or not to include citizens’ personal income earned overseas), these three tables are rather different.

In the 2010 lists, only THREE countries appeared in the top five on all three – what were they?

I’ll post the answer below later.

The price of goodwill

JK, my good friend and former landlord of my favourite bar here in Beijing, could be a bit of a penny-pincher at times. This was definitely his idea of 'a promotion'.

It was only very reluctantly that he finally introduced a ‘happy hour’ at our bar – and that only because he knew it wouldn’t “cost” him anything, since he had very little early evening trade (pretty hard to change that: we’re just too far away from the major centres of office working). Moreover, he limited the initiative to a rather modest discount on two items only – the house wine and draught beer – that are not really the top sellers.

I always feel that ‘happy hours’ that aren’t really all that happy tend to have a negative effect. If you can’t offer a decent discount on (nearly) everything, why bother?

A well-judged ‘happy hour’ pays for itself.

Double, double toil and trouble

I have been pondering the essence of the pub quiz. More specifically - wondering if there’s any room in Beijing for another one (Shuangjing upstarts Grinders and The Brick have recently added their own offerings in this category to the long-established ones at Lush, The Bookworm, Paddy O’Shea's, Texas Tim’s – and there are a few others as well). And, if there is, how could one differentiate it from the rest of this packed field?

The big problem with these events is balancing the difficulty of questions: you can’t humiliate the know-nothings by asking too many ‘hard’ questions, or bore the super-nerds by asking too many easy ones.

And so it came to me – what about A DOUBLE QUIZ: two sets of questions side by side, one hard, one easy; and separate prizes for each quiz? Too much bother????

Ah, I’m an ideas man, you know.

A fond farewell

The No Name Trio – two guitars and an accordion performing mellow French jazz, Django Rheinhardt et al – played their final gig this Saturday.

Well, never say NEVER; I wouldn’t rule out an occasional reunion at some point. And they’re still playing together as Blackwater, accompanying the great Des McGarry in his renditions of favourite Irish folk songs. But, for now, the gypsy jazz is over. They’ve been together in this lineup for four-and-a-half years (and Nico and Dan had been playing the same sort of stuff as a duo for a year or two before that), and a little bit of ennui had been setting in for them.

It was a very poignant moment for me: I’ve been following these guys since they first got together, and have many, many happy memories of their shows, particularly from their long residency in the marvellous early days at Jianghu.

Bon mot for the week

"Individual disappointments wouldn't be so hard to bear, but for the fact that they remind us so terribly of the general unfairness of the world."

Froog

Yes, still grumping about that job I didn't get last month...

A moment of cognitive dissonance

I was reminded recently of an unexpectedly diverting – compellingly atmospheric – thriller I  chanced upon a few years ago, Matt Dillon’s 2002 directorial debut City of Ghosts. Dillon plays a con man who journeys to Cambodia on the trail of the mentor/father-figure who left him carrying the can for a boiler-room insurance scam back in the States. It has that Graham Greene-ish magic of portraying a developing country as thoroughly corrupt, squalid, and dangerous – and yet making you want to go there anyway.

One of the film’s many incidental delights is the end credit music, provided by a band called Dengue Fever (and what a great band name that is!), an LA outfit who play ‘Cambodian pop’. Here, from City of Ghosts, is their Cambodian frontwoman Chhom Nimol singing Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now in her native Khmer language. It stopped me dead in my tracks.

HBH 258

All such jolly fun,

A neverending party -

Till they bring the tab.

I feel as though the Angel of Death is keeping me under surveillance again. Or his friend, the Angel of Annoying and Embarrassing Incapacities, anyway. I fear I may have gout. This seems unjust, as I haven’t touched a drop of port in years. However, I gather that other ‘lifestyle factors’ - such as the substitution of alcoholic beverages for food – probably put me in a high-risk category.

Then again, perhaps it’s something even weirder and more sinister, because…. it occurs to me that this – a sudden onset of stubborn and debilitating pain in the middle of my left foot - has been happening to me at around this time every year for the past five years or more. After a few weeks of hobbling me, it goes away again, just as suddenly. 

Any ideas?

I just want to drink ALONE

Not - usually - in the sense of shunning all companionship. No, I generally prefer some company and conversation with my drink.

But I do cherish my autonomy - in drinking as in everything else. I like to be able to take a drink on my own, to be independent of others in regard to when and what and how much and how fast I drink.

Unfortunately, this is anathema to Chinese drinking culture.

Nowhere, I find, is China’s collectivist mentality more oppressive than in regard to drinking. Drinking rituals here are all about toasting and counter-toasting. Above all, no-one must ever drink alone; every time you want to take a sip, you're supposed to raise your glass to somebody else. And other people will keep raising their glasses to you, if they think you're not drinking enough.

It can be a royal pain-in-the-arse.

New Picks of the Month

Time for another journey-through-time to rediscover what I was writing about three years ago this month...

On Froogville, there were quite a few compellingly weird little entries to choose from. I think I'll go for my piece about how the Chinese cope, or not, with fly-less underpants, one of my intermittent Chinese People LOVE Me! series. However, I was also very tempted by my jokey pitch for a non-fiction bestseller on Gin, my favourite-ever example of Chinese mispronunciation, my selection of 'Desert Island' albums, and my ruminations on the possible significance of an unfortunately risible Danish name I encountered.

And from The Barstool I pick the most poignant entry in my 'Unsuitable Role Model' cycle, Terry Collier (a name that may mean something to Brits of a certain age...). This poem on the perils of the 4th Martini was a close runner-up, though.

Traffic Report - the blog stats for October

Another pretty typical month: slightly subdued over on The Barstool, because I was not drinking for most of the month (although this did, of course, provoke a lot of short posts on the fact that I was not drinking), but surprisingly robust on Froogville, despite a heavy work schedule and the anxiety of suddenly facing imminent homelessness.

There were 35 posts and around 12,000 words on Froogville last month.

There 32 posts and just under 7,000 words on Round-The-World Barstool Blues.

Statcounter tells me that Romania and Argentina have been added to the list of countries that have looked in on us.

I have in mind a new idea for curtailing my effusiveness on here. Though I fear it is so crazy that it may end up costing me even more time and effort…

See if you can guess what it is.

Escape from sports bar HELL

The unfortunate consequence of Paddy O'Shea's having become in effect the only game in town as far as sports bars go is that it is now often too crowded for its own good. It was impossible to get through the door well before kick-off in this year's Superbowl. And it's becoming a problem on proper football nights (that's 'soccer' to you, Yankees) that it is attracting ever larger numbers of Chinese fans (who mostly drink little or nothing, but take up so much space that it becomes difficult for anyone else to get served promptly). It's just not viable to try to watch Manchester United games there any more (because 80% of Chinese football 'fans' support Man U, and the place gets completely heaved out with them).

Enter James Joyce - not the Irish literary giant, but the new bar bearing his name that opened up on Xindong Lu a month or so ago. OK, it's still a bit all-over-the-place in a lot of ways (rather provisional-looking menu, staff who don't know how much anything costs, very limited 'happy hour' advertised only discreetly on a blackboard behind the bar), and some of its prices are pitched stupidly high (the food, in particular, needs to be closer to The Den's price level than Blue Frog's!!). However, it has a real wood fire down at the far end of the room, it serves way the best pint of Guinness in town (for 50 kuai - which, alas, counts as "cheap" these days), the spirits appear to be all non-fake (which is becoming a real rarity around Sanlitun), the staff are mostly pretty good, and the Malaysian Chinese landlady is a diamond. And they have a great location, just off Sanlitun, midway between The Den and Paddy's - poised to catch their overspill.

They only have two TVs at the moment, but they are good ones; and I like the fact that means that it doesn't feel like primarily or exclusively a sports bar, that it's possible to ignore the game if you just want a drink and a chat with friends. What's more, the landlady is well clued in to what's on - which is seldom or never true anywhere else (even Paddy's suffers headless chicken syndrome whenever manager Karl's not around).

And nobody seems to know about the place yet. (Or maybe they do, but they're put off by the prices.)  So, it's becoming a very attractive, uncrowded alternative to Paddy's - and the other wretched representatives in the sports bar field. I've watched my last few English Premier League matches there - last week's Manchester derby, this weekend's thriller between Chelsea and Arsenal.

Some of those prices make me wince, though. A proper 'happy hour' would go a long way to overcoming the psychological barrier I feel about spending money in there.

And I've just discovered that local station BTV6 has a full programme of live Premiership matches this year (for the first time in ages). I think I'll be doing most of my football watching at home from now on - at least during the long cold months of winter which are now descending upon us.

Bon mot for the week

"The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts."

Italo Calvino  (1923-1985)

Going by in a blur....

It's been one of those weeks...

So far, I've been to a book club, a speaker meeting, a stand-up comedy show, three musical events, and a costume party. I've also faced my demons by venturing once more into farthest Wangjing on a secret mission.

I've visited 10 different bars this week, and blown about 1,500 RMB. And we've only just got to the weekend. Oh dear.

I've also signed a contract for a big website development project, begun a new occasional writing gig, and gone to collect two big chunks of money owed for past work. And done a ton of writing for that website. Yet, amidst all this, I've managed to fritter away an entire day trying - and failing - to find accessories for the costume party.

And I've finally begun my house-hunting.

Weeks like this make me feel in need of a holiday again.

[And I've got stuff booked for at least the next five days as well. In fact, I think I'm double-booked for each of those days. Sometimes this city just gets too much!]

Be careful what you order!

In the tropics, especially the Caribbean, you drink rum. This is a given. And it’s too darned hot to drink spirits neat, so you have to mix them. Pina coladas and other such fruity rum cocktails are very pleasant, but a chap can rarely order such a thing without aspersions being cast on his manhood. Thus, a rum and Coke is what a man mostly drinks in the tropics. How hard can that be?

Well, in Jamaica it is a minefield. The default rum option invariably seems to be Wray & Nephew’s Overproof White Rum, which is a rather too robustly alcoholic at nearly 63% (and I think it used to be even stronger when I first visited the island twenty years ago). And it tastes of toilets. That’s putting it kindly: it tastes like something you shouldn’t even pick up without putting protective gloves on first. The smell is even worse than the taste: sniff too deeply and your eyes will water, your nostrils will pucker, you may even gag. This stuff is, I believe, quite literally emetic. A chemist friend who also tried this appalling distillation some years ago assures me that he recognised the distinctive whiff of pyridine about it – a chemical commonly added to things like methylated spirit to try to ensure that you’ll throw up before you can imbibe a fatal amount of the stuff.

This overpowering chemical tang cannot be disguised or diluted. Trying to dilute this rum is a big mistake: it seems somehow able to propagate its poison, to make any mixer taste completely of its own chemical nastiness. You can pour a half-litre of Coke into a single shot of this vile drink, and the nauseating stench will still assault your nostrils every bit as savagely. The more mixer you add, the more foul-tasting fluid you have in your glass to try and drink. If you inadvertently order a Rum and Coke in Jamaica, you are almost certainly going to end up with a Wray & Nephew’s and Coke – that is, a highball glass of carbonated bleach.

The locals, it seems, have developed an immunity to the dubious chemical additives in their homeland’s flagship “rum”. Or they’re prepared to ignore its disgusting taste because it delivers such bang-for-the-buck in alcohol content. Or perhaps they just like messing with tourists. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I ever saw a single Jamaican drink any of this stuff.

No, no, they drink a much more palatable variety of rum. The leading rum producer on the island is the Appleton Estate sugar plantation, and their Special Dark Rum is the tipple of choice for most Jamaicans. It’s not particularly dark; neither dark, nor light, an amber, caramelly colour. And it’s not particularly complex in flavour; it lacks any of those rich notes of cinnamon or cardamom or vanilla that you get in some of the Caribbean’s more exotic rums. But it’s very palatable, slides down easy. Goes nicely with Coke.

'State Special and Coke  is what you order in Jamaica – if you want a refreshing mixed drink, rather than a Dr Jekyll beaker of foaming toxins.

[I've long been meaning to write more about my first trip to Jamaica - my first exotic overseas journey, right after I finished university - but keep failing to get around to it. The other week, I happened to discover that I still had this piece on my computer, something I submitted several years ago to a - now defunct - Caribbean travel website. I'm not sure if Wray & Nephew's White Rum is still as awful as this.  It has been many, many years since I last tried it. The Appleton Estate has subsequently taken over the brand, and they have been ramping up their efforts to market it around the world over the last decade or so.]

HBH 257

Smoother than Bailey's,

More warming than a toddy -

Velvet-voiced chanteuse.

The lovely Lulu is bringing her sultry lounge jazz to Fubar midweek for the next month (just kicked off on a Thursday, but will be Wednesdays through November). Just what we need to drive the winter chill from our bones.

Top Five Birthdays (in China)

Since I survived (narrowly) another birthday celebration a week ago today, I thought this might be an apt topic for another of my occasional 'Top Five' lists.

I restrict myself to parties I've had here in China, partly because my memory of events that occurred before China is now getting very sketchy, but mostly because I think I really didn't celebrate birthdays before I came here. I have never liked the idea of ticking off the passing of the years - even when I was younger, and the dread spectre of mortality wasn't leering in my face. I disliked birthday parties particularly violently as a child (awkward, forced jollity - often involving the participation of lots of children who were not my friends), and it took me a long time to get over those traumas. But here in Beijing, we're a very clubbable lot... any excuse for a party is always welcome. And so I have started to become less grumpy... well, no, not less grumpy, but less furtive about my birthdays here. I have - in most of the 10 years I've been here now - organized some sort of gathering to mark the event.

Here are the pick of the crop. Last Thursday's event would be in contention (despite so many of my friends having quit Beijing in the last year or two, I still managed to rally 20 or so folks to 12 Square Metres; and, coming off a month of no drink, I managed to get well and truly pie-eyed!), but it's still a bit too fresh in the memory for me to appraise how it compares to these fine bashes of old.

My Top Five Birthdays in China

5)  The largely impromptu birthday

Last year ended up being surprisingly fun. I hadn't really arranged anything as such. But I went to a concert with a few friends early evening, then managed to get back to my 'second home' 12 Square Metres by 9.30 or so, where quite a few people showed up to wish me well - including my recording partner DD who surprised me with a cake. JK the landlord even brought his little dog Mafan in to see me for the first time in many months.

4)  The intimate birthday

Round about '04 or '05, I organized a relatively civilized little get-together - more about food than drinking, for once. We gathered in the Fish Nation on Nanluoguxiang (when it was still fairly new there, and it hadn't yet evolved the comically awful service standards that eventually led me to boycott the place). It was also kind of a date with a very elegant French lady I'd just met; she, however, was witheringly unimpressed with my choice of venue - "An English restaurant? You're not going to eat there, are you?" Ah, no-one does disdain like the French.

3)  The brain damage birthday

One of the biggest parties I've had was at the Zoo Bar down on Qianhai Lake - briefly a favoured hangout for my cronies and me, when bar impresario Huxley had just taken it over and got The Barman (my old friend Jackson Bai, from the original Yandai Xijie Huxley's) to manage it for him. It was also one of the most alcoholically excessive. I really don't remember too much about the evening, and had to sleep in to the middle of the following afternoon to recover. People had somehow got the idea it was my fortieth - which it wasn't, quite.

2)  The serendipitous birthday

In my first year here, my birthday was a very quiet affair. I took my two inseparable buddies - teaching colleagues who together formed the disreputable triumvirate known as The Three Amigos - and some of our young Chinese friends from the Bell Tower teahouse out to dinner in a local restaurant. The Bell Tower girls couldn't stay out very late, and weren't drinkers anyway. So, Big Frank and The Chairman and myself were plodding home quite early in the evening, but paused to look in - as we almost invariably did - at our favourite watering-hole of that year, a barebones neighbourhood restaurant that we had come to know as The Adventure Bar (or The Legitimate Businessmen's Club). And, by the happiest of coincidences, 'Susie' (as we called her; she didn't actually use an English name herself), the charming little waitress there, was enjoying her own birthday party - and was delighted to share her cake with us (cake was something we'd overlooked in my festivities). And then.... there was a powercut. It affected the whole of the street, including the private college where we lived and worked. It would be difficult - nay, hazardous - to get home down the long, windowless corridors to our apartments. And there wouldn't be anything to do when we got there, save go straight to bed. So, we hung out in The Legit, toasting Susie's and my birthdays in the refreshing - and refreshingly cheap - local beer until the electricity was restored. It took three or four hours. But the candlelight in our cosy local dive was utterly charming.

Ah, but the prize must surely go to.....

1)  The ceilidh birthday

In 2008, I found the birthday falling on a Monday (otherwise a depressing non-event of a day); and, feeling that this might perhaps be my last birthday in China (ha!), and recognising that I needed to re-energise my social networks to help me try to find some new work.... I threw my most extravagant ever birthday party, taking over Salud for the night, cajoling Nico the manager into providing some free snacks and a token free drink for everyone (we did draw in 50 or 60 people, on what would otherwise have been an almost completely dead night for him), and hiring my accordionist friend Zoe Wang and the Irish folk band she was playing in then with Big John (not the more recent Blackwater, in which she plays with Des McGarry) to perform for us. There was singing, there was reeling, there were inappropriate amorous advances. 'Bowen' (the best barman they've had at Salud; I miss him!) was comping me drinks all night. And I'd got a rather accelerated start to the evening with three or four whiskies down at 12 Square Metres. And, at the end of the evening, instead of going home, I went to the Pool Bar - and things got really crazy from there on. No, I don't think I'll ever top that one!

Little bits of heaven

The Choirboy a week or so ago alerted me to the fact that the Powers whiskey company [no apostrophe?! what's with that??] in Ireland has been running an online vote to find the country's finest snug bar.

The Dylan Whisky Bar in Kilkenny is one of the frontrunners, and you can see why from this picture. However, the voting procedure is highly unsatisfactory, since anything that gets bumped off the first page doesn't really stand a chance.

I cast my vote for (the shamefully neglected) Mulligan's in Dublin, just around the corner from TCD and the offices of the Irish Times. The Temple Bar is also grand, but I have more 'history' with Mulligan's.

The only other bar I could find in this poll that I've actually been to is the Brian Boru, also in Dublin. While I am impressed by the claim that it is the only pub in Ireland never to have run out of whiskey in either of the two World Wars, I can't help feeling that the bar pictured is much too large to be a 'snug' (I can't now remember if they have a smaller one as well; it's years since I've been there).

I do get very wistful looking at all these gorgeous pictures. It is far too long since I visited Ireland, or set foot in a real pub. My beloved 12 Square Metres is the only bar in Beijing that comes anywhere close to that feel, but... it only has one beer on draught... and no open fire... and no dogs. These are the things I occasionally become a little homesick for.