Beijing Boyce

Hooters, the American restaurant chain widely known for its top-heavy “Hooters girls”, is set to open in Beijing on September 12 on Workers’ Stadium East Road, just a hop, skip and jump from The Den (look for the trademark owl* in the second-floor windows).

No doubt this will launch a thousand all-too-predictable jokes - ”where will they find local staff?”, etc** - as well as indignation among some, though if my readers are indicative, a great many people are looking forward to the opening. Hooters has two Shanghai outlets and, according to an industry insider and friends who have visited them, they are doing a good business.

The doors open at 11 AM…

* People commonly associate the sound “hoot” with an owl, thus explaining the animal’s presence in the chain’s logo. Plus, owls have two really big and round eyes.

* Unfortunately for the yuksters, Maggies moved from up the street to near Ritan Park a few years back, otherwise there could have been another thousand all-too-predicable jokes about the titular Hooters-Maggies-Den triangle.

I attended seven lectures and tasted fourteen local wines on August 9, the second day of the International Workshop on the Wine Market in China, held in Beijing. I put notes from the first three lectures on my grapewallofchina.com site in case anyone is interested:

Shop til’ you pop
Getting wine to China is one thing, getting consumers to pull the cork on a purchase is quite another. Huiqin Ma, associate professor at China Agricultural University and the workshop’s organizer, reports on a survey done with Ying Yu of 230 shoppers in Beijing supermarkets.

China Wine 101
Qi Wang, general secretary of the China Alcoholic Drinks Industry Association, provides facts and figures on Chinese wine production, wineries, imports and exports, and regulations.

Taste, with Chinese characteristics
Here’s a shocker: Chinese people drink wine to get drunk. That statement might trigger eye rolls from some people, but in a world where pairing wine and food gains growing popularity, it’s an important point, and one made by wine educator and writer Frankie Zhao, who discusses the Chinese palate.