Beijing Boyce

Cam MacMurchy, author of Zhongnanhai blog and formerly with CCTV, CRI, and Tianjin TV, was a regular on the Beijing bar scene until he moved to Hong Kong last year. In the latest post in the top five watering holes series, he lists his all-time favorite places to grab a drink in Beijing.

I have been sampling the drinking delights in hot and humid Lan Kwai Fong these days, but look back fondly on the Beijing bar scene of old. These might not be the “top five” bars in Beijing, per se, but certainly five of the most memorable and unique.

Happy House

One of the first bars I ever went to in Beijing, this place was famous for having the most foul-smelling toilets in a city famous for foul-smelling toilets (this was 2004, remember). Literally, one could sit on their expansive second-floor patio and tell other bar-goers to follow their nose when they asked where the xishoujian was. Still, the patio was great, the bottled Tsingtaos were cheap, and looking down over the decrepit bars of South Sanlitun below served as great people watching. It had an old slanted pool table, hip hop and R&B music, and some dancing when things really got going. Those were the days. Happy House and Sanlitun South, R.I.P.

The Rat Café

Don’t bother using Google or leafing through the Beijinger to find this place. Situated outside under an overpass near Gongzhufen Station, The Rat Café (as we’ve aptly named it) has been serving up mystery meat-filled dumplings and cheap draft beer for as long as I can remember. Although only guessing at the substance inside the dumplings based on frequent glimpses of the apparently healthy nearby rodent population, the main reason to stop here is the beer and being far away from any other typical laowai hangout. This was a frequent stop for a post-work pijiu and gossip session with colleagues when I worked in the area. If you can get past the traffic noise and car exhaust, the rest of the ambiance is quite good. You might want to give the food a pass, though.

The Friendship Hotel Beer Garden

I think I missed much of the joy of this place, but still like to trek back at least once a year to try and summon the spirits of the good ol’ days. At one time foreign employees of Xinhua, CRI, and CCTV had to live at the Friendship Hotel, which resulted in a thriving drinking culture at the summertime beer garden. I arrived about six months after staff were allowed to find their own apartments, so much of the fun had already died out – but not all of it. The Friendship Hotel serves some of the biggest and best chuanr west of Chaoyang and sitting outside under the stars is a great way to spend an evening. There are some long-time laowai residents of Beijing who continue to live at the Youyi Binguan apartments and are filled with great stories (many unfit to publish on this family-friendly blog) of life in the capital before it was infested with foreigners. And if you find yourself there after the beer garden has closed, just use a hotel phone and dial 8888.

Poacher’s

I’ve always had a soft spot for Poacher’s, located behind 3.3 in Sanlitun. A friend and I found it by accident on our first Friday night in Beijing after arriving in September 2004. We had a great night then, and returned many, many times thereafter. Poacher’s is different from typical clubs because it’s well lit and appears to have no dress code, reducing the pretension quotient to near zero. Plus, draft pints of beer can be had for only 15 kuai at the little stand near the entrance to the washroom, so it’s easy on the wallet. Poacher’s was actually the first club in Beijing in its old location above the Friendship Store in North Sanlitun many moons ago, and it still carries on with people dancing on tables to pop, rock, and R&B tunes. I’ve seen some rough stuff there from time to time, and it’s a bit of a meat market. That being said, sometimes a meat market isn’t so bad: my friend met a girl there, and they are now happily married. Not sure how the place is doing these days, but I imagine some of the magic is gone with so many new bars and clubs targeting similar clientele.

Sammy’s (The Sunset Grill)

I’m not sure where Sammy is these days. He’s either in jail, has been sent for re-education in the countryside, or perhaps his family has received a bill for 2 jiao. Whatever the case, his bar was a den of sin before the police moved in and busted it in a string of closures before the Olympics, which also included the Pure Girl franchise. That was a sad day.

The Sunset Grill (odd name, considering there was no grill – he didn’t even serve food) was located on Xingfu Zhong Lu, about one block east of April’s Gourmet north of Worker’s Stadium. I spent a lot of time here, though not totally on my own volition: friends would often drink beer on makeshift, foldable chairs along the street and I’d be lured in as I was passing by on my bike. Sunset Grill was the dive of all dive bars: the only windows were boarded up, it reeked like stale booze, there was writing all over the walls, the wooden signs behind the bar were falling down, some less-than-upstanding citizens frequented the place, and I’m sure the bar tables in post-insurgency Fallujah were in better shape. Cockroaches seemed drawn to that particular area, and Sammy once brought out a dead rat by its tail and dropped it in a garbage bin while we were sitting outside.

Yet Sammy’s place endured, thanks to 5-kuai pints of beer and his famous yard of shots – 16 to be exact – for 100 RMB (which was a quick way to end the night). Sammy was also a great character in his own right, loudly greeting us if we were in the area and always serving up a beer “on the house” just as we were ready to go, which inevitably made us stay much longer and spend much more than planned. I’m pretty sure, based on my health the following day, that whatever beer-like substance Sammy was pouring wasn’t 100 percent beer, and likewise for the rest of his booze. But the steady stream of oddball regulars and the chance to play your own mp3s on the sound system made his place unique in Beijing and worth visiting, and another one of the character places that has since disappeared.

Honourable mentions: The Den (great happy hour, decent pub grub), Cheers, Luga’s. And yeah, I do like some classier joints, believe it or not, such as Face, which is where I take people for a nice night out. Cloud 9 was a great bar, winning That’s Beijing‘s Best Bar award in 2004, but was demolished only a few weeks later.

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Top fives:

• Brandon Chemers
• Jon, Jackson, Richard, Adam, Andy of RandomK(e)
• Andrew Schorr & Ellis Rahhal
• Pete Demola
• Shane Crombie
• Ben Shaw
• Kaiser Kuo
• Bjorn Stabell
• Phoebe Wong
• Diane Fermin
• Badr Benjelloun
• Elisabeth Tchoudjinoff & Katrina Arndt
• Paul Adkins
• Chandler Jurinka
• Kevin Shen
• Steven Schwankert