Beijing Boyce

This blog evolved from a biweekly e-newsletter I started in October 2005 about Beijing’s drinking scene. That newsletter is typically a magnum-sized 3,000 words and covers bar news and reviews, wine tastings, the nightlife adventures of my friends, and other vital information. In September 2006, readership passed 500, my watershed mark for going online. With coffee mug and eye drops by my side, I labored to upload 70,000 words worth of newsletters over the October 2006 holidays and gave birth to this blog.

Here are typical comments and questions that I receive about the newsletter and that are relevant to the blog.

Who are you?

I work for an NGO in China. I’ve been in Asia more than a decade and in Beijing since 2004, with past stints in South Korea and Taiwan. I am tall, cute, intelligent and smart, and like collecting Five Friendlies souvenirs, traveling and searching for “the one”… Wait, I think I read that in the personals at thatsbj.com. In fact, I enjoy reading humor (dry), tennis (doubles), martinis (dry doubles) and those rare days when the mountains east of the city are visible from my apartment. I have no Five Friendlies paraphernalia, not even a Jingjing key chain. I also have no fascination with Mandarin, Confucian philosophy or the Shaolin Temple, and am not here “to live and breathe China” as are many foreigners. I came to work. Even so, Beijing’s pace of change and growing importance make it, especially pre-Olympics, a notable place to live. Plus, the lamb kebabs are tasty.

Why did you start the newsletter?

I find bars interesting as businesses and enjoyable as places to relax and meet people. I like writing and have penned three columns and two newsletters over the years. Thus, since Beijing has a quickly morphing drinking scene and I have a notebook, writing about the city’s bars was a natural. It also mixes well with my job as I meet many work-related people for drinks and can easily take notes about cocktail quality, service, ambience, and so on. Finally, the drinking scene is a popular topic since almost everyone has a favorite bar, knows a good spot to take visitors to Beijing, or can opine on the pros and (especially) cons of drinking baijiu. My newsletter and blog aim to join in that discussion by providing useful information - hopefully in an entertaining way - and helping people make the most of their nights out on the town.

Why is the newsletter so long?

Print media coverage of bars tends to be fleeting, short and smart-alecky. A magazine reviews a bar once and never mentions the place again; a nightlife column has a mere 400 words worth of space per issue; a writer takes on an air of authority (superiority?) while instructing we mere plebes on where to drink. I wanted to create something that flew in the face of these realities and the Internet’s flexibility makes it possible. I can follow a bar’s progress month by month, swim beyond the kiddy-pool length of 400 words to depths of 3,000 or more, and personalize the bar scene by writing about owners, managers and employees, conversations overheard in nightspots, comments made by readers, and the adventures of friends and acquaintances. This takes space - lots of it!

It seems like you drink every day!

That view is no doubt due to the amount I write. It’s quite easy to gather mass amounts of information on the bar scene. Let’s say I meet a client at Browns for dinner and then head to Q Bar for a drink with friends, popping into The Bookworm and Beer Mania on the walk there to see if anything is new. That’s four places visited in a few hours. Add the emails I get about this or that bar, toss in a few general observations, and that is enough material for a good chunk of newsletter. This might disappoint readers who imagine me pounding a dozen cocktails every night and stumbling about town, pockets full of taxi receipts, to serve the communal liver. I do indulge in an occasional pub-crawl (see TGIF Tour and A Beijing Saturday Night), but at evening’s end this newsletter requires taking notes and that requires sobriety, so my drinking norm is quality rather than quantity.

Where do you find time to write so much?

I can write about 300 publishable words per hour - after all, these are bar observations, not academic journal articles - so the newsletter takes less than an hour per day. I can easily make up this time since I don’t watch TV, live within a ten-minute commute to work and only bath once a month (kidding).

Do you make money from this?

[Thirty-second pause as I double up laughing and then regain my composure.] No, as is the case with most newsletters and blogs, this is a “financially nonviable” endeavor. In fact, it costs me money. Enough said.

I bet you get free drinks all the time.

I pay for my drinks, for wine tastings, and so on, whether that means peeling off a 10-kuai note for a Gin Tonic at Phil’s Pub or 888 kuai for an ASC wine dinner at Aria. Only a few bars blatantly try to ply me with free drinks. There are times, however, when I accept freebies:

- Media events to which I am invited (this happens about once per month).

- Occasional drinks at bars I regularly patronize (this is standard customer service).

- “Guinea pig” drinks that a bartender wants me to test (the bill is waived in lieu of danger pay).
I would make explicit in my newsletter any other exceptions - say if I accepted a free seat to a wine tasting that I could not afford, such as an 88,888-kuai per person Bordeaux extravaganza. It hasn’t happened yet.

Why do you give lopsided coverage to Sanlitun and certain bars?

I live near Worker’s Stadium and tend to patronize that area and nearby Sanlitun, though I foray to Ritan Park, Chaoyang Park, Houhai and Wangfujing, and to a lesser extent Lido and Dashanzi. Given my personal and work obligations, this is as much as I can do while keeping the newsletter and blog fun.

A bar may get disproportionate coverage for several reasons. One, if it ranks among my favorites: I wrote mass amounts about a tiny place called First Cafe, because it epitomized for six months a great bar, and great bars deserve more coverage. Two, if it significantly impacts the bar scene: I wrote mass amounts about Browns because it quickly became a favorite with bar-goers and made industry players take notice, and such bars deserve more coverage. Three, if I have good contact with the owner or employees: I write mass amounts about ASC Fine Wines because the company organizes many media training and wine tasting events, and the owner is frank about Beijing’s bar business, even if much of what he tells me is off the record.

How do you stay objective?

Objective is a tricky word. What one person loves in a bar, someone else hates, and yet another fails to notice. That doesn’t mean everything is relative. Obviously, the bar staff should be reasonably polite, the restroom should come stocked with toilet paper, and vodka martinis should contain, uh, vodka. There is a point, however, when it comes down to personal preferences. For example, is it better that a bar be cozy, have great drinks or offer excellent service?

Here are my preferences. I enjoy bars where I would not only be comfortable with my friends, but also could go alone and easily chat to a stranger on the stool next to me. This slightly outweighs quality drinks and location in importance, which would rank above other top factors such as good service, price and decor. (On the other hand, whether people consider a place trendy matters little to me.) Thus, a comfortable place with a decent location and excellent drinks, even if they are pricey, would rank high would me. The same place, where the cocktails were so-so but where the beer selection is good or the Qingdao cheap, would also work. There are exceptions, but these are my general criteria.

Also of note:

- Unlike many reviewers for the city’s English-language lifestyles magazines, I have no advertisers, tend to visit a bar several times before reviewing it, and have unlimited space for my write-ups (and, in cases where my comments are off the mark, to make amends).

- I easily change my opinion of bars as management changes menus, prices, and so on. Some see this as wishy washy, but what else can you do when a quaint cocktail place turns into a hostess-heavy karaoke lounge?

- I have not owned or managed a bar, nor am I a sommelier or expert on vodka, whiskey, bourbon, tequila or any other spirit. I simply enjoy sharing news and views about bars with other people, most of which have also never owned or managed a bar, are not sommeliers… well, you get the idea.

Who gets the newsletter?

As of September 2006, there were just over 500 readers on my mailing list, including 130 from the bar, restaurant, hotel and wine sectors, 90 from the media, and about 300 from nearly every walk of life, from diplomats to homemakers, from English teachers to entrepreneurs. Most readers not only love food and drink, but also have substantial disposable income with which to pursue that passion.

Why did you use the name Beijing Boyce?

I took it from a Yahoo email address I created just before moving to China in 2004. It was a filler name when I first started the newsletter and I never ended up changing it.

Who deserves props?

Thanks go to Mark Swofford for providing technical help on the blog and for being an endless source of nicknames (F. Swoff Fitzgerald, Whooping Swoff, David Hasselswoff; I could go on forever). Thanks also to Mike Wester, Sherry Tan, Don St. Pierre and Frank Siegel, who inspired material, provided insights, or both.