ISpyShanghai

Here are a few thoughts on Beijing (originally written to cash in on Olympics fever)

Beijing is too big to walk around. Rent a bicycle.

Most of the roads in Beijing included a bike lane that was wide enough to never be crowded. Although the street names were mad confusing for a newbie, there are maps of the local area and the city as a whole posted up all over the place, especially at major street junctions.

We saw an awful lot more of the city than we would on foot or a tour bus, and had not trouble finding a place to park up, even around Tiananmen Square or in the main shopping districts.

Know where you’re going before you get into a taxi.

Beijing people don’t speak proper- it’s all rawrrrr rawrrrr rawrrrr like a puppy with a chew toy.

So even if you can speak Chinese and know the name of the place you’re going to, it can still be a struggle to get somewhere.
Make sure you have an address card from your hotel, the phone number of the restaurant, an SMS message with directions written in Chinese characters or some other fallback plan before you get into a cab.

Bars in Beijing are the bomb dizzle.

Every single bar friends took me too was great. The nightlife in Beijing is quirky, fun, boozy, and cheap. Drinks lists with Belgian beers and 5 kinds of Vodka were everywhere, and before all of the suckers turned up for the Olympics, a pint of Tsingtao was 15-20RMB. Here are my favourite places:

• Salud – (Nanluoguxiang street)

An old timbered building (watch your head on the beams) that makes its own flavoured Rum behind the bar. 20RMB for a shot glass of ginger, apple & cinammon, orange & nutmeg etc. The Salud Special Spice flavour on the rocks was the best thing I drank in Beijing. And I drank a lot.

• Poachers Inn – (Sanlitun area)


50RMB to get in sounds a bit steep, but that included a pint glass full of Rum & Coke. The music was mainly hip-hop which got the local kids dancing on the tables and throwing their hands way up in the ai-ir. Bonkers fun atmosphere, 10RMB beers, horrible toilets, a good place to pick up Chinese girls (probably).

• The Tree – (Sanlitun area)

A real wood-burning pizza oven is going to make you sweat in the summer heat, but they have a list of maybe 40 imported beers to cool you down. Artwork on the walls shows naked boobies but in a classy way.

• Pass By Bar – (Nanluoguxiang street)

The roof terrace will be open in August, and the big collection of travel books will remind you of the places you could have afforded to go to if you hadn’t just paid 5,000RMB for a hotel room.
Again, 15RMB for a pint of TsingTao- why the hell can’t you get that kind of deal in Shanghai?

Beijing Duck is compulsory

Are you really going to be able to face the folks back home if you didn’t eat the local speciality? Top Shanghai blogger WoAiZhongGuo gave me a great tip for a place:

“Other than Charlie Chan’s restaurant in Cambridge, England (next to Oddbins- all major credit cards accepted) the best Beijing Duck in the world is at Da Dong“

There are two branches of Da Dong and both are very popular. We waited thirty minutes for a table on a Saturday- no hardship since there was free wine while you wait.
The food (200RMB for a duck, plan on around 300-400RMB for two including drinks) was fantastic, and at the end of the meal the waitress walks you to the door. Classy.

Beijingers live outside. Go and see

A Hutong is a side street where people sit around all day playing with their kids, washing clothes, eating, napping, and just hanging out. These Hutongs are an integral part of Beijing life- for now- and it’s interesting to walk or cycle around a few of these streets to see how the locals live.

Even better though is spending an afternoon in a park, listening to old folk playing music for their own pleasure, practicing calligraphy with water brushes, playing Mah Jong, etc.
Places like Bei Hai park, Ri Tan park etc. are daily hangouts, especially for the older generation who buy a yearly pass and spend a lot of their free time in the park.

These were just my impressions from one weekend in Bejing, maybe they’ll help someone out.

If you want more information, here is a properly detailed guide to the Olympics with hotels, tips, and all of that gubbins.

So I’m at the Supermarket, laden down with shopping and the assistant came over to help me by putting some beer in the basket.”Which one do you want?” she asked me.

And in that moment, I saw a sudden blinding flash and an idea came to me

“All of them”

“All of them?”

“Yes, one of that one, one of that one, one of that one…“.

“Hmm. Oi 张明! You’d better bring a basket. This bald foreigner’s an alcoholic“

See, a few weeks ago- me and Craig had been talking about doing a taste test. Beer in the supermarket is stupidly cheap, 3 or 4 RMB for a can or bottle of domestic beer, the same for Japanese and a couple of foreign brands. Before I came here, I’d never tried any Chinese beer other than TsingTao and I always just assume that’s the best one, but never really sat down and compared what was out there.

Clearly, it was time for a taste test.

So that we weren’t influenced by the eye-catching designs of the cans, or prejudice towards any particular brand, we used paper cups separated into three groups (one for each person). We wrote the names of the different beers on the bottom of the cup, poured some of that beer in, then mixed ‘em up.Simple enough really, but it took a pHd scientist and two Maths graduates about forty minutes to work that out.

To get the results we added up our individual rankings (1-7) and whoever got the lowest score won.

Matthew “Corky” Corcoran. Australian lightweight / beer sipper

The Results
(in reverse order)

Last Place- Reeb
The only beer made in Shanghai, Reeb has a bad reputation, and with good bloody reason.

Meakin “It tastes like….weak beer”

Me “No flavour whatsoever”

Matt “I’d like it better if it had no flavour, tastes terrible”.

6th place- Bud
Cheap, American, freely available- it’s the Christina Aguilera of beer. Didn’t fair well against the locals.

Matt- “I’m so proud that I picked this as my number 7″

Me- “Hangin”

Meakin “(Who placed it as his number 3) It’s alright actually. I’m a boney fidey Yankee!”

5th Place- Premium Suntory

The premium offering from Suntory placed lower than the regular stuff. Some poor sod at this Japanese brewer will have to perform ritual suicide when they read this.

Meakin- “(Who placed it as his number 7) Tastes chemically- I think that board marker is leaking through the paper cups…I’d better finish it off quick.”

4th Place- Tsingtao
The old standby, available at every restaurant I’ve been to, and probably some of the ones I haven’t.

Meakin- “I think Matt’s got tainted cups.”

Matt- “It doesn’t taste of anything”
Me- “That’s beause you’re only drinking the froth off the top, get it down you- you shirker!”

3rd – Asahi
Japanese beer, popular because of the cool silver can, and apparently also because it tastes pretty good.

Meakin- “(Placing it fifth)Hoppy. I don’t actually know what that means, I’ve just heard people say it. Anyway this one tastes fucking shit”

Me- “Well at least it actually tastes of something. That’ll do for me”

2nd – Suntory
It’s got a dragon on the can and a rocket in its pocket.

Matt (delighted to have shown some consistency by voting two Japanese beers as his top 2)- “Fucking Nihon!”

1st – Harbin
Cheap and nasty looking beer from the frozen wastelands of the north where they talk like pirates. This was the big surprise of the night.

Me- “Really nice is that”

Matt- “It’s the new Tsingtao!”

Me- “It’s the new black!”

Meakin “Is there any more Bud left?”

Meakin struggles to keep his mind on the task at hand

So there you have it, the unfashionable, bargain basement brew Harbin wins out when the lights are off.
It just goes to show, something or other.

Harbin Ale- Available at all good Chinese bicycle repair shops and the occasional Supermarket. Cheap.

Following the success of renting a couple of bikes in Suzhou, Emma has finally been convinced that this (and not the stupid ‘bus as she has previously insisted) is the only right and proper way to get around Shanghai. Yes there are scores of roads you can’t ride down, yes you have to have a bit of brass neck to be on the bottom rung of the Shanghai traffic ladder (blue trucks driven by shirtless workmen, finishing off a 12 hour shift being at the top of the pile)- but it’s still more fun than a barrel full of wet monkeys, and the best way to get to know your neighbourhood.

People I talk to are amazed that I still haven’t had my ride stolen in, what, 7 months? So I told her what I’ll tell you know- the secret to not getting your bike stolen in Shanghai: put loads of crap in the basket.

Old popcorn, broken chopsticks, empty carrier bags- throw the lot in there, you’re aiming for a look that’s somewhere between the front lawn of a council house, and a Jackdaw’s nest.

And with that, we loaded up our bikes and headed off through the streets, ringing out a peal on our bells in the clear Autumn air.

A woman collecting boxes. Jing-An district, Sunday afternoon.

Bike, 160RMB (plus basket) from Carrefour

Emma’s a good un, not only did she point out the t-shirt below for me, she also didn’t mind when I chased this couple up the stairs to get the photo, and then helped me to act all innocent after the flash went off and they both looked around.

She also spotted this guy’s natty bicycle clips-

Our pedicab driver

In fact it’s safe to assume from now on, that she’s doing all of the legwork and I’m just scooping up the vast financial and critical rewards.

Back to Shanghai with a bang over the last few days though, we’ve caught the tail end of a typhoon and the rain absolutely hammered down from Sunday evening until the early hours of this morning.
It was on the news in the UK so my Mum phoned me up to check I was OK- I recognised her number and before I answered, took a mouthful of water and gargled down the phone:

“Mu-u-u-u-u-m-m-m! I’m gu-gu-gu-going-g-g to havl-l-le to cal-l-l-l you ba-a-a-a-a-ck!“

She’ll be out of hospital by the weekend apparently.

Once I get the sack from this job (for my embezzlement scheme where I steal 50-60 office pens per day and sell them down Nanjing Road at the weekend- shhh!), the plan is to go on the streets as a rag and bone man. My Father wasn’t in the rag trade, neither was his Father, nor his Father’s Father and so on stretching back for generations- so I should pick it up pretty quickly.

The way it seems to work over here is that you ride around the streets ringing a small bell- this bell attracts people how are snowed under with masses of cardboard, plastic bottles, and recyclable goods who are only too glad to give it to you. Then you ride down to the docks where there are people prepared to give you cold hard cash for the stuff, which I assume they then eat. I’ve done the figures, and it all stacks up pretty well:

Outgoings

• Fancy bicycle with three wheels and a trailer on the back: 200RMB
• Bell: 20RMB

Incomings

• Selling cardboard to dodgy characters down by the docks who FREAK OUT if you try to take their photo: 10RMB per day
• Selling plastic bottles to dodgy characters down by the docks who should really chillax, it’s a camera not some kind of laser stun ray: 20RMB per day
• Selling cardboard boxes to people who are moving house: 250RMB per day (I’m really going to sting those poor suckers hehe)
•  Money I find randomly on the street whilst riding around looking fly: 3,060RMB per day