Sunday, December 13, 2015: The Den’s final night

Since 1997 in Beijing, it’s been possible to answer “Where can I get a really nasty Old Fashioned and a 900-gram burger at 5am?” “Who’s showing the goat-wrestling qualifiers?” and “What happened to my phone?” with the same words: The Den. Last weekend, all that changed. Seventeen years after President Jiang Zemin ordered the Chinese military to give up its illegally owned commercial enterprises, local units in Beijing have begun to reluctantly comply (further closures have already been announced). As of Monday,  the city’s only 24-hour all-in-one sports bar, restaurant, short-time hotel, crisis-counseling centre, divorced men’s networking club, Pattaya tribute venue and dipsomaniacal dog whistle is no more.*

The Den… shut?

“A continuing expansion of competition and a slowing economy may both be playing a role in the changing of Beijing’s bar scene,” reckoned the Beijinger when the news surfaced some weeks ago. Competition? Slowing economy? Changing bar scene – The Den? All that seemed grist to its mill. The Den was not only recession and puke-proof, it was the kind of place people went to because they were unemployed. One doubts its patrons gave much of a passing care about “scenes,” artisanal infusions or whatever pop-up concepts make the long, hard-seat journey from the West to Beijing. The craft beer revolution was something that just happened to other bars; The Den was popularizing gastro-enteritis long before the gastro pub humped its way into the local consciousness. To the world outside it may have been 2015, but over in the People’s Republic of Denezuela, it was perpetually 2007.

For a long time I didn’t get the appeal of the place, finding it always populated by aging sports enthusiasts whose faces had exploded. My mistake was timing: I was coming in at sane hours, like lunchtime or 11pm on a Thursday. You needed to hit The Den at a very exact sweet spot. Peak Den was between the clubs closing on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday and the rest of the world getting up and going about its respectable business: say, 4 am – 7 am. This was when the magic happened. There aren’t many bars in Beijing where it feels dangerous to get chummy with the regulars after a certain hour, but The Den firmly ranked as one. For all its friendly aggression, actual fights were rare, though the staff were regularly called upon to remind emotional patrons how to leave. Closing time: You don’t have to go home, but maybe you should, because it’s midday and you’re hitting on barstools and frightening children.

Here’s an Iranian man being helped to the door on a quiet Thursday afternoon

Tributes have been pouring in since the news broke, ranging from pithy (“Wut?”) to prosaic (“Fuck”). What was it about this place that inspired such poetry? What ensured its runner-up success in such categories of the Beijing Cream Bar and Club Awards as Bar Where a Lay is Most Likely Followed by Postcoital Triste, Probably Because You Paid for a Hooker (2^nd place, 2012) and Worst Place to Go if You’re Feeling Mildly Suicidal (2^nd place, 2012), before stealing the crown at 2013’s ceremony for Most Likely to Encounter a Cockeyed Sot Who Harbors Bad, Bad Intentions?

What was the Definitive Den experience?

The people

Sure, there was the half-price pizza, the five-hour Happy Hour, the football, the fact that it was open. But for many, it was about the people: you’d get the full gamut, and gamut is definitely the word we need here. Tourists would wash up here at 4 am and not believe their luck. Surly Eastern European dancers and Gongti shift workers, Aeroflot crews on layover, aging expats who could remember visiting the Goose & Duck Ranch; Chinese students visiting in the mistaken belief that this was a suitable venue to bring someone you hadn’t slept with yet; visiting scholars; Tier-88 entrepreneurs pressing business cards into the hands of elderly Australian men; borderline schizophrenics; saturnine Germans that arrived at 3 am to watch Munich Bayern battle for the third-place playoffs of the Hofmeister Cup (who drank four pints and spoke to no one); expat sporting societies almost as old as The Den; the entire cast of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet ; angry Russians who’d been exiled from the Russian exile community… all were Denizens.

Denders

Because The Den never closed, it invited the most ridiculous benders: Benders seemingly without end, benders that would leave your taste buds numbed for a week. 24 hours in The Den? Child’s play.

A Russian man expresses his love of The Den

Hookers

Probably the most overplayed aspect of Den life. Sure, in the wee hours, there was usually someone happy to meet your glassy-eyed gaze and steadily hold it; the odd brass; the occasional strumpet or two. But The Den wasn’t exactly the Red Mansion. More a last-chance saloon for Nigerian baby mamas on their way to a sweet retirement gig jacking-off pensioners.

The ‘Denu’

A multipage, pleather-bound tome with a nice heft to it, covering a wide array of, uh, “cuisines,” The Den’s food was part of the venue’s core appeal: No nonsense. Solid. Unpretentious. If you’re down with The Den’s food, then you’re all right with me – you’re OK.

This beef tenderloin, priced at a gentle 68 yuan, was Tao’s last Den meal and supposed to come with mash but they’d run out. He didn’t mind

Unlike most restaurants, The Den’s picture menu was unafraid to dramatically lower customers’ expectations with blurred, two-megapixel shots of congealing sauces atop lonely cuts of meat, captioned with unpunctuated, unadorned prose describing the various ingredients. If a menu could be said to have a “voice,” then The Den was Samuel Beckett reading aloud government warnings from a carton of Mongolian filterless cigarettes. Thus, the actual quality of the grub was a consistent surprise. Hits included the pizza, steak, sausages and mash, and, of course, “Eggs Norway,” the classy European breakfast choice for any true international Denizen. On the other hand, the “Lamb donner pitta roll” [sic] was a diplomatic incident waiting to happen. For my final repast on Sunday, I spun the wheel and chose the Corned-Beef Hash with Sweet Peas for the first time. Like a chef on condemned-man’s-last-meal duty, The Den produced something thoroughly digestible that I would, like the venue, never revisit again.

What are your thoughts, Beijing? Be a true Denizen and have no shame while sharing your best (and worst) Den moments. (Feel free to email.) Whatever your story, it’s not gonna beat this:

*The Den will be back, don’t you worry. But for now, if you see a fifty-year-old bleary-eyed British man tottering about and banging on the locked doors of Gung-Ho Pizza at 4 am, give him a hug.

Following up on Sindicator’s last episode about Food Security in China, let’s look at how food security and food safety go hand in hand. Simply put: security is about quantity, while safety is about quality. But let’s be real, when we talk about China, we’re always talking about quantity. And quality of that much quantity is difficult to oversee, especially in the context of MEAT.

Recently, China has seen an unparalleled increase of demand for animal products, leading to a meatier Chinese diet. How much meatier? Well, since 2012, China ranks as the No. 1 meat consumer in the world. The country now eats a quarter of the world’s supply, or 71 million tons a year. For you bacon freaks: more than half of the 107 million tons of pork eaten worldwide were consumed in China. Mmmm… bacon.

The rise in demand has been a big topic in food security talks, and has been met with a lot of outsourcing, exemplified by these mega-value “Meal Deals”:

- The Smithfield-Shuanghui pork production deal came to a whopping $4.7 billion; it was the largest buyout of an American company in history.

- Argentina and Brazil have reshaped their landscapes to grow soy feed for China’s livestock.

- New Zealand milking its FTA with China to provide dairy to its new No. 1 importer.

- Australia’s landmark deal in 2014 promises a million live beef cattle valued at more than $1 billion to be shipped to China, where they will be slaughtered and eaten.

And from that great circle of life that your hanbao deluxe sprung, there is a lot of potential for error in the logistics chain. Meaty food scandals include:

- Shuanghui was found using illegal additives such as clenbuterol in their pork. Oh, and maggots. Also there were some maggots.

- Husi Food Co, a unit of American OSI group, was videoed reusing expired meat, and meat that had fallen to the factory floor.

- In 2013 16,000 pigs were found floating in Shanghai’s Huangpu river, in a fantastically dark Porkpocalypse.

A reason why much of China’s animal product supply comes from abroad is because safety standards are more developed in other countries. Another reason is because China only has 12% of the world’s arable land, which is not enough to support the livestock needed to feed 1.3 billion people. This means the most carnivorous country (by volume) is getting the meat sweats in maintaining viable food security policies. Can’t wait to see what this year’s No. 1 document has to say about the situation.

“Just like China, meats and fish are popular in Britain,” begins this video called “A Taste of Britain” by CRI’s Stuart Hemsley Wiggin (of C4 fame) and Wu Tong. “But in order to make that meat and fish taste extra special, it has to be complemented by other ingredients. Britain only has one such ingredient.” Can you guess what it is?

Watch on for some mouth-watering shots of potatoes.

CCTV’s A Bite of China, by the way, is the most popular documentary in this country. Hemsley Wiggin and Wu’s video has drawn more than 100,000 Youku views in one day. Maybe people here just really love food, potatoes included?

UPDATE, 5/19, 10:41 pm: Stuart Wiggin with some words, many of which promoting the show C4:

I freely admit that I struggle to reel off more than a few dishes when confronted with questions such as what do British people eat, as does my co-host Rob Hemsley. I assume the truth is that we Brits are just not very good at explaining things. However, the sketch wasn’t really intended to provoke Chinese people to learn more about British cuisine; that’s what Gordon Ramsay is for. Instead, as always, the C4 team, led by our producer Wu Tong, is simply trying to show people that even state media organizations within China, or at the very least CRIENGLISH.com, have a sense of humor.

Most people know better than to eat street malatang, which — if you don’t know — basically consists of pieces of veggie and tofu and fish balls and squid and other indecipherable foodstuff stabbed on sticks and boiled/drowned in oil and spices. It’s disgusting and no one likes it. But sometimes, because you’re drunk or too prideful to say no to a dare, you do eat, and your stomach dies a little.

Just be glad you’ve never actually died.

Sina reports:

20-year-old Yu Yue has been critically ill after eating boiled spicy vegetables (“麻辣烫”,a variation of hotpot) since a month and half ago. She was diagnosed gastrointestinal perforation and severe infection by the PLA Air Force General Hospital at Beijing, where her conditions improved a lot with the treatment, but the cause of the illness is still a mystery.

You can check out her misery in the video above, but we don’t recommend it. She’s a student at Yunyang Teacher’s College in Hubei province who ate malatang with old classmates in Jilin province on March 18. That same night, she checked into a hospital “with symptoms of abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and fever.”

She was transferred to a Beijing hospital, and lots of internal bleeding later, she appears to be doing better — but not fully recovered. Doctors at the PLA Air Force General Hospital in Beijing reportedly don’t know the cause of illness. “Malatang” should suffice, no?

Sadly:

Yu’s parents have spent all their savings on her medical treatment. They even own the PLA Air Force General Hospital about 50,000 yuan (about $7936) for Yu Yue. They admitted to Beijing TV Station that for several times, they’d been thinking about bringing Yu Yue home and just waiting for her death. Now organizations are raising fund for Yu Yue from the public.

Be careful about chuan’r, too. As for malatang — let this be a warning:

(H/T Alicia)

Here’s how to make a jidan guanbing, those delicious baked flat cakes lined with egg and rolled over a piece of chicken and lettuce, as demonstrated by Andrew Moffat:

• Spread dough on hotplate
• Place chicken on hotplate and cut into strips
• Pour raw egg on dough
• Flip, I guess
• Here’s the most important part: squirt oil over everything; you can’t use enough oil
• Add lettuce and chicken

Consume. Sleep. Regret.

So, the Blue Frog in Sanlitun Village has closed, packed its shit up and moved two doors down (to the old Spirit & Spice venue) to make way for the arrival of Pizza Express, a UK chain that does Italian food.

That’s good news. Pizza Express does solid pizza, yer classic mid-range date night kinda joint: guessing a set lunch for 88 yuan, soup and a pizza plus glass of wine? That’s my bet.

More good news, though, is that the vague Frog connection gives us a peg, however tenuous, on which to hang this classic recording from 2008, which had inexplicably disappeared from the interwebs.

First published on the old Danwei under the headline “RMB 3 million foreign douche bag in Shanghai” — aged mp3 link newly restored! — the tape is a genuine recording from Sherpa’s from a freewheeling customer who really likes comped hamburgers and isn’t afraid to show it (City Weekend analysis here). At one point the brutal laowai tells the Sherpa’s operator, who gives her name as Sunny, that she doesn’t have a “sunny disposition” and chastises her on lacking a “sunny attitude.”

He adds almost immediately: “You’re a fucking bitch, you know that?”

Takeaways: one, some wankers out there, but they’re hopefully in the minority. Second, if you want to enjoy that Monday 2-4-1 deal, best hustle your lazy behind to the Frog in person.

UPDATE, Ed’s note, 4/14, 4:52 pm: Transcribing this conversation, I noticed how incredibly lonely our multimillionaire foreigner seems to be. Money can buy a lot of things, but someone on the phone to talk to — a Sherpa’s operator, for instance — is so precious as to elude the dirty dollar.

Anyway, for the love of God, we hope that our operator (named either Sophie or Sunny, though it’s likely both are fake work names) got a huge bonus for putting up for this d-bag — and, incidentally, for being the greatest customer service operator we’ve ever encountered.

The full transcript of the conversation:

Operator: This is [Sophie?], how can I help you?

Foreigner: Okay, ahem, I have a question for you. I order food from Sherpa’s very often, many times, okay? So let me ask you, so from Blue Frog — okay? — Blue Frog…

Operator: Yeah?

Foreigner: …restaurant Blue Frog?

Operator: What’s wrong?

Foreigner: My question is, on Monday nights, on Mondays it’s Burger Night, so you buy one hamburger you get one free, so if I order from Sherpa’s, it’s the same thing?

Operator: Uh, no.

Foreigner: No? OK. Then, see, that policy, because then you will lose business because instead of ordering from Sherpa’s from now on I’ll just go to Blue Frog on Mondays.

Operator: Okay, that’s fine.

Foreigner: Heh. “Okay, that’s fine”? I’m not sure your bosses… See, that’s a very bad attitude for you actually. See… you’re what, Chinese? You’re very… you don’t know how to do business, okay? Your boss I’m sure will be very upset with you to know that you said, “Okay, that’s fine.” Never say that to a customer, okay? I have 2,000 people below me in my company, I don’t… Let me teach you how to do business: never say that. Never say, “Okay, that’s fine.” You could lose your job. If I talked to your boss you could lose your job right now.

Operator: No. Thank you for teaching me.

Foreigner: What is your name and what is your ID number?

Operator: ID number?

Foreigner: Yeah. Give me your name. I’d like to talk to your manager actually.

Operator: Okay. Sunny. [Five seconds elapse] Hello?

Foreigner: Yes?

Operator: Hello? Can you hear me?

Foreigner: Yes? …I’m waiting to talk to your manager.

Operator: Okay.

Foreigner: What is your name?

Operator: Sunny.

Foreigner: What?

Operator: Sunny.

Foreigner: How do you spell that?

Operator: S-U-N-N-Y.

Foreigner: Sunny? Okay. Well you certainly don’t have a sunny disposition.

Operator: Sunny what?

Foreigner: You don’t have a sunny disposition.

Operator: Sunny disposition? What do you mean?

Foreigner: Attitude. You don’t have a sunny attitude.

Operator: Oh, God [mutters]…

Foreigner: So let me speak to your manager. You’re a fucking bitch, you know that? Let me speak to your manager. You have a very bad attitude.

Operator: Hello, sir. I just want, uh…

Foreigner: No! To a loyal customer — okay? — you should never speak to a customer with your attitude. I told you, I’m a big boss, I have 2,000 people under me, I would never… if any of my employees ever spoke to a customer the way you’ve spoken to me, they’d be fired so fast they can’t even collect their things. Your attitude is very bad. Do you understand?

Operator: I understand.

Foreigner: Do you want to apologize to me or should I take it up with your manager and maybe people even further up?

Operator: Before you will what?

Foreigner: Do you want to apologize to me for having a bad attitude?

Operator: Okay, I will try it. You give me the chance [unintelligible]. But, uh… yeah… I can apologize to you and I will say sorry to you but I don’t understand because you said…

Foreigner: You have… listen to me! Okay, you deal with foreigners, okay, you don’t deal with Chinese people. I know Chinese people are very rude, okay? In the whole world Chinese people are very rude, it’s a fact everyone knows, but you deal with foreigners, you have to be more polite, you cannot say things like that, what you said to me in the beginning. “Okay, go ahead.” You cannot say things like that to people, your customers. Okay? If your managers are not training you, not teaching you properly, then I will teach you, because I don’t want to listen to your bad attitude when I pay good money to your business, do you understand?

Operator: Yeah.

Foreigner: Do you understand?

Operator: Yeah I understand.

Foreigner: Okay, so… in lieu — which means in place of — me speaking to your manager I’m willing to accept for you to say, “Okay, I’m sorry, maybe I was a little bit rude, but in the future I will do better.” If you can say that then that’s fine.

Operator: Yeah, in the future I can do better.

Foreigner: Okay, no problem. Thank you very much.

Operator: [begins to say something]

Foreigners: And uh, that’s the thing, China there’s one way, but if you have to work with us, with Americans, with Europeans, with foreigners, you have to learn our manners, okay? And I know it takes time, but I think you’ve made one step today and I hope you learn more and I hope you do very well, okay?

Operator: Well thank you for being a very passion and good teacher.

Foreigner: And it’s just advice, it’s just friendly advice, okay? I mean, okay, I… I make 3 million RMB a year and I’m only 30 years old, there’s a reason. I work hard and I treat clients well, I’m never rude to clients, okay? Because… you work for Sherpa’s, without me — I’m the client — without me, there’s no Sherpa’s; with no Sherpa’s, you have no job. So, the point is, always be nice to the customer no matter what they say, okay?

Operator: Okay.

Foreigner: That’s it. Thank you very much. Okay, bye-bye.

The Beijing News reports that a Beijing resident, surnamed Shen, was sent to the hospital on Monday after drinking water containing toxic dish detergent.

Shen’s wife told the media that he is recovering, but that the extent of his internal injuries is not known.

A representative of the restaurant’s holding company, Miele Food Import Export, took responsibility for the incident, explaining that a cleaner had put detergent into a water thermos to wash it out and then left without marking it.

Lo’ how the mighty have fallen for The Beijinger’s 2011 Best Affordable Italian joint. Chef Luca Mania might serve a mean pizza, but we recommend staying away from the lemonade.

On Saturday, Chinese president Xi Jinping surprised diners of a neighborhood eatery in Beijing when he walked in and ordered a set meal that included steamed buns, some veggies, and a chitterlings. It was a modest lunch that cost 21 yuan, reports Global Times.

But what do we know about this place, Qing-Feng, located in Xicheng District? Photographers have been more or less flocking there to learn more, and Wall Street Journal has collected eight pictures in a slideshow. The above is from AP, with this caption:

Tourists from Guangdong province pose for photos at Qing-Feng. Political commentators said that while the event appeared to be unplanned, photos released on state media suggest that the drop-by was intended to portray the leadership as being in touch with common concerns.

The samples that follow show people posing with the “same meal” that Xi Jinping ordered. I suppose when you weren’t there to see the man in the flesh –

– this will have to do:

More samples, via Zuma Press, from Beijing’s newest most-popular restaurant:

And in case you missed it, the video:

Look at Xi Jinping eating lunch. When the story broke yesterday that the president of China was spotted in Beijing ordering steamed buns at a local restaurant called Qing-Feng, I noted that we’d be seeing more pictures, since if you can’t take pictures of the president of China on your camera phone, you might as well never take another camera phone picture again. Well, here’s a video, which surfaced on Youku about nine hours ago. It is wonderful in the following ways:

1. As we know, American politics favors extroverts: a politician in a neighborhood canteen might chat up everyone around him or her (“constituents”), pose with babies (even kiss them), create a ruckus; if not quite trying to stand out, certainly not shying away from attention. Chinese politics, of course, operates at the antipode of this civic dance. Watch as Xi Jinping professes his normality — and dignity — by ignoring the people who stand next to him and pose for pictures. This isn’t awkward. He’s just a man trying to eat, like us.

2. At the very start, someone (picture-taker?) says, “Can you see us?” Otherwise the only sounds are ambient conversations and utensils. But at the 17-second mark, someone behind the camera says, very clearly, “Napkins, waitress.” Someone else — presumably the waitress — replies, “Take it, take it.” I’m not entirely sure why this is notable, but maybe because it seems so in place, and, yes, normal. Xi Jinping is able to behave like a normal human being in a public setting, with neither purpose nor agenda. All other interpretations of this scene — whatever we want to make of it — that’s on us.

3. The people who stand next to him and pose for pictures. Particularly this woman, leaning in:

And this guy, so proud:

And this: is Xi Jinping possibly regarding the mashed-up husky-wildcat image on the dude’s shirt? (Note: could be a woman.)

4. On the back wall is a poster that confirms this restaurant is indeed Qing-Feng. The address, for those of you who might want to swing by:

Address：北京市新街口南大街178号 (178 Xinjiekou Nan Dajie)
Phone：010-66182812 or 010-66124087

Jen Haskell on Twitter recommends the Old Beijing breakfast place around the corner though.

5. Did you know Xi Jinping has a huge head? Yeah, you probably did.

UPDATE, 11:19 pm: Here’s another user video showing Xi Jinping actually interacting with people. Also, he really does wait in line!

Youku versions:

UPDATE, 12/30, 4:19 pm: Xi Jinping’s meal cost 21 yuan:

This certainly looks like Xi Jinping in a crowded Beijing restaurant. Weibo user @四海微传播 wrote at 1:20 pm today: “People, I’m not seeing this wrong, am I? Uncle Xi came to Qingfeng to eat steamed buns (baozi)!” The same user messaged again at 1:34 pm: “Uncle Xi queued to buy steamed buns, even paid his own bill, carried his tray, chose his own buns.”

The message was forwarded by none other than the official Xinhua Sina Weibo account at 1:38 pm.

Is this a set-up, in the same way that so many of these public-figure-deigns-to-walk-among-commoners episodes are? That is to say, was it pre-planned, with (undercover?) photographers lined up, with a clear motive? (At this point, we’re inclined to believe that really is Xi Jinping, not an impersonator — if state media is retweeting instead of actively censoring the story. This isn’t a repeat of the taxi incident in April, when Xinhua verified — then retracted — an always-apocryphal Xi-Jinping-took-a-taxi-by-himself story.)

If this isn’t a set-up — if Xi really did just pull a Gary-Locke-at-Starbucks — we have a lot more questions. What restaurant is he visiting? (UPDATE: Here’s the website for the restaurant referenced in the weibo, Qing-Feng Steamed Dumpling Shop, located at Xinjiekou.) Did he grow nostalgic for steamed buns — if so, what kind? — or are Zhongnanhai’s chefs just that poor? Did he really wait in line? For how long?

Below are two more pictures, via Sohu. Surely more will become available on the Internet, if those camera phones are any indication. Then again, we wonder how many of those plainclothes folks are from Xi’s entourage. (The tall dude in the center, surely.)

UPDATE, 12/29, 12:19 pm: A video has surfaced.

(H/T George Chen)

UPDATE, 12/30, 4:19 pm: Xi Jinping’s meal cost 21 yuan:

As you’ve surely heard, president Barack Obama has nominated Democratic Senator Max Baucus from Montana as the next US ambassador to China. Baucus appears to have support from both sides of the aisle and is expected to be confirmed soon.

What do we know about the man? The profiles and commentaries have already begun to roll out (“strange choice,” “solid China credentials“… “clever political ploy“). Apparently the multinational business community in China is especially aware of Baucus’s work, and presumably approve. But we’ll let policy wonks sort out what this means for US-China relations, or how Baucus is expected to handle a host of sensitive issues from journalist visas to South China Sea sovereignty and space.

We’re going to read the tea leaves in a slightly different way. Here, from a Wall Street Journal article:

Mr. Baucus has traveled regularly to the country, visiting the countryside as well as big cities like Beijing. His favorite restaurant there is Blue Frog Bar & Grill, a small chain popular with expatriates that was founded by a Montana native.

So, Baucus is a man who is not afraid of making the safe choice, a man loyal to his friends and set in his ways, who prefers to steer clear of bold statements that might elicit the ire of a more passionate minority.

Either that or he hasn’t been to Beijing since 2011.

(We kid: Blue Frog remains first-class. Baucus is going to be upset to learn that you now have to buy a drink to get the second burger for free on Mondays though.

(H/T Josh Chin)

Uhm.

Let These Sexy Chinese Dishes Seduce You (The World of Chinese)

This video, produced by Radio Free Asia, was posted in May, but it just got a big spotlight thanks to Washington Post and Foodspin, so, thanks, guys, for showing us all how low the lowest low in food production can get.

Max Fisher of the WaPo points out that “food in China is delicious, and gutter oil typically is used just in some street food stalls or cheap, hole-in-the-wall dives,” so it’s not as if you should starve yourself here. But, man. If you’re a poor student in a second-tier city bumming by on 10-kuai gaifans for the past month, maybe you shouldn’t watch the above.

For my fellow Beijingers: it’s inconceivable, isn’t it, that any neighborhood dive or greasy spoon would cook with this shit within, say, Fourth Ring Road. Am I in denial? Do I deserve all the food poisoning I’m in for? Careful about your answer. Karma frowns on arrogance.

Picture by Cameron Frecklington

Yeah, it’s full of students, and yeah, its bars cater mostly to the 19-year-old frat boy set. But there are at least a couple reasons to visit Wudaokou.

Zaogao Wang (Date Cake King)

If you’ve lived near Wudaokou for more than a few months and haven’t noticed that every third person is walking around with a bag full of steaming, brown date-cake bricks, you need to step away from the five-kuai, dance-club hooch you’ve been swilling.

Same goes for if you haven’t seen the line snaking around the corner just east from the Dong Sheng building (Lotus, Nirvana Fitness) and leading to a storefront window set up a bit like an inner-city liquor store (transact through a half-moon in the bottom of the bulletproof glass, quickly and in cash). If you fumble with your wallet or are too slow at the window, the throngs behind you will almost certainly fuck you up.

During the National Day holiday I waited in a line three and half hours to take a bus towards the Great Wall. I watched as a few jerkoffs ahead of me jumped the queue and were met with quiet grumbles and fist-shaking.

Don’t try that shit in the zaogao line.

Once, I saw a well-dressed office worker type try to sneak to the front of the line as he passed on the sidewalk. It was rush hour and the line was huge. The reaction was like a Red Guard-era student rally. People erupted – screaming, cursing, and dropping their handbags, ready for a revolution. If he hadn’t walked away, I have little doubt he would have been bludgeoned into cake batter. And for good reason. The zaogao here is awesome.

Some people say waiting in line for 30 minutes isn’t worth it. They’re wrong. I don’t care if the secret ingredients are migrant sweat and Tongzhou top-soil, this stuff is a mile better than the crusty, dried-up shit that you’ll buy anywhere else in the city (and is 10 kuai for a “jin and a half” – about eight pieces).

For extra fun, give a hunk of zaogao to one of the beggars making the rounds with a limp and a tin cup (not the ones with the comatose puppies, fuck those guys), and watch his eyes light up.

He Jian Donkey-Burger Shack 

Yeah, shack. Step inside this crumbling, street-side dive just north of the 7-11 across from Tsinghua’s main gate (by the KFC) and you’ll see a poster of the main attraction: a solitary donkey happily eating grass on a rolling, green pasture under a blue sky. Presumably, that was before he was slaughtered, chopped up to bits, and squeezed into a flaky pastry. That’s what this place serves – donkey burgers – and they do it better than anywhere outside of Hebei.

First, to clear up any misunderstanding, these things are delicious. The meat is slow-boiled, seasoned perfectly, and interspersed with just the right amount of marrow and fat. The buns – crispy, thin pastries – are always freshly made and come out piping hot. It’s also dirt cheap – four kuai for a burger. Like Zaogao Wang, this place is always packed. I once saw a man driving a Mercedes SUV pull off from the highway onto the sidewalk in front of the stand and urgently shout an order from his window.

When you’re inside, no one gives a shit if you wear a shirt, shoes, or pants. During the summer months, the four or five tables are always crowded with sweaty construction workers, letting their paunches out to breathe while they smash a dozen or so burgers and some white booze.

Out back, there’s a poor-man’s patio with a couple of fold-up card tables, stools, and plastic lawn furniture. The service is reassuringly surly. If you ask for napkins, the waiter (tattooed scorpion on his hand) is just as likely to tell you to go fuck your mother as he is to throw you a fistful of toilet paper.

There are abundant cold beers and complimentary vinegary cucumbers when the waiter feels up to it. In the cooler months, when the patio is closed, the inside is cozy with steam from a barrel of perpetually simmering donkey. If you’re lucky, you catch flecks of flesh as you breathe in the wholesome goodness. PM Donkey 2.5.

Nick Compton is an American journalist living in Beijing. You can reach him at nickcompton1@gmail.com.

Picture by Cameron Frecklington

This story was never good to begin with — authorities crack down on street barbecue vendors, who by the way may be passing off rat meat as lamb skewers, because they think street barbecueing contributes significantly to air pollution – but the folks in charge have found a way to make it worse: more chengguan are expected to deal with this issue, because now fines are serious, as in quadruple what they used to be.

Reports Global Times:

The new regulation proposes that the maximum fine for outdoor barbecues be increased to 20,000 yuan ($3,528) from the current 5,000 yuan. Authorities also confirmed that barbecue stalls should be excluded from downtown public areas, such as streets and plazas.

Not to be cynical, but how many more chengguan fight videos will we see?

Meanwhile, chengguan, or urban management officers, will continue their efforts to force street barbecue vendors to move on from public areas.

That’s the spirit: send undertrained street enforcement officers to enforce an unpopular law against the city’s most slick, industrious, downtrodden, and tempestuous businesspeople. LES SEE WHAT HAPPENS!

Anyway, the proposal is in its debate phase right now, so it’s not finalized. It’s not much of a “debate” though, and we know this because of common sense.

“People tend to criticize barbecue businesses because pollutants from their stalls, PM10, or particles with diameters up to 10 micrometers, are visible. But it is the invisible PM2.5, or particles with diameter less than 2.5 micrometers, to blame for our poor air condition,” Wang [Tao, a scholar at Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy,] told the Global Times.

The lesson here, as we should have learned from the very beginning, is to never eat yangrou chaunr while sober. Alcohol kills all diseases though, as everyone who’s gone through college knows, so wash it down with those 15-kuai street mojitos and you’ll be just fine. The fake alcohol may cause blindenss though, so watch out for that!