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Q: Does this happen in your city?
Now, shijiazhuang does not have much of a nightlife. However, this has happened on at least four occasions that I know about in the last few years -
Bar is opened.
Caters to foreign tastes; draft or cheap beer plus decent music and seating arrangements.
Expats new watering hole.
Chinese realize expats go there, they turn up cos it's cool.
Bar starts to cater to Chinese tastes, they pay more.
Chinese tastes exclusively catered too, expats move out.
Yes, I know this is China, blah blah blah.
Is this something you have seen?
I've seen that before. Sometimes it just seems like the bar is fishing, looking for their target market. They start thinking that it would be a good idea to aim for the foreign market but lets face it, the local market is huge and probably a lot easier to cater to so that's the direction they end up going.
I don't blame them but it's always a shame to see a cool place turn into just another 'bar with Chinese characteristics'.
Experienced the same in Qingdao recently...
Visco8:
Hey ~ am also from QD. Totally agree....very few good places to venture to these days.
Too much Chinese BS for my liking!
I'm not really into the bar scene in China, but if someone can explain to me what is a 'bar with Chinese characteristics', I would learn something today ^^
RiriRiri:
A loud place where everything on the menu is "meiyou" except piss beer or fake Jack Daniels+tea.
DrMonkey:
Good lord... In Vietnam, they have a simple concept, the "bia hoi", the South-East Asian variant on the beer hall. Put lots of low plastic tables and low plastic chairs. Put a big piece of plastic sheet for roof, with bamboo poles and wires to hold it together. You just sat, *bam* a fresh cold half-pint of beer appears on your table, next to roasted peanuts. The beer is very cheap, you can order stuffs like sliced cucumbers and fried rice. Great stuffs to talk with a bunch of friends :) You can shout if you want, it's outdoor and not in a residential area.
RiriRiri:
I'm not a beer guy, more a wine/cocktail guy. Now this a chance for me, because, I won't argue over tastes sure, but the Mojito is the perfect way to probe a bar in China. A Mojito needs fresh mint, lemon, rum, plus the knowledge to do it right. All of which being stuff that don't come too easy in China unless of course to a bar that actually cares to have what it takes to be a bar... by international standards. Any place that is able to make a decent Mojito in China is me-approved, at least for a time.
Oh, and by the way, this trick works also for sorting fake 5 star hotels from genuine ones. Seeing the staff go through all their hierarchy trying to figure out what a goddamn Mojito is is just hilarious.
DrMonkey:
I remember very decent mojitos in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Quiet bars with great decoration, and where people whisper rather than shout, and where the music is a carefully selected background, not ear-splitting rehashed 90's disco. Damn it, even in Cambodia they had good mojitos. WHHHYYYYYY !!!!!???
Stiggs:
That's more or less what I meant by a bar with Chinese characteristics.
Loud techno music so you can't relax over a few drinks and talk to your friends or hear them talk to you, you need to scream to be heard.
Having to buy a table where everyone will see you in the expensive table and be impressed, part of the deal often includes a dozen warm beers for the table, all opened and slowly going flat and if you decide to leave you waste your beers.
The quality of the food and drinks going downhill, or changing to meet local tastes.
There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you're into, but it's a far cry from the quiet peaceful western style pub atmosphere.
I haven't seen this in my little town. We basically don't have any bars in the traditional sense. Anytime someone gets the bright idea to open one, it gets shut down about a month later due to too much drunken rowdiness and fighting amongst the locals.
The neighboring bigger city (Ningbo) has a good selection of foreign themed bars. So far, at the least the ones I frequent, haven't regressed on their foreign-ness. I assume because the expat population and consumption is large enough to stave off having to cater to more Chinese tastes.
Seen that happen, not exclusively to bars but actually to kind of everything: restaurants, private swimming pools, various clubs... it's actually the story of every single that opens to the public: start out pretty nice with good facilities, nice service, pleasant environment, and then once the place assumes it has built up a steady clientele, or when they assume it's time to earn more money and bring up the general civilisation-incompatible Chinese population, everything turns to shit.
Eventually the place struggles then closes down, or lives on its shitiness, just without me.
Yeah. I know a guy who owned a bar, sold it, lost the profit and now he moans about how nice it was when he had the bar and it was "run properly"
His main downer is the drop in food quality. From haute cuisine to pot noodles. But drinks choices have also been chinesified.
Generally, the turnover in bars here is pretty high. Seems the more stable ones are the expat bars. But they all suffer from being forced out once the property lease is up. The successful bars always have to move as the property owner wants more
Yes this happens from what I seen. But we are in China, so afterall if you want a foreign bar you must go to an exclusive place like Shekou in Shenzhen or hope the border to HK or just drink at home with your friends.
I seen this too many times as well in the big cities.
It is pretty much like that in Xi'an. I think the Chinese people do not understand the concept of a bar or a club. They think a bar and a club are pretty much the same thing. I place where you hear loud music so you cannot talk, and you have a drinking contest like in an American high school or frat party. The idea for just chilling, or chatting with friends or dancing has escaped them.
Bar is opened.
Caters to foreign tastes; draft or cheap beer plus decent music and seating arrangements.
Expats new watering hole.
Chinese realize expats go there, they turn up cos it's cool.
Bar starts to cater to Chinese tastes, they pay more.
Chinese tastes exclusively catered too, expats move out.
There's more though:
Locals notice that no expats go to bar.
Locals move out.
Bar closes. Chinese manager wonders what went wrong!
Seen it many times.... foreigners and Chinese just don't mix well in those types of places.
Unless it is foreigners trying to pick up gold diggers...
Not a drinker, but i have seen it happen, as described above, a couple of times in Changsha.
However, the exception was the "Fifth Tone", a coffee shop owned and run by an American. had great fresh-baked cakes - not local muck
He refused to change to cater more to local tastes, which is why it was popular with the local ex=pat community.
However, when the lease was up, he was forced to close, for the same reason Scandinavian points out: it was too much hassle being a foreign business owner trying to compete on an uneven playing field. It was reopened by a local under a different name, but failed to attract any foreigners
i USED TO WORK FOR A CLUB LIKE THIS. Infact used to lead the guest relations department...but thanks to the stupid chinese management, my job was hard every day. Labelling it to be a expat mentality club and treating people like shit..or chinese way of treatment made my work harder and harder. They mess up and i got to step in, our team kept the bar alive for almost an year. but eventually it was getting so hard for us and we just ddnt want to lie anymore, i left. Then my team wouldnt work without me, since ofcourse i wasnt there to look after them. eventually the club closed months later.
I remember the expat owner telling me what is it that you guys do...cruising around....we need sales.........well once the club closed because most of the customers kept asking about us and stopped coming i sent them an email "now you know what we do....we kept the place alive." hahahah
