Journal: September 14, 2003
Michael Steely
Where the BOBO Meet: The Bars of Beijing Old Town by Guan Yunzhang
Appearing in the August edition of China Today (www.chinatoday.com.cn) , the article “Bars in Beijing Old Town” reveals the birth of a new bar district in the center of Beijing. Guan notes that Shichahai Lake’s bar district has recently grown from several bars to over a dozen, and now provides an alternative to the other bar street (Sanlitun) located in the embassy district. What I found interesting about the article was not that another bar district has popped up in another big Far East Asian city, but of the reasons for the growth of Shichahai in the first place.
Where Sanlitun might be compared to the Right Bank of Paris’ Beijing, Shichahai has the ambience of the Left Bank. Where Sanlitun grew out of the yuppie, trendy embassy area, Shichahai bar district sprang from a spirit of the Chinese past with its charming and quaint bars nestled within the little alleyways of the hutong and around Shichahai Lake. Yet Guan points not to a location in Beijing as much as a lifestyle that explains the recent popularity of this new bar district. And it is to the BOBO – the Bourgeois Bohemian- that this growth is attributed.
Guan depicts the lifestyle of the BOBO as “Bourgeois Bohemian -- a growing social stratum in China. Its people pursue the kind of quality lifestyle to which filter coffee, bon vivant bars, independent travel and keeping fit are indispensable. They read Murakami Haruki novels, watch European art films, and shop at export garment stores. Despite this Western influenced lifestyle, however, Chinese BOBOs feel cut adrift somewhere between Chinese traditional and modern culture.” Shichahai’s new bars were created for BOBOs by BOBOs and goes on to mention several bars now operating in the area.
I, personally, can relate to BOBO having lived the lifestyle of the backpacker English teacher for many years, with the Yukio Mishima novels, my Fellini movie copies and my trips to the waixiao (export) garment shops. But there was something about the article and Beijing’s new BOBO that seems to echo the BOBO of Taipei of yesteryear. It reminds me of a teahouse on the northwest side of Taiwan University surrounded by a sprinkling of bars, pubs, student grub houses, etc. The Wisteria was renowned (infamously) as the intellectual’s hangout. The tree in the courtyard, the cozy, welcoming alcove with a sprawl of littered shoes, and the labyrinth of rooms of tatami in an old two-story house, where many discussions of Taiwan independence ensued. Away from the downtown area, and located in the misty hills of Beitou is another BOBO teahouse, where I spent many afternoons over the GO chessboard, shaded by bamboo brushing up against the floor to ceiling windows. This was Shann Yuan, started by Taiwan’s no. 1 BOBO, Milo Chang, artist and collector extraordinaire, who founded the first museum for aboriginal artworks in Taiwan. When I last saw him, before he died several years back, he was playing an upright piano in a 100-ping bare room of tatami in long underwear on a cold rainy Beitou day.
