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新浪首页 > 新浪教育 > 中国周刊 > Nothing Like a Sanlitun Café!

Nothing Like a Sanlitun Café!
http://www.sina.com.cn 2004/02/25 09:39  中国周刊

  Beijing's answer to Moscow's Arbat, Sanlitun Bar Street is a narrow street with a cool cafe strip on one side. Conveniently located in the embassy district, it is over-run with foreigners and is the principal sunny afternoon and late night meeting place for the moneyed party set.

  Personally, I try to stay away, since too much exposure can severely dent one's wallet. The drink prices are very un-Chinese at $3-5 a pop. I can't stay away altogether, though, and over the May Day holidays(May 1 to 7), I spent three days in a row drinking in the sunny cafes. The first day, I had whiskey all afternoon with my friend Jingsong, brother of Jingmei's, after a lunch of Thai food and four bottles of wine. Needless to say, I passed out in the back seat of Jingmei's car by 5 pm, waking late the next morning for another afternoon of pleasantries.

  This time around, I stayed away from the hard stuff, and settled for fresh watermelon juice and a few dozen new CD's from one of the countless CD sellers. Actually, unlike normal times when I would look through the piles and piles of crappy Western music (Cher, Michael Bolton, Back Street Boys, etc) for the few gems, Jingsong just bought the whole pile from the vendor and then shooed him away. Amazing what power Shanghai stockbrokers wield in China.

  That evening, we went to dinner at a Brazilian restaurant on a side street next to Sanlitun, watching with watering mouths as the chief cut delicious slices off the roasting slabs of meat. Nothing like the usual rat meat on a stick sold in the hutong allies.

  Once again, I fell pray to Jingsong's unquenchable thirst for booze and indulged with him at another Latin place around the corner. Not able to go too long after the previous evening, Jingmei and I left him early for more rest.

  The third afternoon found us sipping cold drinks in yet another cafe after a morning of a boring Chinese wedding and tasty Japanese sushi. We sat next to a Russian couple in town on business and chatted about the joys of Sanlitun. They pointed out a fun trait about this city, the locals' accent.

  In Beijing, the locals speak Chinese with a thick accent, adding "r" to the end of many words. One time last November, Tom, the swift Chinese language student, and I were headed to a club on Sanlitun. He spent ten minutes trying to tell the driver where we wanted to go, using perfectly pronounced Putonghua, when I busted in with my street-learnt pidgin Chinese and scored instant recognition with "Sanlitur".




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