Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
these are generally long - sometimes
5-8pm. Wednesday is often ladies'
night, with many places offering free
drinks for women before midnight.
Look out too for
open bar
nights -
all you can drink for around ¥100 -
advertised in expat magazines. Only
the swankiest venues have cover
charges, and they usually include one
free drink.
If you're horny and dumb enough
to follow one of the ubiquitous touts
promising to take you to a “
lady
bar
”, then you deserve the subse-
quent shakedown. Anyway, it's not as
if there's a shortage of “independent
female contractors” in the regular
dive bars.
Finally, remember that some of the
venues listed under cafés and restau-
rants work very well after dark as bars,
notably
Arch
,
Citizen Bar and Café
(both p.114),
Lapis Lazuli
(see p.119),
South Beauty 881
(see
Where to drink
The biggest range of watering holes
can be found in the
Old French
Concession
. Xintiandi is upmarket,
perhaps just a little too respectable,
but a good place for a civilized drink
if you can afford it. At the opposite
end of the scale, Julu Lu is a strip of
dive bars growing long in the tooth,
as typified by gritty
Goodfellas
.
Southeast of here, the bar strip of
Maoming Nan Lu is perpetually
under threat of closure for lowering
the tone around what its otherwise an
exclusive area. Heading south down
the street you can expect to run a
gamut of bar girls shrieking “You
come my bar!”, though there are a
couple of cultured alternatives. To the
west, Hengshan Lu is a more diffuse
zone, stretching for several kilometres,
with bars catering to most tastes but
veering towards the expat friendly
just-like-home pastiche.
In
Jing'an
, Tongren Lu provides an
updated version of Maoming Nan Lu,
with a few decent venues along an
otherwise shameless parade, while
the
Bund
is the fastest rising new area;
here, an air of exclusivity is reflected
in the prices.
p.120) and
Barbarossa
(see p.113).
The Bund and Nanjing Dong Lu
Bar Rouge
7F, No. 18 The Bund.
Staff are snobbish,
clientele are pretentious, but the terrace has
unrivalled views over the Bund. Cover is ¥50
on weekends and you won't get much
change from a red bill for a drink, but go for
one, check out the view, and then hit
somewhere less posey.
Captain Bar
6th Floor, 37 Fuzhou Lu, by Sichuan
Zhong Lu.
This relaxed venue is one of the
few in the area where you won't feel the
need to dress up. Never mind the
unremarkable interior, it's all about the
terrace, with its fabulous view of Pudong. It
sits atop a backpacker hostel (see p.104),
though most guests are put off by the
prices - draught beer ¥40.
Glamour Bar
魅力酒吧
mèi lì jii bā
6th Floor, M on the Bund, 20 Guangdong Lu, by
Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu
Opening hours and prices
Bar
hours
are flexible; a bar tends to
close when its last barfly has lurched
off - though all places open till at
least midnight, and on the weekends
much later. We've listed phone
numbers and/or websites for places
that can be hard to find, or anywhere
that has
live music
.
Though Chinese beer can be
cheaper than bottled water in shops,
bar
prices
can come as something of
a shock; even in the shabbiest dive, a
small bottle of Tsingtao will cost
upwards of ¥25. In the swankiest
venues it will be more than ¥50, and
for a cocktail you won't get much
change from a ¥100 note. But just
about everywhere has a happy hour
(two drinks for the price of one), and
www.m-theglamourbar
.com.
Pink, frivolous and fabulous, this is
Shanghai's destination du jour for poseurs.
W
124
r
Good view of the Bund though, and there's
a schedule of cultural events such as book
