Every laowai (foreigner) in Beijing knows this bar. Despite it’s location (if you look for ‘nowhere’ on a map then Wudaokou - the area where this bar is - is in the middle of that, miiiiiiiiles out of town… but in a thriving expat community nonetheless), this bar is always busy. It’s 24-hours so that helps. But then again it is tucked away inside a bookshop…

Anyway it’s not too bad. Good drinks selection and there are various special offers at certain times. To my knowledge the excellent XinJiang band don’t play here anymore (you can still catch them at ‘Cheers bar’ - check out my review) but there are other events throughout the week such as the pub quiz on wednesdays which is quite good.

The crowd is usually a mixture of western students, each claiming to understand ‘the real china’ better than anyone else, and the odd adventurous and western-loving Korean student.

The food here, much like most attempts at western food in beijing, is all terrible and at 4 times the price of any chinese restaurant.

In summary, if you happen to be stuck in wudaokou (i.e. you live there… there wouldn’t be a reason to go otherwise) then this is an OK bar to go to. I would say there are better bars in wudaokou but the reason I give this bar 3 stars and not 2 is because it’s quite near to the subway station - the fastest way back to the city. Actually I will give it 2 stars.

Lush is a pretty cool ex-pat bar in Beijing. Oddly to get to the toilet you have to walk out of the bar, across the corridor, and into the bookshop next door. Of course the bookstore is closed at 4am, but they create a corridor of curtains through the store to the toilet. Weird.

Phil seems to have forgotten the 5am “Full English” that we had here on our last trip. I was in bed with food poisoning for the next week.

It may not have been them, but the under-cooked eggs are a likely cause.

I love this bar. Probably my favourite drinking haunt in Beijing, it’s a mixed ex-pat and local student crowd, hidden in a bookshop, of all bizarre places.

It’s fairly small, and there’s always some action here. They have a particularly good band on, on Tuesday nights as I recall, and do excellent cocktails, and a full English is on the menu!

It’s open 24/7 and they have absolutely no objection to you falling asleep in a chair the night before and waking up here for breakfast. Surreal, but nice.