I now know a little of what it feels like to be Stephen Hawking. No, not in that way (I can feel the scoffing already); I mean by having to distill an immense amount of information into something digestible by the general public (or in my case by a handful of friends and family and those arseholes that spam the trackbacks). Hawking undertook this onerous task when writing his masterpiece, “A Brief History of Time”. This was a seminal piece of work that furthered his genius (to even more seemingly improbable heights) simply because he was able to take the most complex human imaginings and theories (a lot of which were his own) and make them understandable to the layperson. Make no mistake, this was a hugely important piece of work, and he understandably received plaudits from every quarter of the universe for it. The work I present here is far more important than that, and it’ll only be read by a tiny fraction of the people that read Hawking’s gem and receive no acclaim whatsoever. I suppose my genius will always be underappreciated.

There are an uncountable amount of bars in Beijing (much like any big city, of course), which is fairly odd for a nation not well known for alcoholism, and there are more sprouting up every day; either replacing those that failed, copying those that are successful or attempting to fill an empty niche. There are bars of every kind: dive, Irish, old fashioned English, sports, wine, dance, rock, strip, guitar, waterfront, seedy, large, small and tiny (the smallest is 12 square metres); there is something for everyone and every taste. The range of beers is also wide, with the best (and worst) from across the globe stacked haphazardly behind the bars. Trying to talk about the scene as a whole would be a never ending exercise (although quite fun, especially if I deigned to try out all bars before reporting on them). The most important point to note (and the only one that I’ll be concentrating on) is that the bars are mainly located in only three areas, or districts, of Beijing, with a tiny smattering placed elsewhere around the city:

1) Wudaokou – The student district. The universities are located around here, meaning that the bars must be cheap, plentiful and willing to turn a blind eye to the outrageousness of the students if they are to succeed. Some technology companies also have big offices here, most notably Microsoft and Google, so occasionally (i.e. at the weekend) the students will be joined by poorly disguised techies and suited and booted business folk looking to get hammered. The employed people are easy to spot: they wear shirts and they’re generally fairly clean, unlike their student counterparts, who have mostly turned up to the bar having slept, for the past four nights, in what they’re currently wearing. They also go home a lot earlier, mainly because, again unlike the students, their tolerance for alcohol has waned since they graduated. The guy vomiting outside the bar at 10pm and using his friends as crutches? A techie. The disheveled looking dude knocking back shot after shot of the cheapest urine looking drink at 3am? A student.

2) Sanlitun – The expat drinking haven. The main language here is basically English, with a side in very poorly spoken Mandarin. The bars are more expensive than their counterparts in Wudaokou, mainly because of the plethora of relatively rich foreigners looking for a place to drink until their heads explode. The drinking holes are, in the main, small and rammed full of writhing, gyrating people (regardless of the day of the week) looking to score with anything that moves. These bars attract their clientele by offering a wide variety of truly poisonous spirits and generally blasting ear drum poppingly loud music into the street in an effort to attract people into their bar (the latter trick actually works, although I’ve no idea how since the music is usually bollocks). Oddly, there are little or no fights around here (something that every Brit is conditioned to hear on the news is that drinking abroad equals massive fights, heads rolling across streets and dingy prison cells), although this could well be due to the fact that everyone is so drunk that moving swiftly is simply not a viable option. The Beijing youth, with ever more disposable income (especially when compared to the previous generations) and nowhere else to spend it, have also begun to move in on the scene, and I must say they’re fitting in quite well. A few of them even manage to get heartily inebriated and expel the contents of their stomachs all over the street. However, they are still no match for the drunken westerner, who is unrivalled in his/her drinking stupidity. An anecdote to illustrate my point is required. A friend of mine, who for the purposes of this story we’ll call CP (those are not his initials, by the way, I’m not that stupid!), went to Sanlitun and got bladder burstingly smashed. He claims that everything is a blank from about 9pm until he woke up, so he’d obviously consumed a majestic quantity of booze. When he did wake up, he noted that he wasn’t in his flat, or indeed inside any building at all. When his eyes began to work properly, or at least function enough that he could vaguely see, he discovered a small, homeless Chinese woman tending to him. Further inspection of the scene told him that he was lying on the pavement of a very busy road near Sanlitun (Gongti Bei Lu, just in case you wondered), and that it was approximately 5.30am on Saturday morning. He checked about his person for his effects: wallet, still stuffed with cash, in his back pocket; clothes, undamaged; keys, present and accounted for. It seems that the itinerant Chinese woman had actually been taking care of him while he was dead to the world (the Chinese, at least in Beijing, are ruthlessly honest; they would never steal anything – apart from my iPod Touch, but that’s another story). CP attempted to engage the vagabond in conversation (he can speak a little Mandarin, enough to get by at any rate) and discovered that either she spoke no Chinese, or he could not understand a word she uttered. You can decide for yourself which story to believe here (CP does claim, however, that what issued forth from her mouth was just a stream of random sounds, clicks and noises, much like Starvin’ Marvin’s method of communication in South Park). Feeling a little sheepish, but enormously grateful, that a tramp had had to look after him, he decided to reward her for her decency by buying her a McDonald’s breakfast. That’s what Sanlitun does to you.

3) Houhai & Nan Luo Gu Xiang – The lakeside/hutong bar area. A huge mixture of Chinese and expat society come here to drink and eat, with one type of bar absolutely dominating the scene; the guitar bar. Here, a local will sit with an acoustic guitar and softly croon a love ballad to the patrons while they drink. Occasionally you’ll find bars with bigger bands, playing a mixture of their own songs and western cover songs, but generally, it’s just a guy/girl and their guitar. The other beauty of the bars here is that each one has a view of Houhai or Qianhai (they’re lakes, and very pretty ones, too, full of water and aged ugly men swimming in speedos and other amusing things), or of the surrounding hutongs (if in Nan Luo Gu Xiang), making them especially popular during the summer months. Most bars here also have roof terraces, so you can sit and gulp your beer down while surveying (what can feel like, especially when drunk) your own domain and the ants scurrying around it. It’s a beautiful feeling made even better when we managed to get to know and become friendly with the owners of one of the bars, Bar 31 – ask for Karl (he wanted an English name so we named him!). Now every time we go there, he makes room and time for us, and we always pay him back by making sure he gets as drunk as we do. A mutually beneficial relationship in an excellent drinking location.

The choice of location for an evening’s debauchery depends on how you’re feeling. Up for a big night, with loud music and insane things happening all around you? Head to Sanlitun and join in with the crazies. Fancy remembering those halcyon days when you had no responsibilities and drinking on weeknights was the norm? Go to Wudaokou and mix with the students (and feel really old into the bargain). Up for something a bit more quiet, with cheap-ish beer and good conversation? Rock up in Houhai. The only thing I need to do now is decide which location I’ll be heading to tonight. And how to deal with the hangover in the morning.