Lulu’s Diary: Of Cabbages and King

"Lulu's Diary" was a magazine column that ran from 2003-4. Lulu was one of Beijing's It Girls who commented on the movers and shakers in the city. Her identity will forever remain a mystery.

Nov 2003 - Artist Han Bing tied a cabbage to a chain and dragged it around [our magazine's] Second Annual Starving Artists Exhibition. I feel his pain: it’s been a weird month.

Houhai, or to use its proper name Shichahai, now has its first yuppie development: Lotus Lane. It was the scene of an opening party last month for a selection of hipsters and minor celebrities, including Spring Subway director Zhang Yang, curly haired Green Tea director Zhang Yuan, Beijing gutter novelist Wang Shuo and cynical realist painter Fang Lijun. Fang also happens to be the cynically realistic owner of the South Silk Road restaurants. A new branch of South Silk Road, snidely named S’silk Road, is the centerpiece of Lotus Lane.

The whole development is a pleasant change from the hippie Houhai standard, but they’ve got a long way to go before they can compete with Shanghai’s Xintiandi. Complaint number one: Lotus Lane’s ad campaign is a shameless plagiarism of Absolut Vodka’s ads. Secondly and far more importantly, some of the places don’t have their own bathrooms and their patrons have to use a communal toilet, hutong style.

On the other end of the scale, Sohu.com published a list of China’s 100 richest people. Netease Internet entrepreneur Ding Lei tops the list, with a personal fortune of RMB 7.5 billion. Not bad for a 32-year-old geek. The list was compiled by Shanghai-based accountant Rupert Hoogewerf, aka Hu Run, who himself has joined another list: foreigners famous in China for no good reason. At least Da Shan speaks good Chinese and is a funny cross-talker if you like that sort of thing (my father does). Hu Run on the other hand has become famous for making a list.

I have been making a list of my own. Whilst looking for an apartment, it has become clear to me that Beijing’s real estate developers are severely challenged in the English language department. Aside from the proliferation of New York place names – Manhattan Garden, Central Park, Upper East Side, Park Avenue and Soho to name just a few – there is an alarming tendency to just plain weirdness:

Yuppie International Garden
Top Aristocratic
Golf
Moma (as in New York’s Museum of Modern Art)
Vitality Building
Margarita Island
Genertime International Centre
Moderate Shangri-La
CEO
Gahood Garden
King Da International Apartments
Mega Hall
Wonderful Digital Jungle
A Firenze
Top Box
Palm Springs
Pink Box ER
Glory Vogue
American Rock
Latte Town

If all goes well however, I will file next month’s column from the apartment building with my favorite name: Merlin Champagne Town.