Lulu’s Diary: Talking about their g-g-generation

"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.

Sep 2003 - Did the earth move for you baby?

It did for me one Friday night in August when Beijing was tickled by an Inner Mongolian earthquake. On the same night that the ground shook beneath my feet, I won the yellow jersey of the tour de younger generation in a one-night frenzy of bar-hopping.

We started off the evening, against all my better instincts, at Poachers. It was full of students – healthy-looking young men and women of university age, and “students” – young women in revealing halter tops and men with ample bellies and ponytails. Not really my scene, darling, but they all looked happy swilling cheap beer and dancing to hip-hop pop.

Next stop Deep. Or was it Vics? Or Mix? Was it the cheap beer or was it that these Workers’ Stadium dance bars are so similar that only their owners can tell them apart? Anyhow, I went to all three and had an epiphany:

My generation has become boring!

We either don’t go to clubs at all, or roam around Sanlitun in packs, waiting for The Club to open so we can shake our heads to a type of music that had its heyday in the last century. In the meantime, the Vics Mix Deep troika packs ’em in: singles, couples and groups of youngsters, laughing and bouncing to music that doesn’t necessitate the ingestion of controlled substances.

Which type of club will Room 18 become? Its eccentric location inside the Rosedale Suites Hotel in the Lido area does not give any clues, and the opening night attracted a motley selection of scenesters, ranging from Desmond O’Neill, the notorious lush of Beverly Hills, to The Club’s earnestly happy proprietors, Henry and Sally, to Zhou Ying and Claudio, the hipster couple who own of Vibes. A bottle of Corona at Room 18 goes for a handsome sum, a strategy clearly intended to keep students and “students” at arm’s length. However the expensive beer did not stop a group of media types from getting drunk and swimming in the fountain outside the club.

Room 18 was also the venue for a Chanel trunk show after-party. A trunk show, darlings, is what you get invited to when you spend enough money on a designer brand. The designer brand then thanks you by inviting you to spend even more money by buying the new season’s collection before it hits the stores. I missed the trunk show, which was held at the Grand Hyatt, and I felt underdressed at the after-party. The dress code was head-to-toe Chanel, although man-in-tight-black-T-shirt was also an acceptable clothing option. Movers and shakers in attendance included LVMH public relations maven Grace Zhao, Media Edge hipster Charley Kan, and Shen Qing, the gorgeous publisher of celebrity rag Rich and Famous.

Finally, as predicted in the January edition of this column, the competition between high-end bars in luxury hotels is on. The Grand Hyatt leads with Red Moon. Cheesy name, but go for the sushi and the Japanese businessmen. The Kerry Centre Hotel joins the fray in late September with Centro. Expect an update next month after the opening party.