Lulu’s Diary: Lulu Does Shanghai, Mian Mian Style

"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

Jul 2003 - Your intrepid social correspondent has been spending time in Shanghai recently, risking quarantine and social isolation to bring you up to speed on the scene in the southern capital of slick.

“Easy on the eye but no soul” is how a dear friend of mine describes Shanghai. In an attempt to prove him wrong, I spent an evening tagging along behind the woman who has herself been described as the soul of Shanghai: Mian Mian, the original Shanghai baby, bad girl author and socialite. We went to Face, a beautiful bar in an old villa inside the Ruijin Hotel. It’s like a Shanghai version of the Treelounge: very pleasant but full of expatriate frat boys, except that the Shanghai frat boys have better haircuts and more expensive clothes than their Beijing counterparts. And whereas the Treelounge is right next to the Third Ring Road, Face looks out on a long stretch of manicured lawn and the green gardens of the Ruijin Hotel.

We went on to the tacky Buddha Bar where we fought our way through tattooed Australian surfer boys to get to the tiny bar, then to Max Club which was full of well-dressed Chinese boys and scantily-dressed girls, and then Fusion which contained a lot of people who looked like they really wanted to be on some kind of stimulant but couldn’t find anyone dodgy enough to sell it to them. We hadn’t yet had enough of the cheap ’90s techno that fuels Shanghai nightlife, so we moved on to the heaving California which, if you must have a Beijing comparison, is basically Maggie’s for yuppies without a discriminatory door policy. We popped into Guan Di, just next door, which offers more of the same but draws a crowd of Hong Kong and Taiwan compatriots and gym-built ABC boys in shorts and Yohji Yamamoto Adidas sneakers. We ended the evening at Mezzo’s, a little bar that opens for business at about 4 am, when it turns up the volume on the same CD of lousy ’90s techno that all the other clubs play.

What about food? Shanghainese cuisine is too sweet for a rough Beijing girl like me, but the Western restaurants are excellent. The one must-eat destination is M on the Bund with its superb food and views of Shanghai’s famous waterfront avenue. Also worth visiting are the many restaurants at Xintiandi, a sterile but beautifully renovated entertainment complex housed in a swathe of old concession-era Shanghai houses.

So does Shanghai have a soul? Yes it does, but with apologies to Mian Mian, Shanghai’s soul is wrapped in Teflon and has already been sold to Louis Vuitton.

Back in Beijing I was delighted to find the following advertisement in my inbox: Job Vacancy at British Embassy Beijing: Social Secretary to Her Majesty’s Ambassador. Main purpose of job: To coordinate official functions hosted by the Ambassador and his wife both within and outside the Residence. Your Excellency, you may reach me via the editorial offices of this magazine.