Lulu’s Diary: The Swingin’ Season

"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

Oct 2003 - September is golden, goes the old Chinese saying. It was a busy month. A lot of openings:

Cloud 9 is a new club located in a maze of residential apartments behind the Sanlitun chaos. Opened by Zhang Youdai, a radio DJ who introduced me to Jimi Hendrix on his late night Monday show too many years ago for me to reveal an exact date in print, it’s a chinoiserie-meets-dance-music type of place, occupying two floors of an old-style apartment building. I went there after it had been open about a week.

Cloud 9 is Suzy Wong’s for those who prefer bars that are not named after a call girl. The beautiful people are already all over it: Playboy model, soap opera actress and girl about town Ai Wan was there with a crew of glamorati. I also spotted Asian media price John Chan who may have been doing research for an article he just published in Asia Times about bohemian Beijing. And at the next table, Ogilvy stud and Ali G lookalike Dirk Eschenbacher was chilling with a small gang of adorers.

Another new space that’s off to a good start is Centro. Fuelled by a powerful combination of champagne, California rolls and Cosmopolitans, the opening media bash was a cut above the average Beijing press event, in which someone makes a speech for fifteen minutes and the journalists are bribed, in cash, to write about the boring speech. Bold face name Henry Li was there helping things along, as were rare book dealer Nils “the Mongolian connection” Lindstedt and his lovely wife Lovisa.

Centro’s opening offered something much more seductive than 200 kuai in a red envelope: the promise of fun.

I’m in trouble with Fulbright scholars again. An email from a reader named Ben ponders my frequent dissing on frat boys:

I would also fit into the category of “twentysomething American jock type,” (I used to play competitive sports too) but like any stereotype that doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Where am I going with this?

I’ll tell you where you’re going my dear Ben: you’re telling me that frat boys have feelings too and that not every frat boy is an ogling oaf. Well that may be the case, but perhaps you should visit the Sanlitun South Street on a Friday night for a quick refresher course in the Dark Side of Frathood.

What else has been going on? Well Bhangra! There was an Indian party at Vibes: south Asian music and Indian food. Nice. But I wish Vibes would buy some more sofas so that you could actually sit downstairs, instead of standing around with drink in hand.

The club is back to pre-SARS levels; Houhai is Disneyland; Steve Barker and DJ Motherman (a.k.a. Staffer 3) are mixing up a Carribean storm at the Treelounge; and I was invited to a cocktail party at some hotel in Wangfujing. An envelope addressed to Mr. Lulis Diasy arrived by courier at the [magazine's] offices and the editors assumed it was for me. As soon as I file this story, I’ll put on my sluttiest Dolce & Gabbana boots and go check things out. You’ll have a full report next month if anything interesting happens.