much more than books

there are a lot of things that they did right here:
it's the best place to just chat away the afternoon with friends (old friends as well as people you get to know here..) while sipping nice mojitos, enjoying some well prepared dishes and listening to some decent jazz tunes
it's one of the best places to just sit in the corner and read, again, while sipping the mojito...
it's the best place i know of in beijing to buy all kinds of english books that cover many aspects of china inlcuding a huge variety of translated chinese novels
it's a great source of information about life in modern china if you attend their lectures, readings, talks (while sipping the obligatory mojito) and as such an important center of cultural exchange
so all in all it sums up to be a quite multicultural (!) place - something beijing otherwise lacks so much...