Timelessness - Face Bar (Rue Lafayette, now Fuxing Zhong Lu)

Face Bar is not "in", it's not a fashionable location but it is quintessentially part of the Shanghai spirit. Face Bar is located in one of the smaller building of the former Morriss Mansion, now Rui Jin Guest House. The front entrance looks at the park of hotel, and the back entrance is a few steps away from Rue Lafayette (now Fuxing Zhong Lu). Although this building is not the main one of the compound, it's a large and impressive mansion with 3 floors. I'm not a great fan of the terrace. It's a cozy place, but as it's spread out along the alley, the isolation of the tables from each others gives the feeling that you are alone in the world, while letting people at the next table fully comprehend your conversation.
I particularly like Face Bar in the winter at 2 o'clock on Sunday afternoon, drinking high tea in the veranda, looking at sun rays painfully piercing through the clouds. It's cold outside, but the inside is jut warm enough. Just a little sunshine gives a pre-feeling of the winter. There are not so many people at this time on a lazy Sunday giving the atmosphere a feeling of great intimacy and timelessness. The whole winter gloom suddenly disappears while lying one of the Chinese beds. No need for opium to travel in the comfort of the wooden canopy. The world outside this wooden protection has become just the show that I am spectator of. Time stops while lying on this carpet as magic as the one of Aladdin.
Face Bar also has a restaurant upstairs, serving Thai food. There again, the old walls and old wood give you the feeling that you are on a time travel... to old colonial Asia. Flavors and atmosphere of various Asian countries mix, to create this subtle ambiance. Face Bar also has a third floor in the attic, cozy and charming, with a balcony overlooking the park.
The genius of the architect is to have preserved and used the old building where the bar is located. It has created an establishment that seems somehow straight out of the settlements time, while very contemporary. Like their ancestors in the "Cercle Sportif" of the old Shanghai, today's expat meet there for drinking a Gin-and-Tonic, chatting with friends, enjoying a cigar and play a game of pool. Under this veranda, the year could be 1920, 1930, 1990 or 2050... it does not really matter. Face Bar is a timeless place, one of those where my mind starts to imagine that I actually live in the old Shanghai.

In love again

We have not met for about a year and I just could not have come to Europe without coming here. I planned my trip home to France, but somehow I had to make a hook. I'm sitting on a terrace, having a coffe at Cafe Vian on Liszt Square in Budapest. Our story somehow finished in December 2004, when I decided to leave and move to Shanghai. Although I am now far away, I have never forgotten this feeling.

I have just spent the last hours walking in its streets and old feelings come back so fast. The city and me just find back each other. I notice every detail, every change in its heart. I touch the walls, the old stone still has the same feeling and the same soul. Flashbacks about people and events that I have lived here come back at each corner. There is a deja vu feeling and the return of past habits is just like fitting back in long worn shoes. I sometimes feel that I never left, that the whole time in Shanghai was just last night's dream and that I still live here. Spending time with old friends, sitting at the same restaurants as we used to and feeling somehow part of the group again, those are feelings that are worth coming from the other side of the world just to enjoy them.

I am still in love with Budapest and being here is just like restarting this relationship that we had before. I thought I would never leave, and somehow with fatigue, habits and all the events that we lived together I ended considering going away. I eventually left for this new girl of Shanghai. New and unknown feelings were overwhelming, but it took me a long time to really absorb the end of our story and feel like a part of it. Shanghai is now my home and the relationship with this city is just as intense as the one I used to have with Budapest. I still enjoy living the old times again, spending some time between the nineteenth century buildings and feeling Hungarian nostalgia again, although knowing that the story is over. As much as I feel home here, it does not take long to realize how much a different person I am now. Any return would be the start of a new story, and imagining anything different would be fooling myself. The city is like an old girlfriend of mine, and meeting again is just so nice for a few days, just to enjoy a little bit of the nostalgia before going back to Shanghai, my new home.

Decadence on the Bund

It's another Sunday, waking up when most of the mornings hour have already vanished. I am thinking of going to brunch, which is just another way of forgetting that breakfast should have happened a few hours ago... when I was still in the first hours of my sleep. I'm looking at time passing so slowly and so fast at the same time, feeling somewhat guilty of this lost morning of free time. I could have used all this time for the many interesting things that have always been planing but never done, instead of staying in my bed, recovering from last night's dancing and drinking. I'm trying to remember what I did last night. Snapshots of drinks, dance music and happy people come back to my mind. We talked about going to a new club where a famous Dutch DJ was playing last night... instead I ended up in old favorite Bar Rouge.
There is only one bar like this in Shanghai. It opened about 2 years ago along with the restaurant below (Sens & Bund). Brand new design in an old ostentatious building, bringing a team of French managers and skillful bar tenders with them. Management probably initially thought that Bar Rouge would be "The bar of Sens & Bund" ... when this very bar has become infinitely more successful than the restaurant below. Some people love it, some people hate it, but everybody in town has been to Bar Rouge at least once... I have long lost count of how many evenings I have enjoyed on the 7th floor of Bund 18 looking at LuJiaZui towers on the other side of the river... or the amount of money I have spent there, that only somewhat equals the amount of bad things people have told me about this place.
Yes! Bar Rouge is the center of attentiong the newly rich foreigners as well as jet setters and posh tourists in Shanghai. Yes! people go there to be seen, much more than to enjoy and everybody seems to try being just something else than what they really are. Yes! Service can be appaling on overcrowded weekends if you don't know the bar tenders personaly. Yes! prices are astronomical compared to Shanghai bar scene, not to mention the local living standard BUT this is exactly why Bar Rouge is so great. Managers of foreign multinational companies, Russian models looking for a salary complement, new stars of the Chinese Media, winners of the "end of communism" game, foreign trainees looking for a little more of student life, foreign tourists looking for some posh action or maybe a little trouble at half the price of home, entrepreneurs celebrating business successes, Chinese working women willing to become your instant friend for the night, foreign buyers from all nationalities recovering from hours of drive on terrible roads visting factories, a new generation of young Chinese enjoying the fun of parties and nightlife, business visitors shown how much China is a "hardship posting", foreigners coming to Shanghai to study Chinese and ending in the most foreign place of the city, all of them and many more dress up and enjoy the pure decadence of the this place, the ablaze Champagne bottles, colorful lab tubes in ice, heavy cigar smoke, flamming bar and Formula One style Champagne aboundantly shaken by the beat of the dance music spinned around by excellent DJ's.
I don't always want to, but more often than not I find myself ending up in Bar Rouge. There are so many other great places in Shanghai, but going there is somewhat convulsive... there are nights that I just need to go there, because only there can you find this kind of atmosphere. There is true feeling of old Shanghai in this place. Like the Majestic dance hall, the New World and the Paramount in their times Bar Rouge is the place where Shanghai business people show off their success and release from the stress of the intoxicating life of this city. A night there is to feel just how Shanghai is becoming a world city again.

Singing trees

Shanghai is a very noisy city. Taxis and buses constantly horn, people often speak loudly, advertising and various kind of music resonate all the time. It's also not rare to hear the song of an air hammer a three o'clock in the morning, but if you look for it, you can find some pockets of quiet between the old buildings. The entrance of a lane can be on a busy street, but get through the door and it suddenly becomes much more quiet. Within ten or twenty meters, the traffic noise slowly disappears, giving away space for live noise of people talking with each other and households noises.
Lanes going through Shikumens are small narrow alleys serpenting between two-three level houses. The real gem is to find a lane leading to larger villas. Those often have gardens and trees, surrounded by a very special sound. The noise comes slowly from the sky, going crcrcrcr and taking everybody by surprise. It inflates and inflates and inflates until one cannot hear anything else for a while and then disappears on a slow descrendo. Silent regain the floor for a few minutes and the noise comes back again. Most of people living in newly built tower have never heard it.
This mysterious noise is the song of the cigalas. They are large insects, creating noise by vibrating their wings to attract females cigalas. This cigala's "love song" is a typical noise of the old Shanghai. Along with intense heat and Spanish style old houses, it gives a strong Mediterranean feeling to old parts of the city. Cigalas are still a privilege of the old Shanghai, as they seem to prefer old trees. Trees in the new parks and residence gardens do not seem to have been found yet by the little animals... or maybe the traffic noise is covering the Cigalas song there. Sitting in my old house looking at the garden, I hear the cigalas song and suddenly feel miles away from China. This sound is for me like a trip on the Mediterranean, somewhere between Marseilles, Thesaloniki and Oran. Cigallas song is one of these little details that make summers in old Shanghai so special.