List Post 1

I just finished my history final! I think it went pretty well and am very happy it’s over. The only thing I have left now is my Chinese final on Tuesday, which promises to be a beastly leviathan of an examination, but after which point I get to spend my last two days in Beijing free and unburdened by sentence structures, characters, or the Language Pledge. Other than that, there’s not much to report, other than that Zhang Ran and I made jiaozi last night and they were delicious.
As I only have about a week left here, and I feel like I’ve pretty much done everything I’m going to do at this point, I am going to start the part of the show where I make lists of things. These will be of no practical interest to anyone except possibly Arianne, but I am a type-A person at heart and enjoy inflicting my opinions on others. I need to recover from the history final, so we’ll start with…

NIGHTLIFE
Top Five Best Bars
5. Bar Blu
Sort of expensive, but the drinks are good, the music is good, the dancing is good if you come on a good night, and once I was sitting on their heated rooftop terrace and they put 300 on for us to watch. Stay classy, Bar Blu. (I’m Ron Burgundy?)
4. Lush
The student mainstay in Wudaokou, Lush not only has good hamburgers but a great, albeit early, happy hour. Their open mics are also a bundle of fun. Lush is what I’d always do before Propaganda…good times, but it gets marked down for being almost exclusively foreign students.
3. Drum and Bell Bar
I only went here once, but it was great. The rooftop terrace (I am a sucker for rooftop terraces) is beautifully positioned in a thicket of trees, the branches of which will brush you in the face if you’re kind of tall, and you have a great view of the Drum and Bell Towers, built during the Ming dynasty. Beijing’s best-kept secret, although I did find it in Lonely Planet.
2. Bookworm
I expounded on this place in great detail in the last entry, but it rules. It is also the only bar I’ve ever studied at.
1. Q Bar
Q Bar made me not hate Sanlitun anymore. It’s out of the way, has a rooftop terrace, expensive but tasty drinks, and gin & tonics with entire slices of cucumber in them. Mmm. It’s also not packed with obnoxious drunk college students, who are probably driven away by the prices. Good riddance, I say.

Top Five Best Places To Go After the Bars
5. Bar Blu
The dance floor counts as a club. I mostly just go here for dance purposes anyway, because it’s free.
4. The 24-Hour Porridge Place in Wudaokou
As can be expected, this restaurant serves delicious, hot rice porridge at all hours. It’s great.
3. Club China Doll
The best place to dance in Sanlitun, hands-down. No cover, but still stays classy, and I’ve seen a couple good DJs there, mostly playing electronic and hip-hop.
2. MAO Livehouse
This place has killer bands (Hedgehog, Regurgitator, Jens Lekman), good space, and interesting people. It’s sort of the Fillmore (or the Metro, for those of you in central time) of Beijing, where every respected alternative musician comes when they’re in town.
1. Propaganda
My heart overflows with love for Propaganda. There’s no cover, the music is awesomely bad, and it’s always SO MUCH FUN. When I die, I want to be cremated so that my ashes can be thrown over the crowd here at 2 a.m. on a Friday night. Propaganda is like rager grad school. I may never love again.

There will be more lists every day. Keep your eyes peeled.

Dumpling Tally: 293