imkevinxu

To celebrate my good friend David Hoyt’s 24th Birthday in Beijing, we had to do it in an epic way so we booked a table at The Beach.

Yeah, that’s actually sand you see there near the bar. Rooftop view right next to Beijing Chaoyang Park (北京朝阳公园), this was one hell of a night.

Throughout my time in Beijing, I always felt that the Stanford group that was there was partying the wrong way… well maybe not the wrong way but not the classy Beijing way. A common thing some of the other students would do would buy cheap Baijiu (烧酒) bottles at the local small store and pre-game hard until getting to the club completely smashed, maybe ordering one or two more shots before getting all up in the dance floor.

I began noticing things and asking around and finally got a chance to do it the classy Beijing way I was hoping for. It involved two things:

• Booking a table - This guarantees a place to come back to that is yours for the whole night. Of course there is a minimum charge and it is actually quite hard to find a table on a Saturday night (Xiu was full that night). Thanks to a bit of a hustle, I pretended to be a young ambassador showing my American friends the best of Beijing and they were only free that one weekend and I pitched to the club manager, “I want to show these Americans the best Beijing has to offer”. That was an easy close.
• Whiskey and tea - One of the most popular drink mixes, sometimes I’d see tables full of giant Chivas Regal handles and bottles of green tea which would then be poured and mixed together. We finally got to try this at Beach and it was amazing, the chilled tea makes it perfect for a warm summer night as well.