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 spent there makes you feel just how Shanghai is becoming a world city again.

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