A touch of class

Lorraine and Nigel arrived in style last week - first class Air France - for a long weekend in Beijing. The city put on its best face or them - beautifully warm days & clear blue skies - as they explored the sites and enjoyed some of the entertainment Beijing has to offer.

Gastronomic highlight was, undoubtedly, The Whampoa Club - sister restaurant to the well established Shanghai restaurant of the same name at 3 on the Bund. It was the first time we'd been and we really enjoyed it. Whampoa serves contemporary Chinese food of terrific quality - some of the best we've eaten since moving here - in what, I think, must be the most dramatic restaurant setting in Beijing. The building is a converted courtyard house in the financial district with the main dining room built in the basement. The room's ceiling is made of glass to allow light in from the courtyard above. From below, the ceiling is hung with thousands of reflective glass beads. From above, the ceiling is also a fish pond with dozens of goldfish swimming around. Every aspect of the decor was beautifully done and the service was exceptional - definitely the place to go for a special occasion.

Lorraine & Tac try out the Whampoa bathrooms

If Whampoa is a testament to the sophistication, style and wealth of new Beijing then a Beijing duck lunch at Li Qun in the hutongs south of Tienanmen Square offers you a very different glimpse of Beijing life. The restaurant - also built in a courtyard, but untouched since it opened - is tiny with only a handful of tables. This family restaurant serves great food for a fraction of the price of Whampoa and still manages to retain it's simplicity and originality - with a few concessions to it's foreign customers such as English menus - even though it has become one of Beijing's best known restaurants.

But Beijing also has its duds. We decided to try Shuguo Yanyi (蜀国演义), a Sichuan restaurant recommended by 'That's Beijing' magazine - normally a reliable source of restaurant and bar reviews. As they describe it: "Upscale entertainment restaurant with more neon lights than Las Vegas. This Sichuan place has shows every night including face-changing, classical music performances, and traditional dances. The food is good but you're mainly paying for atmosphere". A bit tacky, maybe, but perhaps good fun on a Saturday night, we thought?

How wrong we were. Arriving at 7.30pm we found only one other table occupied and a Chinese crooner with a dubious voice finishing off his set. Obviously a warm up act and we had come too early, I assumed, as they seated us in a booth with no view of the stage. We moved to a table in the centre of the room and ordered but I should have smelled a rat when a presentation screen came down at the back of the stage and the Eagles live 'Hell Freezes Over' DVD started to play.

I did feeel better when a group of 40-50 Koreans walked in - obviously seduced by the thought of that traditional Chinese face changing, dancing and classical music performances - but after an hour of serious eating, drinking, toasting and picture taking the Koreans left. We were at 'Life in the Fast Lane' by now and not a face changer in sight. As it turned out the show had finished at 7pm - way before we arrived - and, in the opinion of the only other dinners in the place - was terrible.
Shuguo Yanyi on a Saturday night

We also fed our minds that weekend and spent a fun morning at the Dashanzi 798 art district where we ended up buying our first piece of Beijing art.

Wen Fang is a Beijing photographer who has created a series of photos of migrant construction workers printed onto grey, 7kg, building bricks. For Wen, the bricks and the construction workers symbolise the headlong dash by local government and property developers to modernise Beijing at, seemingly, any cost including the destruction of Beijing's traditional architecture and culture.

There are more than 3M migrant workers in Beijing, mostly in the construction industry. They have come from rural areas in search of higher wages and earn around 1000RMB (€100) per month in the city, leaving their families back home and, generally, living at the construction sites where they work. Since they can't get Beijing residency, they don't have entitlement to housing or other local government benefits and the stories of their exploitation by their employers abound. The (sometimes) smiling faces and hard hats are to be seen all over Beijing and are as much a symbol of this city as it's eponymous duck restaurants.

Nigel and Lorraine liked the bricks so much they bought two and hand carried them home along with all of their other luggage. Air France first class - c'est la vie.