city weekend

this post is affectionately named after the website where we find all of shanghai's events, drink deals, new listings, etc... cityweekend.com. for a girl such as myself, who refuses to pay cover charge and doesn't really care enough to pay for drinks, cityweekend is pretty darn useful. they have a beijing site too - fabulous.

anyway, this weekend was all about playing with friends and experiencing the finer points of shanghai's famous nightlife. on friday and saturday, we got dressed up and headed to some places that are slightly classier than our usual destinations - namely bar rouge and M1NT. they are both on the bund. bar rouge is normally 100 rmb to enter but they listed a password on cityweekend for free entry that night (hence, probably the first and last night i ever go there). when we arrived on the bund, it was a gorgeous, clear night and we could see the bar's huge balcony on the 7th floor of one of the old, concession-style buildings on the water. as you can see below, the cover charge is clearly for the fantastic view of the huangpu river and pudong new area (first picture picture clearly shows the view; second is sort of a failure, but i wanted to capture the atmosphere)

bar rouge is a pretty, modern, wood/metal space, with an equally large rectangular balcony where you can hang out in the open air. the glamorous scene is enhanced by the fact that everyone around you is speaking french, spanish, or italian... very little english and no chinese! a friend commented that it feels as if you are in some upscale club in london or paris. the music was amazing, best we have heard in shanghai yet. really well-mixed house.

at bar rouge we met some engineering students from georgia tech that are studying at tsinghua in beijing, but were visiting shanghai for a week. i suppose that since they were just here for a while, they wanted to go all out every night. they invited us to join their reserved table at M1NT on saturday. M1NT, like bar rouge, is all about the view. its on the 24th story of a building just behind the old bund mansions. i forgot to take a picture out the window :( but either way it is also pretty swanky, everything is black and shiny. there is art in the bathrooms and a casual shark tank lining the hall between the dance floor and lounge. at first i wasn't crazy about the music and it was suffocatingly crowded, but later on they played some fun, offbeat stuff and the floor cleared a little bit.

with sunday evening's hindsight, i would say that M1NT is not exactly worthy the hype (and door hassles, and dress code), but bar rouge is simply too beautiful and international to resist. hope to go again, but only two more weekends in shanghai!