White Nights

In the tiny Nanfangcao district, an area in which a large number of artists, writers, musicians photographers and journalists congregate, the poet Zhai Yongming has opened her book bar White Nights.

In an age of swanky bars, cafes and tea houses, White Nights is an understated reflection of the refinement of its owner. While the bar features no expensive fittings, the two walls are lined with books and magazines, photographs and posters hang on display, and dry flowers and other small decorations are casually displayed about the place and, together with all the interesting faces the night attracts here, the ensemble makes up a “floating world”, giving this small bar a style all of its own. You could say that it is a little feminized, a little tender, but it also has substance.

Of an afternoon when the weather is fine, you can make your way here at an unhurried pace and sit down by the large, clean glass windows with a cup of coffee or a pot of English tea. Flick through your favourite book, take a look at the hand-written notes from writers up on the walls and admire the portraits of the poet you may or may not recognize—her expression and her demeanour. When you’ve done all that, you can shut your eyes in the sunlight and take in all this for a moment. Chances are, you’ll be feeling pretty good.

Zhai Yongming’s book bar opened in May 1998 and, as is the case with many bars these days, it is not a bar in the traditional sense. It blends elements of the cafe, tea house and book shop, and it is the kind of place you can go to on a free afternoon to chat lazily with two or three friends while you take a break from it all. It’s at night that it comes to life as a wine bar. Nearly every evening after nine o’clock, Zhai Yongming can be found sitting somewhere on the premises and her artistic nature as well as the air of close and mysterious understanding she has with the night always give people the sense of something rather special.

The pictures and posters on the bar’s walls include black and white photographs of the writers Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein, the painter Frida Kahlo, and the Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. Photography is one art form with a very modern feel to it, and the mood created by its black and white symmetry complements the bar’s rich sense of design.

Zhai Yongming is very pleased with the card she had made to promote the bar. On one side, it features a candle symbolizing the bar, and above it is a black and white half-length portrait of Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose life-story was featured in the movie White Nights. On the reverse, there is a map showing you how to get there.

In some ways, Zhai Yongming is exclusively devoted to her bar, and her understanding of it makes one think of the modernist artists of the early twentieth century and their passion for bars. Here artists came together to smoke, drink, swap stories, creating a confusion of smoke, voices and alcohol fumes. This is a way of living they find to be the most authentic, and one they are reluctant to give up.


Translated by Simon Patton


First published on chinawx.com