Oscar's

I haven't yet found a bar I like in Shanghai.

I rather doubt I'm ever going to find one. It just doesn't strike me as being a fun town - in the sleazy, low-rent kind of way that I so enjoy.

I've been there 5 or 6 times over the last 18 months, and the only bar I find myself seeking out is an American-style sports bar named Oscar's.

On my first ever visit, I found that it was a convenient place to wait for the friend who was putting me up to get home from work (it was only a few minutes' walk away from the apartment she had then).

It's quite central, and easy to find - so I've found myself going back there almost every time since...... merely a slave to convenience and familiarity; I have still developed no real enthusiasm for the place.

Same story this weekend. My friend L (a different one, living over by the river, to the north) was busy most of the day on Saturday, and didn't have anywhere in her building complex she could leave a key for me. I was done with work by lunchtime, and facing a sweltering afternoon of hauling my luggage around the centre of town until I could rendezvous with her that evening. I tried exploring, sightseeing, shopping for a while, but the humidity was ugly. Then I got my bearings, realised Oscar's was only a mile or so away, and set my course.

Now, the place does have a few things going for it. There is a good selection of imported beers. The beers on draft mostly taste pretty good (something that you rarely or never find with any consistency in Beijing). There's a fairly decent pool table upstairs (though one of those loathsome American designs with the super-slick cloth, rock-hard cushion rails, extra-wide pockets, and sharply angled pocket jaws - not good for a Brit like me; not good for anyone, really, who favours a tactical game over flashy - but not terribly difficult - potting). And they keep their beer mugs in the ice-box to frost them (an American quirk I've grown rather fond of). Also (and this is probably the main reason it has become such a regular destination for me), they always have a pile of free tourist maps of the city (I've only ever seen these at a few other places. 'Tourist Information' offices certainly don't have them! In fact, they are now rare as hen's teeth. Oscar's seems to have laid in a stock of thousands of the things.... although I notice they are still labelled 2006....).

A promising haunt, then. So, what's not to like? It's hard to put a finger on it, but the place is strangely charmless. It probably doesn't help that I've usually only been there in the afternoons, when the place is pretty much deserted. And when there are people in, they are exclusively expats. There are a few places in Beijing that share that vice - and I avoid them too. I didn't come all this way to live in a fascinating, crazy, fast-changing country..... and then spend all my time hanging out in places where the only Chinese faces I would ever see belonged to the serving staff. Some people seem to like that kind of environment; I don't.

Ah, yes - and it's bloody expensive. There's an "all day" Happy Hour until 8pm - half-price drinks. Very nice, you might think. Except that the regular prices are very nearly twice as much as you'd pay in Beijing. And I don't just mean twice as much as you'd pay in the sort of low-rent, student-friendly dives that I favour. No, twice as much as you'd pay in a comparable bar, an upmarket, affluent expat bar.

And that's pretty standard for Shanghai. Shanghai is wince-makingly expensive. That's the reason why I only go there 2 or 3 times a year. That's the reason why I never go to Oscar's after 8pm.