星吧 (Pub Star)

When speaking of China’s economic boom (and ignoring its vague future), everything is only still at an early stage in Kaifeng. These lines are being written in the freshly opened “Pub star”. As far as I (and the locals I talked with) know, it’s Kaifeng’s first bar, if you go by the good definition of a bar, as a place cool people can hang around and nice music is played, and not as a place where a hundred male Chinese huddle together to play cards, smoke, and occasionally begin a generation-long vendetta.

Kaifeng is not nearly as big and modern as its neighbor city Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, but it does have a lot of potential, and is house to the most prestigious university in the most-populated province of China – Henan University. The campus is nice and well taken-care of, filled and surrounded by a genuine university atmosphere – young and cute students walking around, many in groups, laughing a lot. Yet the study A LOT, and most of what they do in their free time is eat (that's simply the good-old Chinese way. No, it’s not culture, it’s the economy, stupid – food here is considerably cheaper than drinks), linger on the computer in internet spots and run back to the university before curfew. The idea of having an alternative (or shall I say western?) good time is still foreign to most of them. Yet sometimes one bar\cafe is capable of changing everything. Yes, it’s Saturday evening, and I am sitting here alone right now, but 5 bucks says it is a whole party complex in a few years.