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Beijing China Club takes Hong Kong hip to the edge
P-I WIRE SERVICES
Buried in a Beijing alleyway near Tiananmen Square, opposite a seedy Sichuan restaurant once frequented by Deng Xiaoping, is the China Club -- mainland China's latest import from Hong Kong.
Essentially, it is the Beijing branch of Hong Kong's trendiest nightspot, and at the mid-September opening no less than Kevin Costner, Michael Caine, the Duchess of York and several dozen other jet-setters were on hand.
And if this place represents the most lavish face of the new China, it is not the only one. Coffee bars and outdoor cafes are sprouting across Beijing. Capitalism is alive and kicking throughout the countryside. The Chinese authorities can imprison as many dissidents as they want, but the genie is out of the bottle.
At the China Club, Mainland China's movers and shakers -- those who can afford the $20,000 initiation fee and $1,500 in annual dues -- can now entertain themselves in a setting straight out of The Last Emperor.
The club not only venerates the imperial era -- it is dangerously irreverent. How else to describe a watering hole dubbed The Long March Bar?
Can a place this hip, this Hong Kong, survive in Beijing? After all, China's leaders do still rail against spiritual pollution and vow to wage all-out war on the decadence spawned by Deng's dictum that to get rich is glorious.
Surely China's geriatric top politicians, barricaded just down the road, will never allow a China Club to hold sway! But they have.
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