Favored Hangouts of Kenny Cao, Owner of Beetle in a Box, Concertino

Kenny Cao is Jiadoakou’s go-to guy for everything from whiskey to vintage video cameras that you won’t find anywhere else. He started off with his café Waiting For Godot in 2008, helping to shape café culture in Dongcheng as we know it today. 

Now known as Beetle in a Box, this cafe and his neighboring store Concertino are important mainstays in Beixinqiao for alternative types looking to buy used record players or a cheap cup of joe. He spent an afternoon with us to share a couple of his favorite places in the area.

Hear
We went to Meishuguan, for a visit to Strange Fruit Records, though they were in the process of moving into their new location in Dongsitoutiao (and changing their name to Fruity Shop). Kenny is a passionate LP collector and audiophile and sells some pretty amazing records out of his own shop. We looked through one box at random and found selections like Pharoah Saunders, Miles Davis, and Parliament Funkadelic. You can find a chaotic selection of classic records at an appropriate price with most LPs ranging from about RMB 50-200. Tell them Kenny (Lao Cao) sent you.

Eat
We arrived at Gina’s Place, a Yunnan haunt in Xiang’er Hutong, south of Beixinqiao. Sitting down pretty famished from a long afternoon of media browsing, Kenny perused their thick menu of subtropical delicacies. and picked out a delicious spread of cold shredded pork shanks (RMB 58), roasted tilapia (RMB 88), spicy fried chicken (RMB 38), and pineapple rice (RMB 38). All of what we ordered was delicious, but naturally, some of it was left for the dogs. We finished off the remainder of our culturally nourishing afternoon, staring satisfied at our once beautiful dishes quickly ravaged by two very cultured fellas.

Read
Our next stop was around the corner at Sanlian Taofen bookstore. Kenny is obsessed with the beats and analytic
philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein. So, it’s no surprise that he knows the best places to fill your bag with quality
reading materials. Open 24 hours a day, Sanlian Taofen has an amazing selection of literature in both Chinese and
English. Bookstores in Beijing are usually pretty peaceful places brimming with intellectual activity, or people
sleeping on stacks of Dan Brown translations. Kenny made a couple of purchases from authors like Roberto Bolaño
and Henry Miller.

Photos: Kipp Whittaker