the Beijinger

“Last Orders” is a regular magazine column in which we ask noteworthy Beijingers to imagine their final meal before leaving the city for good. This month’s host is Joel Shuchat, Co-Owner of The Orchid.

The venue
Home, outside in the courtyard. It feels and smells like Beijing, and without a view onto the horizon all you can see is the blue sky above.

With all the results announced on Saturday at our 2012 Reader Bar & Club Awards party, now it's time to take a closer look at the bar scene. We didn't have a Gay-Friendly Bar category this year as our nomination panel didn't manage to collectively come up with enough venues for you readers to vote on. We thought that this was still a very valuable category, though, so we asked the nice folks at Beijing LGBT Center to help us. They were kind enough to do so. Here is what they consider to be the best of Beijing's gay-friendly nightlife venues.

Over the past two years (and probably since all eternity) Beijing’s inhabitants have had the longest commutes of all of China. Oddly, last year’s 50 minutes was somehow ten minutes less than the year before. However, China Daily recently posted an article on a new study that quotes a Beijinger’s average commute at 1 hour and 20 minutes. To measure ourselves against the rest of Beijing we did a little in-house survey. Here’s what we figured out

As Beijing’s reputation grows, there are certain things about the city that have become famous around the world – the culture, the architecture, the exploding economic development – but I think there’s one thing Beijing should get more credit for, because it’s an area in which the city is absolutely world-class: the lunatics.

By lunatics, I don’t mean just your humdrum, day-to-day loonies, like the taxi driver who spits into his passenger seat, or the attention-craving sajiao girl who jumps out of her boyfriend’s car to sit and pout on the highway. I mean the people who have an entire, well-developed persona of craziness, the kind of lunatic that can make a subway ride or an otherwise boring night out truly special.

Every year we ask you, the readers, for your opinion on the best in Beijing dining at the Reader Restaurant Awards. We value your opinion very highly but we thought you'd also value the opinion of the experts so we canvassed a select few. Here's part three of their picks (and a little introduction as to why we consider them to be experts). Bon appetit.

Brazilian producer and DJ Gui Boratto studied architecture, but abandoned a prospective career in construction for a life in music. We asked him a few questions as he readied himself to headline this weekend’s INTRO Electronic Music Festival (May 26).

Remember when personality tests were based on a handful of weird black ink stains? Well, they’re a lot more fun nowadays. American neurologist Allan R. Hirsch, director of the Smell & Taste Research and Treatment Foundation,  has spent nearly two decades studying the connection between the food we eat and our psyches – linking taste and smell preferences to our daily behaviors and choices. The doctor's studies have been published in many books such as What’s Your Food Sign?, Life’s a Smelling Success and What Flavor is Your Personality? The last one includes many tests and since the weather is glorious, we’ve chosen the most refreshing of them all, the ice cream personality test. What’s your favorite flavor? Apparently, it might be more revealing than you'd like.

With all the results announced on Saturday at our 2012 Reader Bar & Club Awards party, now it's time to take a closer look at who won, who narrowly missed out and what it all means.

Yesterday we looked at the "Club of the Year" winners, so today we'll move on and look at the other one that everyone wants to win: Bar of the Year.

Whatever plans you have for Saturday, May 26, cancel them. Beijing's biggest and best electronic festival, INTRO, is back! (Just a few days ago, in our recent Reader Bar & Club Awards, INTRO 2011 won Best Party of the Year.) This year's event has been shortened to a single day but the expectations are bigger than ever. Acupuncture Records has assembled more than 40 artists to make Beijing's electronica aficionados dance for the entire sun-kissed afternoon. We've got tickets to give away but before that, here's everything you ever wanted to know about INTRO 2012.