Demolition in Beijing is not big news - usually. But people are certainly talking about the knocking down of the strip of debauchery that came to be known as South Street. It may not be retirees getting evicted from their homes, but Sanlitun was a home, of sorts.
The name has long been associated with nightlife in the capital; its northern half still draws punters looking for a night on the town. Sanlitun is so popular that if you tell any taxi driver to go to 'Bar Street', he will know where you mean. The northern area - called, not surprisingly - North Street, features a series of bars that may constantly change their names and undergo regular renovations, but at heart they remain the same. There is the ubiquitous live entertainment, a keyboard player and a vocalist or two, with a tambourine and guitar often thrown in for good measure. The northern strip is a gauntlet: you cannot pass a doorway without at least two touts hollering for your attention, and suspicious characters whispering 'lady bar' as you walk by.
But South Street was different. Musicians flocked to the venue first called River, and, later, the Red Bar, for jam sessions deep into the night; expat businesspeople took to the Hidden Tree for high-end Belgian beers and wood-oven pizzas; Guinness was drunk and stew eaten at the pseudo Irish pub, Durty Nellie's; Nashville hosted semi-country music; and the house band at Minder's was legendary. The street was full of drunken hordes high on cheap alcohol sold from bars no bigger than the average bathroom.
There have been rumours of South Street's imminent destruction for most of the five years since it became the place for cheap booze. The whispers turned to shouts last autumn, when bar owners began leaving the strip, which was something that not even rising rents could force them to do.
There is a strange kind of nostalgia at play when you cruise down the war zone that is South Street today: piles of rubble, rubbish and, oddly enough, shoes have replaced the watering holes that used to line it. It has become the neighbourhood that we love to hate: we bemoan the obnoxious drunks that used to clutter the place while pining for our favourite watering holes. It was on South Street that I had my first experience of a bartender knowing what I wanted to drink before I had time to ask for it.
In a classic Beijing bar-world move, less than three months ago, when everyone knew that the strip had a date with the wrecking ball, one brave soul decided that it was the perfect time to renovate. The space that used to be the Red Bar got a fresh coat of paint, some new neon, a redesign and a new name. They called it TNT.