Bastion of the backpacker

Phone: 0086-13683002918 (24 hours)

E-mail: chinatourdesign@yahoo.cn

Home

Bastion of the backpacker

By Erik Nilsson Those with a passion for travel won't want to bypass Passby Bar.

This traditional courtyard-turned-tavern tucked away in a Dongcheng hutong has been a long-time favourite of backpackers and bookworms. Here, nomadic globetrotters trade travel tips between sips of Belgian specialty beers, locally produced spirits and exotic teas, while literature lovers satisfy their need to read at the bar's English-language book nook.

Passby's bring-a-book-take-a-book policy has inspired many booklovers to put in a good word even a paperback's worth of them for the bar's book cove.

True to its slogan, "Better travel than dead," the mainstay of the dcor is a series of photographic posters promoting bike tours around China's ethnic-minority areas. Another series of posters advertises the bar using subjects rendered in the woodblock-print-style of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). These paradoxal depictions show workers slinging pickaxes with one hand and hoisting frosty brews with the other as well as fist-raising backpackers on the march.

Visitors can purchase T-shirts printed with these spoof scenes as well as the entire Lonely Planet guidebook series at the Passby Store.

Bar-goers can grab a seat in one of the five lower seating areas, or they can plop down on plush cushions in the loft. In warmer months, visitors are lucky to find an open seat in Passby's crowded courtyard seating area.

The tavern's selection of specialty Belgian beers runs from 28-40 yuan per bottle, while German brews cost 22-28 and Tsingtao costs 18. The bar also proffers an international selection of meals, including fusion pizzas such as Hutong Pizza topped with Beijing-style mutton and Gong Bao Ji Ding Pizza topped with a sweeter-tasting adaptation of the chicken-and-peanuts dish famously favoured by foreigners.

With the spirit of travel alive in the air, international itinerants and peripatetic passers-by won't want to pass up Passby Bar during the Beijing leg of their global journeys.

More Bicycle News Info