The Great Chinese Saloon Series/Jam's
McGurn, William
THE GREAT CHINESE SALOON SERIES JAM'S by William McGurn Shanghai C o notorious was cosmopolitan 1.3 Shanghai in the wicked old days before the Chairman and his band liberated this city,...
...The Marlboro Man stares down froma poster on the side...
...I think the ladies in Hong Kong are much beautiful," she tells me when hearing where I live, and I swear on a stack of Bibles that they're all dogs in comparison to Shanghai girls...
...After a bit of conversation to convince the driver that we really were just going around the corner, we were delivered to the front of Jam's...
...THE GREAT CHINESE SALOON SERIES JAM'S by William McGurn Shanghai C o notorious was cosmopolitan 1.3 Shanghai in the wicked old days before the Chairman and his band liberated this city, missionaries used to say that if the Almighty let it endure He owed an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah...
...First came Bloody Marys and Scotches in the lounge...
...Once outside on Wulu Mu Qi Road, the neon sign for Jam's flickers offand we are faced with the militant drabness that is China, a sobering sight indeed...
...But it's hard not to notice that the bass has a large crack running up its back...
...debate continues on andoff, with the Stars and Stripes ably defended by the beautiful Patsy Whitcomb...
...Needless to say, one of the first casualties of the Long March through centuries of Chinese civilization was bourgeois hootch...
...I want to work, work, go to Panama and find a boyfriend," she explains, reaching into the fridge for two fresh Heinekens...
...I think many married peoples is miserable," she explains...
...The great art deco buildings stand drab and demoralized along the Bund, Shanghai's waterfront Wall Street, and inside the old Sassoon House, founded by one of the city's many famous Sephardic merchants (now, alas, reconstituted as part of the rat-infested Peace Hotel), the jazz band still plays...
...The ladies sport pirate Gucci bags and make-up...
...officer with Seacliff, was the chief instigator...
...Upon our arrival in Jam's we found the place in full swing, packed with foreign devils who appeared to be divided evenly between Americans and Canadians...
...The object of our travel was a teeny stucco-front building with an unpromising pink front door over which hangs a canopy saying simply, "JAM's Bar...
...A few patrons dribble out...
...We were, however, well taken care of by his sisters Petty and Xia Jing, the latter of whom everyone calls "Mei Mei," or "Little Sister...
...Across the street the back of the Hilton gleams like Oz...
...And we're grateful...
...And as I was soon to find out, the city is even beginning to witness the resurgence of a near-extinct species: the Chinese saloon...
...She is younger—about nineteen or twenty—pert, and confesses to a craving for Whitney Houston tapes...
...Patsy Whitcomb, a P.R...
...The imitation red-brick on the front wall gives the place a welcome cheesy homeyness...
...Among the former were two who had been with us from the start in the Hilton lounge, Adrian and Barbara Cowling...
...Liu's judgment in this area...
...Along the wall opposite there are four booths, each of which comfortably holds four Shanghaiese or two overweight Westerners...
...Unfortunately, we did not have the honor of meeting Mr...
...Remy Martin has supplied the ashtrays...
...A cunning businesswoman who says that bartending is much to be preferred to her old job as a factory hand, Mei Mei is clearly an old-fashioned sort...
...Which at the time (4:30 a.m...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 37...
...But the Chinese are a patient people, and given that there are more than a billion of them, they may rule the world yet...
...But for the most part, the evening was refreshingly free of politics, itself a political statement in China...
...Then, as last call came and went, she made her move...
...A slightly different perspective comes from Little Sister's little sister Petty...
...But the patriots attendant, inspired by the famous barroom scene in Casablanca, delivered themselves of a rousing rendition of our own national anthem above which nothing else could be heard...
...Every manner of vice flourished here, from opium to prostitution to the Communist party, and it was a time when the Green Gang leader Big-Eared would send around a little coffin to the home of anyone who might be thinking of refusing one of his offers...
...Just about four decades to the day after the People's Liberation Army marched in, modern Shanghai is but a shadow of its decadent (and prosperous) past...
...And so at 1 a.m., I and my traveling companion, Sinologist Joseph A. Gregory of Montclair, New Jersey, found ourselves so to speak shanghaied by three resident ex-pats including Patsy and were herded into a tiny cab...
...James Liu, the name Jam's is the happy outcome of a sign painter's mistake (it was supposed to be "James") and an entrepreneur's good sense to go with it...
...Then maybe America...
...I sincerely believed to be true...
...Bellying up to the bar in Jam's is easy, because the place is the size of a shoebox...
...Barbara precipitated a near diplomatic incident when she delivered a lecture on the evils of American nationalism and then began to sing "0 Canada...
...William McGurn, former deputy editorial page editor for the Asian Wall Street Journal, is the new Washington bureau chief of National Review...
...He is something of a local hero here, having opened China's first private bar in September 1986, a still-extant concern down the road called The Smiling Bar...
...The foreign devils have been driven out, to be sure, but they evidently took with them the mysteries of plumbing and electricity...
...Over in the front doorway this evening the Canada-U.S...
...Today it does a thriving business, and after expenses such as the requisite palm-greasing of the various Public Security Bureau officers are deducted, Jam's is rumored still to clear about $2,000 a month—an amount unheard of in China...
...And I myself am left with the faint recollection of telling Petty she was the most beautiful girl in the world...
...As the management takes a rather laissez-faire approach to business hours, Jam's tends to close not at any pre-arranged hour but after all the customers have run out of money...
...From there we moved to Armanacs on the 39th floor...
...and although the loathsome Tsing Tao is available, customers by and large prefer the five imported brews, especially Carlsberg and San Miguel...
...With the Chairman dead a dozen years now and his face getting greener with every capitalist encroachment, the 100 Flowers are finally beginning to bloom...
...I t started over drinks in the elegant 1 lounge of the Shanghai Hilton, located in the middle of the old French settlement...
...We soon settle into a mutually agreeable arrangement whereby I continue to pay for our drinks in valuable foreign exchange certificates and she in turn pretends to be amused by my conversa36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1989 tion...
...With no more prospects for alcohol the mood turns to the consolations of philosophy...
...But unlike her sister, Petty is not on the prowl...
...Jam's might not seem like much to an outsider," says Patsy Whitcomb, "but it's all we've got...
...Too bad.A nd so it goes through the evening, most every evening so long as the boys at the PSB are happy with their squeeze...
...Jam's followed within a few months, started up with about 40,000 yuan in capital (roughly $1,100 at official exchange rates...
...The nicest parts of town were the concessions run by the French, British, and Americans, complete with their own administrations, courts, and police forces...
...There are seven stools with worn green cloth coverings arranged in an L-shape around an attempt at a butcher's block bar...
...There is a Hilton...
...Owned and operated by Mr...
...You've got to see Jam's," she told us...
...Here too it was that the public gardens bore the infamous sign "No Dogs or Chinese allowed...
...Liu, inasmuch as the great man was in Panama arranging identity papers that will eventually permit him to vamoose from China if he so chooses...
...Nor is it the first time history has vindicated Mr...
...I wait...
Vol. 22 • July 1989 • No. 7
