Life | Phases/stages of Leaving a City You Used to Love

Written by Tracy Wang May 22, 2015

edited version 14.06.2015

To leave or not to leave is always a dilemma. Much the same as Schrodinger Cat, you won’t know until you leave.

We are used to leave things behind, be it something, a habit, a person or sometimes even a city.

When a friend recently left Beijing after living here for 5 years, I thought about the different stages he went through and compared them with my own experience a year ago. I was about to take a job assignment for Shanghai.

From the start here are the stages of leaving as I see them.

First of all happiness! Of course there are many little annoyances that come with living in a city, and Beijing has its own footprint of these:

1)      Traffic: It always feels like you are experiencing bad luck when traveling in a taxi, especially when passing through well-known and notorious traffic jam hotspots like Sanlitun. You have to deal with your own frustration. Best remember the tips your mediation teacher gave you. Always keep the cab driver happy and sane, so he doesn’t make any suicidal maneuvers and drive straight into a bridge support.

2)      Pollution: Anyone staying 5 or more years in Beijing has noticed that the air pollution has gotten worse. It’s become a daily ritual for many to check the PM 2.5 levels first thing in the morning on their phone app.

3)      Culture: Like me, it’s the charming traditional culture of China which makes many people come to Beijing. Except it’s an illusion and now more of a fading memory. Many hutongs continue to be torn down. Once tranquil hutongs, like Nanluoguxiang, have now turned into endless shop fronts for cheap snacks and trinkets, with vulgar noisy bars every few meters accommodating the thousands of tourists that herd in groups through the alleys. Are globalization, economic growth, increased personal wealth and tourism strong enough reasons to blame for this loss of culture over the past decade? It's hard to say, but it’s disappointing for both those who live here and tourists visiting the city.

4)      People: There too many people crowded into Beijing. It feels like someone is always stepping into your path to block you or spit in front of you. Someone said living in Beijing is like video games from the 90s. I feel the same especially when you are in the sidewalk and there’s some tricycles horning at you from God-knows nowhere.

You realize that it is never easy to live in this city. Beijing has sandstorms in spring which make you raise your clenched fist at the heavy yellow-grey clouds, swearing that you will soon escape the city. Then a chance suddenly appears in front of you to finally leave this hellhole and you think; “Hell yeah, I’m out of here!” You begin telling everyone you know, making sure all are aware that you will soon depart the grey pollution.

Not long after that initial happiness, sadness will sneakily start growing in your heart. “Oh, I lived for so many years, there are also a lot of things that I love”: the easy life, the cheap drinks in a dark hutong bar, the friends who accompanied you on travels and hikes, visits to good bookstores you found after hours of searching, visiting every new restaurant you heard of … your foodie and drinking buddies, the freaks that wake you up in the early morning and drag you to Xinyuanli Market. You know every corner of Gulou and Sanlitun and every short cut connecting them.

That’s when you start to struggle and it’s dawning on you that all your friends, dearest and not so dear, are here in Beijing. Do you really want to leave them all behind and move to a new place? Will you make new friends there? Where will be the cool places and bars to make them? Will you understand the crazy dialect? Will you be bored to death with loneliness?

During this phase you might cry a lot about the upcoming departure. You’ll be frail and emotional and panic about the new life you are going to face. The packed up boxes in your flat equate to years of rich and happy memories, and you wonder how could you move them to another city? That’s insane.

Finding myself at exactly the moment, everything packed up and my friends ready to wish me farewell, I visited my prospective future home of Shanghai on a business trip. I started to see the city in a different perspective as a future resident; “Is this what I want? Is this the place I want to move to?”

Visiting a city for fun is one thing, but living there is totally different. You need to look for a new apartment, choose a district to live in, talk to the landlord see if s/he can receive packages for you. You have to access public transport and find supermarkets. After the visit I returned to Beijing with even more bittersweet feelings.

But then you start to accept the fact that you will move, and you have to make a list. You pack the things you want to keep, (you’ll hate yourself because you can’t just stuff everything in one suitcase and go), return the library/shopping mall/membership cards, visit the bars or restaurants you like, go to the museums and galleries and all the cool places you are going to miss. Then you need to meet the people you want to say goodbye to before leaving, and even schedule your farewell party. Then shoot, you find you are really running out of time.

In the end, you finally make the decision (or pretend that you do) by comforting yourself with thoughts of the new experiences and friends you will make. During the endless farewell meals/parties/meetups, the goodbyes are getting more and more annoying. You are getting tired of the crying people, and try to avoid any more emotional scenes. After returning beer kegs, books, plants and furniture, you feel you’re a new, free person. With renewed hope and a thirst for adventure you can’t wait to leave.

Having been through all of that I was ready to move without any reluctance. Then, just as I had experienced every one of the stages of leaving a city, my job transfer was cancelled just three days before my departure.

Was the whole thing a nightmare? I felt like I’d been cast in a dramatic version of the Truman Show. Trust me, there were more than a thousand versions of ‘really, what if’ going through my mind at that time. In the end I had no choice but to stay. Heck, Beijing, I still love you.

All the best with your new life, Craig. Now I have to wipe away the tears.

Cheers :)

Beer Journal | Mikkeller Bangkok “Once a beer-lover, always a beer-lover.”

Mikkeller Bangkok

“Once a beer-lover, always a beer-lover.”

By Tracy Chenxi Wang

May, 2014

Right after I landed in the fascinating country of smiles and endless cilantro seasoned dishes, I headed directly to the legendary craft beer bar of this 18 million people megacity, the Mikkeller Bangkok. As the first and only Asian outlet of acclaimed Danish beer brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø’s Mikkeller, it opened on January 29th in 2014.

  

After getting away from the bustling main street, onto a tranquil soil, a yard of a small side street, I found it in a green residential area, the teal-colored sign of the Mikkeller Bangkok. Stepping on the lawn of a stylish functionalist house built in the 1960’s washed away all the irritation of the hot weather. There is a huge garden with a few tables on the patio outside. The interior is in a bright Scandinavian style with bright wooden floors and furniture, accomplished with a lot of white. The food menu only has a few items for now, but the management will add more, once the bar becomes busier.

Here I met with Jakob Mørkenborg Rasmussen from Denmark and his Canadian co-partner Mike MacDonald. They both share enthusiasm for beer and love being innovated. Jakob had been importing foreign beers and holding numerous tasting events that Mike, a self-described beer connoisseur, attended regularly. That’s how they met and became business partners. Jakob’s short full beard makes him look to me like a typical Dane. Mike smiles a lot and his outgoing funny ways make him the people’s person of the two. After travelling in South Asia for some years, Jakob felt a growing love for Thailand and moved there in 2004. His fascination for beers got matched by finding work at Carlsberg Thailand, giving him a deep insight of this industry and also the local drinking demographic.

“We really wanted to build something that we would go to every night.”

Most beer-lover would ask why with a lot of curiosity, why would a Danish legendary gypsy brewery locate in Bangkok?

“There are a lot of beer bars in Bangkok and Thais have a really strong beer drinking culture, but what most bars compete with is the amount of beer signage or who has the most number of taps, even though they are serving 50 pale light lager tasting very much like the other”, said by Jakob,

Since the market was dominated by domestic staple Singha, Chang and Leo, Jakob and Mike decided to open a bar to showcase beer of many styles on tap and bottled. “We want to serve beer with respect. My partner and I are both in this business not so much from a financial perspective but more so from a beer culture perspective. We wanted to bring in a different kind of quality than people are used to in this part of the world. The beers may be much pricier than the conventional brands, but we believe they offer a whole different experience in taste,” Mike MacDonald said. “We really wanted to build something that we would go to every night.”

Speaking of the customers they want to attract, they hope to get people who are genuinely interested or curious about great tasting beer. “With most people not being able distinguish between two beers like a Mexican chili beer and Mikkeller American Dream, we want to educate the Thai beer drinking crowd what good craft beer really is. A part of that is having beer tastings with an educational scope as well offering beer tastings in our Imperial Tasting Room.” The staffs are also hardcore beer-lovers with passion. They are ready to educate the customers about craft beer culture, the stories behind the beers, and how to serve and enjoy craft beers. They want to provide a complexion of beer, service and atmosphere which will attract people. “Once a beer-lover, always a beer-lover”, Mike preached.

There is a reason why the bar is a bit away from the busy streets of Bangkok in a much quieter place, they explained, “A requirement from Mikkel was making this bar a destination and I think we have managed just that. It’s not a place you just drop by; you’ve probably made up your mind coming here, well before actually coming here. With the garden we’re able to offer plenty of outdoor seating, people love that.”

I happened travelling in Thailand during the period of political tensions; there was national curfew between midnight to 5am every day, which damaged tourists industry and local food and beverage industry a lot. Mike told me that this (policy) is one of their biggest obstacles for now. Thailand has a lot of festivals and “No Alcohol” days, which adds up to four to seven days a month the bar has to stay close. A sudden feeling of deep dark sadness, dampening my mood, soggy, miserable everything but what Thailand is, fell over me! Mike and Jakob rushed to the bar and poured me 2 pints of their finest each. It took me almost 5 minutes to down them and the world become bright again.

Talking about the theory that they run the bar, “quality is number one; we’re not competing with price. We’ll have no happy hours or discounted days.” They wouldn’t compete with the biggest selection of imported beers, or cheapest beers. “For example, the reason of people going to the wine bar is not because it has the biggest selection, but a unique selection. Another kind of customers go to the nearest bars, they don’t care what kind of beers they are drinking.” With the mission of providing the finest craft beers to the customers, Jakob started his own beer distributing company, Hopsession. Now he imports Danish beers from Nørrebro Bryghus and Bøgedal but also Mikkeller. They only want to build a different place where the customers can keep drinking with their friends. “Every time I came to Bangkok, I’d spend every night here, and I love the atmosphere here”, said an American Sam Craig who was on his business trip here. Since Mikkeller Bangkok was opened less than half a year, it already made it way on the list of Top 10 Best Beer Bar in Asia by CNN.

The bar quenches the thirst of craft beer lovers with a selection of 30 beers on tap, 20 of them are brewed by Mikkeller, and 10 of them are changing guest beers from other craft beer makers. A large selection of bottled beer completes the collection. There’s no cheap beer here, all beers on tap are in the range of 200-350 Baht (￥40-70)per glass, and bottled ones are 250-1500 Baht (￥50-300), on the street you find a local commercial beer for just 50 Baht (￥10).

There are four other venues among the world in total, other than Mikkeller Bangkok, there are two located in Copenhagen, the third is in San Francisco and the fourth is in Stockholm (opened in March of 2014).

Mikkeller Bangkok

Address: 26 Ekamai Soi 10 Yaek 2, Ekamai Road, Bangkok 10110, Thailand

Tel: +66 2 381 9891

Website: www.mikkellerbangkok.com

Here is the list of Top 10 Best Beer Bars by CNN:

Mikkeller Bangkok (Bangkok, Thailand)
BrewDog Roppongi (Tokyo, Japan)
Goodbeer Faucets (Tokyo, Japan)
Smith Street Taps (Singapore)
BREW – Beers & Ciders (Bangkok, Thailand)
Brewerkz – Riverside Point (Singapore)
TAPS Beer Bar (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

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This article was also publish on Precis magazine on issue seven. Free downloading here: http://issuu.com/istech24/docs/precis_issue_seven_4_30_2015

About Me

Who is Tracy?

Tracy Wang is a travelling foodie and passionate writer especially about craft beers and fine wines.

She's the executive editor for The Beer Link Magazine, contributor and associate editor for Precis Magazine and picked up homebrewing in 2014 (Don’t tell me you didn’t try the ladies-co-brew Tart Tomboy Ale and Golden Wave Amber Ales on Women’s Day at the Slow Boat for the Starfish Foundation). She’s ambitious on keeping track of every beer she samples with taken a photo of it and taking notes. Recently, she’s busying in preparing to be the only female beer judge and very first one to get hammered at Shanghai 2^nd National Homebrew Competition in June.

And she's still waiting for the alien mothership to get her home. If you meet her on any of the beer festival or in any craft beer bars, go on, buy her a beer!

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