Beautiful Dudes: Modesty Is Very Becoming

This dude was sitting behind me as I gave a lecture on quacked out a few words in Cantonese in Ye Olde Teaee Shoppee last night. That place is highly recommended by the way.

Smack in the middle of Central, in Wellington street to be exact, the 欒 香 園 咖 啡 室 (Happy Fragrant Garden Coffee parlour) (which isn’t a coffee parlour at all but a greasy spoon, ) features ridiculously low prices, fairly insane staff (one drunk from 10 am) and a laid-back atmosphere.

That’s where I build up my secret guerrilla force to fight back against the evil hegemony of Mandarin.

Anyway, this beautiful guy was sitting behind me, blogworthy. I said “You’re so handsome, can I take your photograph?” but the poor guy kept ducking from side to side – he thought I wanted to immortalise the tiles behind him.

How modest can you get?

Beautiful Dudes IV

Ah, Ben Si Bar! The best bar in Shenzhen, possibly the world. This guy, A Yong, possibly A Tong, a manager, is always walking around there looking and being busy. Wide shoulders, narrow waist and always standing well inside my personal space. My gay friend says he’s gay, but that cannot be. God will not permit it for a start.

Ben Si Bar is my favourite bar. It has three large rooms, one for drinking, talking and playing pool, one has a live band and the innermost room is for bopping. The music, although dunk-a-dunk-a bass’n'drum and not like the 80’s, is curiously danceable and it’s impossible to stand still.

The music is in fact so hypnotic that even fuddy duddies feel compelled to jump up on the speakers and give it a go. And that’s the beauty of Ben Si Bar – everybody can get into the groove as it were without feeling or looking like an idiot. From super cool barmen

and slinky babes in stilettos to side-parted fuddy duddies and young fogies like myself, the Ben Si Bar embraces everybody, shakes them around a lot and spits them out exhausted at three o’clock in the morning. The drinks are cheap and the dudes plentiful. And the next day there’s a much better breakfast than you can get anywhere in Hong Kong, as well as HK$10 DVDs. What’s not to love? Shenzhen, forgive that I ever called you a shithole.