The revolution is alive

This has been blogged about before, so I’m cheating. But I just can’t resist posting a few pics (in addition to the one I have up on China Beat) and a quick video from Beijing’s Cultural Revolution restaurant, where I had dinner with most of the friends I follow on this blog last Friday night. Yes, June 4th – to complete the political awkwardness of the night.

Out past the fifth ring road, the restaurant is a couple of hours from the student district by subway and (lost) taxi – that’s longer than it takes to get from London to Wales.

A red guard opens our beers and serves our food. As we tuck in, I breath a sigh of relief that this isn’t a Great Leap Forward themed gig.

While the show goes on in the background, I commit the biggest faux pas of my life: giving an ironic toast ‘Long live Mao’ (毛主席万岁), forgetting that I’d invited two friends from Taiwan along.

By the end of the night, we were all wondering when the Cultural Revolution would give way to Deng Xiaoping’s Reform era. Which it did … when the cheque arrived.