The booze hound

Catch Sulumi and co at the Strawberry Festival's Yen Stage

With Beijing’s current Irish bar explosion (Danger Doyle’s, The Irish Volunteer and Stumble Inn all opening within a few months) there’s never been a better time to be a fan of the Pogues and Guinness.

To confirm this theory, we bring you news of an intriguing experiment being conducted by Paddy O’Shea’s. Starting this month, the bar will record the nationality of every person who orders a pint of Guinness.

Next month, the brand of beer being monitored will be Stella Artois. The idea is to discover which nation are the biggest drinkers of what beers.

Results will be tallied throughout the month and chalked up on the board for all to see and the winning nationality (by then officially the world’s biggest boozers) will be awarded a keg of their most popular beer to share with their compatriots at the bar.

May is also the month when we finally get some festival action. As well as Baicai’s Circus Company label festival and Acupuncture’s INTRO 09 festival, don’t forget to check out the Yen Stage at Modern Sky’s Strawberry Festival, featuring all your Yen favourites doing their stuff in the cold light of day.

Meanwhile, Vics turns nine this month, making the club older than some of the kids we’ve seen on their dancefloor.

Love it, loathe it, sit blandly on the fence – you can’t deny that Vics has played an important part in the development of Beijing’s nightlife scene. Head down towish them happy birthday on Sat 2.