21g

Ever wanted to have one of those legendary wild nights where you wake up with a strange tattoo the next day? 21g hopes to bring you closer to your unrealised dreams of feral hedonism. By day the space is a mild mannered tattoo store, but by night 21g is converted into a delightfully sinful little bar hoping to tempt you with as many vices as possible.

The downstairs is a small, dark space with a bar and a few seats. The décor is heavy metal cliché, pitch black walls, skull posters, leather jackets: it's the kind of place you imagine Slash would like to get drunk in. The upstairs is just as small, with cheap but comfy sofas and a tiny stage for live music performances and 'sexy dancing' at the weekends. Drinks are fairly priced for the area, yet overpriced for the bar's size, with 20RMB Tsingtaos and mixers from 30RMB.

Alongside a dart board, 21g boasts the only Chinese fruit machines we've ever seen. Coins supplied by the bar staff are fed into the machine and offer you the chance of winning a small amount of RMB, the machines apparently occupy a criminal grey area which the owner described as 'barely legal', which brings us nicely to 21g's other untoward attraction; a full on gimp harness. Placed unassumingly at the top of the stairs, the S&M apparatus features leather cuffed manacles and a claustrophobic looking leather mask – complete with an obligatory zipped up mouth hole. Sadly, there are no live gimp spanking events planned, Time Out received some strange looks when we suggested it, as if we were the perverts.

Having held a few irregular events during 2008, 21g is now aiming to establish itself as a fun little bar catering to a small crowd of regulars. It's never going to seriously compete with any of Beijing's big-name bars, but as a charming little niche concept, 21g is hard to fault.