around the fudan/ tongji/sisu area?

theres a bug lak at present. all catering to locals. theres a lot of foreigners in the area.

i think sth with good Western music and western standards but low key and cheap would go down a bomb.

my friend used to run a bar round here. rent is fairly cheap, but bills can add up if u aint got the custom.

my friends place was small and had restrictions on music but was only 40,000 rmb a month. my bar bill alone would almost cover that.

do u think its a good idea? would u frequent? what would u want?
( waitreses with very short skirts r off course on the menu)

what about location location location? i here rent is *** ? Great idea though .. where's the area ur talking about ? which government / local authority would you need to throw $ at ?

Me and my friends usually hang in downtown, like Fuxing Park, Hengshan Lu, Tongren Lu, etc.. Don't think we'll take such a long ride to Fudan area for a low key and cheap bar.

Guess you need to think about the market. Will there be enought potential customers living/working in that area?

I figure it could work, but it would be catering to the foreign students up there (so young westerners without too much dough).

Whenever I've been to that part of town I've found nothing worth a repeat visit. All crap. So plenty of potential.

But how many foreign students are there up that way?

It would have to be a hell of a bar to get people making a special trip from downtown.

A friend of mine who is Korean has a son studying at Fudan at the moment and lives in the dorms. I understand there's quite a few Koreans there and they are real drinkers and are cashed up. Funded by their parents. That's all these students are doing in their spare time. You might like to look into this deeper and see exactly how many Koreans are there and if they're worth targeting.

yeah, lots of korean and japanese silver spoons up there...cater to them and you may have a winner...

You could have a little sex / drugs action on the side ... a real cash crop i'd say

Was going to mention the Koreans myself. They are big drinkiers and all. . . But then setting up a bar catering to Koreans is probably more a job for a Korean.

You'd be talking something more like a Chinese bar. More a 'sit at your table and have waitresses bring you drinks type of deal', rather than a 'mix and mingle' type place. And you need lots of dried squid and peanuts to be truly authentic. Possibly decorate the walls with a swastika or too. For some reason Koreans love that stuff, makes them feel 'bad' or something.

I thought I spotted a Korean bar not far from the language uni up there, but it was totally empty and I didn't bother going in to investigate.

yes, open something up here. we're starving for some kind of entertainment. anything would beat a 45 minute journey to more interesting places of shanghai. not sure about many foreigners here though. i haven't seen that many.

i think govt interference is pretty minimal judging by my friend's experience. we would of course, use a shanghainese face man to avoid all the hassles.

theres at least a 1000 white students i guess and the figure increases about 50% every year. multiple times that no of asian expats.

To be fair, while bars here are all pretty lame, a few u probably dont know about r just about acceptable and some of the discos r cheap and have nice women, though atrocious music is ubiquitous.

i generally believe if u get the whiteys coming the asians will follow.

wouldnt really expect people to come from downtown.

I've spent a few days on a course at Fudan.

It is a massive open cut road tunnel there for the Mid-Ring Expressway, do check where the road crossings are if they are going to leave it open, the road crossings will be the concentration of pedestrain.

You should cater for expats attending courses there too, especially for quick lunch with GOOD coffee, we couldn't find restaurant worth visiting while we were there. Pay the school to erect map/roadsign within the campus for your bar.

You might have to investigate the number of summer courses they have, how many students are there in the summer holidays?

Hiring students like Hooters might be a good idea, they'll being in their fellow students as well.

im quite familiar and the target customer base

frankly, i could hardly be fuqed with the hassles of catering, believe me there r some kik-a$$ eateries locally. coffee is maybe doable.

i'll just do some table-dancing for advertising. after all, wouldnt it make a refreshing change to have fukuman shaking his super-sized hairy but in ur face 4 a change?

i just arrived here at SISU. walked around a lot, saw one disco, one bar within a two mile radius. that's just wrong. one bar, called the belle bar on dalian lu near SISU, closes its doors at 12 everynight. what the hell is that? but just to warn you, there a lot of older people living in this here area. and granted there are quite a lot of students studying chinese here and you might be able to build a base around that, but a loud disco in this location might not sit well with the locals. location, location, location. and who is this fukuman? what do you do to enjoy yourself in this area? i wanna see what this place has to offer.

A luowai table-dancing show will definitly set off a heated discussion in Shanghai and you'll get a lot of free pubicity, even media will jump on you, then you can start charging entrance fees. You might earn more that way than selling drinks.

What was that movie with 4 unemployed Brits turning into male strippers?

At least it will be something the locals can't easily open a copycat bar like yours!!

think it'd b mopre of a freak show, and english teaching is enough iof that, thanks

IAMME - that bar is a joke. ole bar, when they were triad controlled kicked. more drugs than ive ever seen in the uk. Qingdao bar is ok for a quiet drink. many nightclubs. subhouse ( siping lu, sichuan bei lu) is probably the best.

PM me , we'll hang. i used to live in SISU.

hey fukuman, can you tell me the addresses/location of the bars aforementioned? like the ole bar? that one sounds particularly interesting. how did you know it was triad controlled? and the tsingtao bar, where is that located? this weekend i spent too much time travelling all the way to the hengshan, huaihai lu bars in the west. it's time to start living a more local existence. plus all the foreigners over there freaked me out. appreciate the help!!!

qingdao car is ythe end of sichuan bei lu and yanna an lu

ole bar is crap since it got busted. Its actually the SISU hotel. chi feng l;u, yannan lu.

maybe worth trawling on a sat night, otherwise dead..

i'll be prowling rouind there again soon

thanks for that info, man! too bad about the SISU hotel, i would have never imagined such a profane history in that picturesque "dormitory". well, maybe i'll go trawling around there too. what do you reckon meeting up on the 5th at one of these places, perhaps qingdao or subhouse. my sis is coming into to town, she's never been to a foreign country before and she likes to club. ofcourse i'll take her to the glitz and glamour clubs of shanghai west but i'd like to explore these places that you mentioned. let me know what you if you're up for it! i'd like to learn a bit more about this area.

thanx for the info sofar,
I've only been here for 2weeks now and I was about to give up on the SISU area...

btw, I'm not sure, but there's a difference between the guesthouse and the hotel right? as in: there's a hotel which belongs to SISU on the next block...

thats the one amster, not the guesthouse. u have to go into the carpark to c it.