Cash-strapped Beijing drinkers turn to unlicensed ‘home bars’
The proliferation of illicit bars is a reminder that the world’s second-largest economy was already suffering from weak household consumption even before Donald Trump launched his trade war against it.
Joe Leahy, Nian Liu, Wenjie Ding and Ryan McMorrow
Ken and Dolores’s unlicensed Beijing bar lies behind an unmarked door in a gritty residential tower where a rowdy group of men play cards in the foyer.
In the converted apartment in Beijing’s Olympic Park area, Ken, a civil engineer by training who asked to be identified by his English nickname, serves quirky cocktails at prices half or even less of those charged by the Chinese capital’s conventional drinking establishments.
