cocktail culture.

I attended the opening of BarHuLu on the Bund on Saturday night. It was, as almost everything in Shanghai is, gorgeously outfitted, glimmering with mirrors and opulent to outrageous degrees. I sipped on the free-flow champagne for a couple of hours, schmoozed with locals, browsed the cocktail menu (nothing too innovative) and (more than) sampled the salmon rolls and took in the luminescent Pudong views and exquisite decor. It was a nice night.

I'm pretty certain I've been to more bars in the past six months than in the last six years combined. I nothing bars, generally speaking. In New York, the frugal homebody in me hated the idea of paying supermarket-bottle-price for one glass of red wine, and bemoaned the near, inevitable future: holding back the reemergence of buffalo-flavored finger food in the back seat of a cab while groping for loose bills in my purse. I hated how crowded everything was - a stupid complaint for one who opts to reside in Manhattan, and then China - but, really, does anyone enjoy waiting in lines for the bathroom? Elbowing one's way to the bar? Being denied the option to sit? There was a time in my life - I think I was nineteen - when I really enjoyed screaming drink orders over a sea of strangers and tripping, laden with high-ball vases, back to some dank corner to rejoin my group of idle, silent sippers, arms sticky with overflowed liquor and soda. (Must have been the novelty. Or something.)

That being said, I do like cocktails, and being served one under the right circumstances (which, for me is almost always a matter of ambiance), can be quite relaxing and luxurious. I like in a bar what I like in a cafe, ultimately - qualities that are readily available in Shanghai bars, but seem to be painfully elusive in New York. I like reclining, in a nice chair. I like lots of room and interesting decor and enough noise to fill uncomfortable silences (bars are, after all, primarily meeting places for strangers and new acquaintances), but not so much that it makes conversation an endeavor.

The unsavory pubs on one particular strip of JuLu Lu are bookended by two excellent bars by these standards - the retro boudoir Velvet Lounge and the cyclopean concrete fortress People 7. The latter, supposedly two seasons passe, still appeals to me more than Face (regrettably, of 'Shanghai Baby' fame), whose contrived Orientalism (brocade, red, silkscreen) evokes the that NYU hipster hub in Alphabet City where I fell asleep sitting up that time. People 7 is cold by contrast - a vast, ghostly greyscale lined with sterile silver votives and a mile-long, mirrored bar. I liked it immediately; I take everybody to People 7.

I checked in with worldsbestbars.com to take a look at their Shanghai listings. A few I agree with (People 7), a few I don't (Face!), but some others worth noting are described below.

Cloud 9 holds the title of the world's tallest bar. Situated on the 87th and 88th floor of the Jin Mao Tower in PuDong (which, from the 55th floor up, hosts the grandest Grand Hyatt imaginable), it feels a bit like an airplane. The ceilings are awfully low, and the drinks are awfully expensive, but when you're surrounded by the panoramic floodlights of the Bund skyline, you will forget that you're hunched over in your booth, and that the carpet smells suspiciously of shrink-wrapped wool.

I'll indulge in any chance to plug the singular, terrific Yongfu Elite, to which the web site wisely gave a nod. Just. . . check it out in you're ever in Shanghai. It might be the best food / beverage venue I've ever stepped food in. Period.

WBB also heralds Aqua, the sexy addendum to that posh waterfront Japanese restaurant Sun (with Aqua), TMSK XTD, which I popped my head into the last time I was out that way (no patrons, at ten on a Thursday), Attica, which is really a club (and a filthy, sinister one at that), Sugar, at which women may almost always drink, eat cake and receive ad-hoc facials for free, and The California Club, which I, upon visiting during my first night out in Shanghai, vowed never again to step foot in.