Song Fa was ready to compete with the Fàguó rén on Yongkang Lu.

Sure, they had rented out over half of the shops to sell their fancy sausages and baguettes and exotic foreign booze and non-instant coffee. Every night, the street spilled over with foreigners drinking foreign beers and chatting animatedly in foreign languages. At the curbside were parked minty green fixed-gear bikes, owned by skinny Parisians with perfectly tousled hair,  over on an internship.

He could accept Shanghai’s status as an international city. He was a modern, cosmopolitan guy, after all. He had been to Hong Kong twice. He had even tried a few of the Belgian beers at Cheers In.

However, he wanted to open a proper Shanghai bar, to counterbalance the laowai influence. It was only fair.

He surveyed his inventory: 4 crates of lukewarm Reeb beer,  a bucket of slightly chilled hairy crabs still slightly comatose from the fridge, a portable cooker for frying up the stinky tofu, 2 folding stools, a card table and a China Post bike.

That would do nicely, he thought.