Comments on: The Foreigner Card, Don’t Leave Your Home Country Without It

By: Jeremy Yeh

Jeremy Yeh — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:48:01 +0000

To Lee and Ben
the population of the urban area of fuzhou is around 2.2 million.

By: DS

DS — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:23:16 +0000

That’s the second time I have seen liuzhou emerge on a China-related forum nitpicking the author’s English….do you not have anything better to do in Liuzhou?? Economic slowdown hitting you hard is it??

By: Jackson

Jackson — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:38:22 +0000

A few of the bars here in Xiamen have generic membership cards which can be given to anyone. The door-entry gift usually being a couple glasses of cheap whisky. Pretty easy for foreigners to get them but that are not handed out arbitrarily.

By: King of Men

King of Men — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:27:03 +0000

By the way, Wenzhou’s nightlife is utter shit. Not much going on. The entire waterfront that’s lined with pubs and discos is mostly dead save the Disco with the broken escalator. Cowboy Eric’s I and II are the only pubs that are regularly roaring. The two foreign-owned pubs, La Luna and The Blue Shell charge the outrageous China prices and while the owners are incredibly nice guys: offer nothing special and tend to be empty or when they’re having a good night – free of many Chinese. La Luna also caters to the shit-pop local music tastes yet Cowboy Eric’s I and II packs them in, especially on the weekend.

By: King of Men

King of Men — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:22:58 +0000

Cowboy Eric doesn’t give out “free steaks” all that much. At all ,really (unless he did for you, then you’re first). Free beer, however: when he’s around that’s true. He also leaves a lot of his management of one of his bars to a very cool African guy named Bruno. It’s really two bars and one cafe. Cowboy Eric’s III is mostly dead at night and has a cafe atmosphere. Eric is quite the character. Taiwanese, he made his fortune in textiles and is the only Chinese man with a cowboy hat that I know of in all of Wenzhou.

By: Jetso

Jetso — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:46:13 +0000

You guys have it lucky then. In some places in Southeast Asia, the bartenders & shop owners would usually charge a “special” (hence, jacked-up) price for the foreigner & a more “affordable” (hence, cheaper) price for the locals.

By: FOARP

FOARP — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:21:46 +0000

Damn – it wasn’t so long ago the bars in Nanjing were doing this kind of thing, now us useless Laowai need to travel all the way to Wenzhou to get our rightful freebie booze! What are things coming to?!

By: Drunk in China: A long way to go for Free Beer « Written on the Wind

Drunk in China: A long way to go for Free Beer « Written on the Wind — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:45:25 +0000

[...] Free Beer in China [...]

By: Travellers’ Tales - The FEER Blog » Blog Archive » Foreigners Still Got the Mojo

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:08:37 +0000

[...] A bar in Fuzhou is giving out “Foreigner Card” to laowai entitling them to free drinks, according to Ben’s Blog. The foreigners evidently bring in the girls, who bring in the high-spending local men. Who knew? (Hat tip to WSJ China Blog) [...]

By: Matthew Stinson

Matthew Stinson — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:24:53 +0000

Reminds me of when I went to one Tianjin bar earlier this summer with a handful of Chinese friends. They inquired about the price of beers and were told they were 35 each if the Chinese wanted to pay and 25 each if I wanted to pay. Not exactly smooth…

And sorry, whitey, Ben’s not full of himself. Several bars in Tianjin used the “lure foreigners to lure Chinese girls to lure Chinese businessmen/officials/sons of businessmen and officials” strategy. The Chinese girls went there not because they wanted to score with white guys but because they felt a bar with a lot of foreigners was somehow cooler. Anyways, what usually happens next is that the moneyed Chinese guys start getting into fights with the foreigners, the bar cuts its foreigner specials, and foreigners start leaving in droves. Then another bar repeats the strategy.