and Qian Cheng, Wang Jian and a large group of people came out to club, and made an appointment to meet at the door of the Golden Years Bar on Jiefang West Road.

Bars began to enter China with the arrival of foreigners in China, and only foreign-related hotels opened consumption spaces such as bars at the earliest, which is a mysterious and fascinating place. Suddenly, one day, you find that those bars with bright lights in Western film and television mirrors appear in the streets and alleys around you and break into your life. Star City is no exception, just a few hundred meters away from Jiefang West Road, gathered more than a dozen bars, Golden Years, Coco Qing Bar, Norwegian Forest and Margaret Bar are the ones we go to a lot.

In China, the bar is a transplanted space without history, an imported imaginative space, in which Chinese people wantonly add colorful imagination and integrate into the local culture. The rapid localization, fashion and popularization of bars have changed the original nightlife pattern of Star City. The Star City, deep in the mainland, is a "small city" compared to a metropolis like "Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou", but it has a "big bar" with a local temperament. In the first few years of the 21st century, many people in Xingcheng who went to the metropolises of Beijing and Shanghai for the first time, like me, were surprised by the "smallness" of the local bars. The bar in Star City is very large, crowded and noisy. If the foreign bars under the roots of the Imperial City and on the banks of the Huangpu River are dolls of pure Western blood that are directly raised, then the bars in Xingcheng are a mixture of Chinese and Western blood, and the genes of Xingcheng's father are still very strong, so that it inherits the Huoxiang people's fiery and frank and lively character, and speaks a Xingcheng accent, and the throat is still very big.

At that time, there was no water and wood years that were very popular later, only golden years of performing arts. The term performing arts bar is the first creation of Xingcheng people, which embraces the essence of various night entertainment forms such as local song halls, cultural nightclubs, dance halls, and taxis, which were popular before. The hall of the golden years can accommodate nearly 1,000 people at the same time, known as "the entertainment giant, thousands of people are happy". The wide curved bar encloses a large stage, the young and beautiful bar girl ring sits on the outside of the stage, and the artists who have broken into the world take turns to perform on stage. Sometimes, watching the models walking around the stage, I feel like it's a lively runway show; Sometimes looking at the singers, dancers, acrobatics, and duo performances on stage, I feel that it is more like a modern version of the traditional stage, except that in the old days the audience would sit down and drink tea and have some refreshments, while today we are sitting down and drinking and eating fries and buds. In the light and shadow, the rhythm of the music is strong and dynamic, the noisy air heats up rapidly, and the fog created by dry ice fills the air; When the wine and meat are hearty, singing and dancing, nearly 1,000 people are shaking the dice cup together, the deafening sound of the big scene is moving, and the atmosphere of entertainment is like rushing to the sky.

Tonight's bar is especially atmospheric because it's Valentine's Day. Lin Zi, Shi Nian, Qiu Qian and a few female colleagues who didn't have lovers were all called over and had a lively time together. A friend from a Beijing advertising agency came to Star City on a business trip, and just arrived in the evening, and happened to call me, and I also asked him to come to the golden years to sit down.

It seems that he is relatively quiet, he was quickly infected by the atmosphere of the scene, he did not sit on the stool, he kept shaking his head with one hand on the table, I asked him loudly close to his ear what he thought of the bar in Star City, and how was it different from the bar in the capital? "It's different, it's different," he said. Your Hunan bars have the same spicy taste as Hunan cuisine, and people are prone to sweating as soon as they come in. ”

Yes, people think of chili peppers when they talk about Hunan, but in fact, it turns out that Hunan people don't know what chili peppers are, and there are no chili peppers in the whole of China. Chili peppers first grew in the tropical regions of Central and South America, and the earliest record of chili peppers in China is recognized as Gao Lian of the Ming Dynasty wrote "Zunsheng Eight Notes" (1591), which contains: "Peppers are clustered, white flowers, the fruit is like a bald pen head, the taste is spicy and red, and it is very considerable". According to this account, it is generally believed that chili peppers were introduced to China in the last years of the Ming Dynasty. Pepper to China for hundreds of years, only a few provinces will accept it as the mainstream food, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces are still more traditional pepper, only Hunan will absorb this kind of imported products into the bits and pieces of life, made into oil pepper, pepper fried meat, chopped pepper fish head and other Hunan dishes with their own special taste, and gradually carry forward the pepper into a symbol of their own cultural spirit, but also especially on the top of the bell tower of Xingcheng Railway Station set up a sculpture that looks like pepper and like a flame. Therefore, chili pepper is the most representative example of Huxiang culture absorbing and transforming foreign material civilization, which is a kind of tolerance and self-confidence that is eclectic to foreign civilization, which is not difficult to explain the unique local bar style.

At that time, the only thing in Star City was quieter, and the literary and artistic point was the Coco Qing Bar created by "returnees" Cocoa, and we only went when we were dating girls alone or when we needed to talk about things first, and we often changed to a higher bar to continue to soak after talking. For a long time, we often went to four or five bars in one night, and some industry insiders kindly reminded us that almost all of the so-called foreign liquor with fancy foreign language labels on the bottles were MADE IN CHINA, but we still persevered every night with many SBs.

A stomach filled with fake wine always needs a hot meal to comfort it, and a late-night snack is often a must-have sequel. We finished eating supper by the river, it was early in the morning, taking advantage of the interest to get on the boat and cruise the Xiangjiang River at night, just having the artistic conception of "drunk Changsha wine at night, Xiaoxing Xiangshui Spring" in the "Fatanzhou" of the Du Gong Department. We are used to calling it Xiangjiang River, adding a river word, which is more cordial. Xingcheng people like to add a river word regardless of the size of the water system, there are Weishui River, Liuyang River, and a very small one is also called Laodao River, which is the mother river in the hearts of the locals.

There are couples on the boat who bring fireworks, which are actually common "welding rods" and colored bead cylinders on weekdays, but they also arouse the envy of girls; We went down the river, and every few hundred meters on the bank of the Xiangjiang River, there were also people setting off fireworks in twos and threes. Looking at the fire trees and silver flowers in the distance, the water surface is full of color, reflecting the smiles of the people on the shore, you listen carefully, as if you can also hear the bursts of joy and laughter from the wind in the distance. As the so-called east wind blooms thousands of trees at night, it blows down even more, and the stars are like rain. Feng Xiao's voice moved, the jade pot turned brightly, and the fish and dragon danced all night. The moth snow willow is golden, and the smile is full of dark fragrance......

"There are fireworks in the year, and there is no joy without rudeness." Xingcheng people like fireworks, big and small things always like fireworks to help the fun, because Xingcheng is a famous firecracker production area with a long history, our fireworks here are cheaper, and there are many varieties. "Jing Chu Years Chronicles" contains: "Burning fire and throwing bamboo, blasting sound, can ward off demons"; Legend has it that 1400 years ago, on both sides of the Nanchuan River, I heard that someone was killed by mandrills, and even Li Shimin, Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, was disturbed by the dragon's body, so he issued an edict to seek medical treatment throughout the country. Li Jin of Dayao Mountain, Nanxiang Township, Xingcheng, worked hard to develop firecrackers, which were not only used to drive away evil spirits and protect the safety of one party, but also to drive away evil spirits from Taizong. Li Jin was meritorious in saving the driver and was named the "Firecracker Patriarch" by Tang Taizong.

A group of girls have suggested that they should meet our friends in this group and set off a collective fireworks by the Xiangjiang River on the occasion of next year's New Year. Lin Zi said to me that it will be the New Year next year, why wait so long, you can accompany me to set off fireworks during the Mid-Autumn Festival. I said yes, in fact, as long as you want, you can come tomorrow.