Smoke gets in your eyes

Oh yes, tobacco fans, you can feel free to light up anywhere in China. And before you say ‘eeeuw’, imagine this. It’s a steamy evening in Shanghai on the famous esplanade knows as the Bund. It’s magical at night, with all the mellow old colonial buildings that line one side of the Huangpu River up-lit like a giant film set.  On the river’s other side, the city’s gigantic new buildings rear high up into the clouds. Families and lovers, and you, stroll and watch the rivers cruisers drift by.

You wander into the Waldorf Astoria, built in 1910. Through the arched lobby you go, past luscious towers of flowers in tall vases beneath crystal chandeliers. Then you’re in the fabled Long Bar. It feels utterly authentic and it almost is –  it’s been rebuilt to look the way it was in the 1930s when it was the smartest gentlemen’s club in Shanghai. The most powerful members got to sit at the end with the river view.

Apparently, Noel Coward once laid his cheek on one end of the 34-metre mahogany bar and declared it was so long he could see the curvature of the earth. The number of martinis he’d had at the time is not recorded.

The club was used by Japanese occupation forces in World War II, as a seamen’s club when Communism came in and even as Shanghai’s first KFC venue in the early 1990s. Derelict for 15 years until leased by the Hilton group in 2009, it is now a most elegant hotel. www.waldorfastoriashanghai.com The bar is low-lit and has nests of soft armchairs and rotating fans lazily whop-whopping overhead (not that they’re needed with the air-con on High).

So, cocktails, anyone? Going vintage, you might try a ‘1915’, which is a blend of gin, curacao, cream, peach rum, lemon juice, mint and peach puree. Or a ‘Bronx’, a tipple dating back to 1906, featuring gin, orange juice, dry vermouth, sweet vermouth and orange bitters.

Prices start at about NZ$17, with beer rather cheaper. If you’re peckish, a Waldorf Salad or a trio of oysters is the same price.

Thus equipped you can ease back and enjoy the music. There’s a guy tinkling ivories and a singer with a sexy voice that’s exactly right for the pre-war songs she’s crooning.  Then you realise people are smoking in here. Curls of smoke drift up from the bar. A man in the corner is enjoying a cigar.

A guy in our group sniffs appreciatively. ‘I miss that,’ he admits. And the rest of us, non-smokers all, nod in slightly wistful agreement and feel a little nostalgic pang for the days of casually lighting up and kidding ourselves about how sophisticated a habit it was.  It’s like we’ve stepped into the past.

Of course, smoking in an elegant joint like the Waldorf Astoria is one thing, street smoking is something else. There’s no way we really want a world of tobacco shops stocked with $1-per-packet smokes, as Shanghai still is, but we find on this night that we don’t mind it at all.

By Lindsey Dawson