From the outside, the dusty, maroon-colored Huaqing Commercial Building looks just like any other Chinese office building built in the early 2000s. What it truly is, however, is an entertainment hub nestled in the heart of Wudaokou, a neighborhood in northwest Beijing famous for its close proximity to a vast cohort of academic institutions, including Peking University and Tsinghua University, China's two most prestigious universities.

Inside, the 17-storey building has everything a university student needs, including a formalwear shop, where many buy their first suits, a ceramic art school, a baking workshop, a cybercafé, a board game club, numerous beauty salons and 27 bars.

The most renowned bar in the building is the Universe Lounge, which, unlike other bars, is stacked with hundreds of books and covered with posters promoting lecture series held at nearby universities.

In the daytime, the store serves as a café where students come to study and socialize while old movies play in the background. When the night falls, the seats are rearranged, the lights dimmed, and the café is transformed into a bar where free academic lectures and seminars take place. These events require no reservations or advance bookings, with seats secured on a first-come-first-served basis.

Since its first academic session was launched last June, the Universe Lounge has curated more than 20 lectures. Topics range from the history of Chinese immigration to the United States and the cultural diversity of India to character development in crime fiction and symbolism in 16th-century Chinese classic Journey to the West.

Li Yiting, a 21-year-old undergraduate majoring in theater and performance studies, is among the many Chinese Gen Zs who have recently frequented the bar in search of intellectual stimulation.

The first session she attended at the Universe Lounge delved into flamenco, a genre of folk music and dance native to south Spain. Li's first impression of the event was that it was not much different from the lectures she attended in college—quiet, with little to no participation. However, that impression was quickly overturned, as the speaker invited all members of the audience to stand up and stomp to the beat. The silence was broken and the session finished off with heated discussion among the attendees.

"That moment when we all stood up was when I fell in love with this kind of event," Li told Beijing Review. "It is all about creating a space for interaction, not for monologue, where everyone can join in the conversation and freely

express themselves."

Alcohol with academics

The Universe Lounge belongs to a new phenomenon called "academic bars," in which academic exchanges are ditching the classroom to enter the less formal setting of bars.

The trend began with Bunker, a 10-square-meter bar tucked away on a quiet corner of Urumqi Road in Shanghai. Starting last May, the bar started a free lecture series where guest scholars, researchers, writers and scientists are invited to discuss their special fields of interests with the public. The goal is simple—to give young urbanites a space in Shanghai to have scholarly conversations and forge new connections.

"It takes time and effort to connect with someone in a big city," Edward Luo, the bar's founder and a 25-year-old banking associate, told South China Morning Post. "But if you have a bar where you can just sit and conversation naturally begins, it becomes a lot easier to connect with like-minded people."

The lecture series was an instant hit on Xiaohongshu, a leading lifestyle platform in China, where the bar earned the title, "China's first academic bar." Much to the surprise of its owner, youngsters started pouring in from all across China to participate in the events.

With Bunker being catapulted to sudden fame, similar bars began to emerge in large cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, Changsha in Hunan Province and Xi'an in Shaanxi Province. Visitors to these bars can enjoy a wide range of free academic meetup events while sipping on beers or cocktails. Some have also combined lectures and seminars with another trend that is taking Chinese cities by storm: the so-called "home bars," which are bars converted from the owner's personal residence, where strangers can meet and mingle in a more intimate, light-hearted setting.

The trend has its origin in the SciBar (short for "science in a bar"), which are informal academic discussions led by science professionals that usually take place in bars or pubs. The trend took off in 1998 in Leeds, the UK, with the establishment of a forum called Café Scientifique. The forum, instead of sticking to a fixed location, had been held in cafes, bars, restaurants and theaters—places where anyone could come to have a conversation about the latest discoveries in science over a glass of coffee or wine. Over the following decades, this new form of cultural activity has gradually been picked up by other parts of the world.

While SciBars have traditionally focused on science and technology, Bunker and other Chinese academic bars have prioritized social sciences, humanities and arts. Since its inception, the lecture series at Bunker has delved into a wide range of topics including social anxiety, the history of bebop in the U.S. and the evolution of parks in Shanghai.

"There are not many events about the social sciences in the current public sphere, and many interesting topics and themes are therefore left unexplored," Bai Bing (pseudonym), the 27-year-old manager of Bunker, told media, noting that the bar's new initiative strives to increase the visibility of these subjects and promote tools that are crucial to the study of humanities, which include research techniques, critical thinking and the ability to put together reasoned arguments.

A temporary escape

The rise of academic bars is part of a broader trend of intellectualizing social spaces in China. In many ways, this nascent public sphere is reminiscent of a slew of literary salon-like spaces that have sprung up near university campuses.

It is not surprising that Wudaokou is where these spaces are clustered in Beijing. The league includes All Sages Bookstore, a 31-year-old bookstore where authors, scholars and publishers meet for intellectual conversations; the Bridge Café, a café founded in 2003 where international and local students alike gather for lectures, standup comedy, drawing lessons and poetry reading events; the Lancet, a kebab shop where medical professionals regularly organize academic meetings.

As the latest member of this league, academic bars provide an open space where hierarchies and barriers are further broken down to allow all people, regardless of their age, profession, social status and educational background, to engage in conversation on an equal footing.

The trend also taps into a widespread sense of anxiety among Chinese youths over intense academic pressures and an increasingly competitive job market. For many liberal arts students who are struggling to find a job in their field of interest or secure a spot in graduate courses, academic bars, with their devotion to social sciences and humanities, offer a brief escape from reality.

"All of my classmates are discussing job interviews, internships and the graduate entrance examination, but all I want to do is to indulge in learning," Li said. Since that first session on flamenco, she has spent every weekend at the Universe Lounge listening to talks and seminars. "And this pub is a safe haven for daydreamers like me," she added.

However, this break from reality is only temporary. Every year in Wudaokou, some 130,000 students graduate from college, while another 130,000 freshmen embark upon their academic adventure.

"Whether academic bars are a passing fad or a sustainable trend remains to be seen," Zhang Jianing, the founder of Konggejiutan, the first academic bar to open in Beijing and a long-time partner with the Universe Lounge, told Lifeweek magazine.

According to Zhang, visitors to his bar constitute a floating population, who tend to completely disappear upon graduation as they move on to the next phase of their life.

Apart from the fact that customer flow is highly unstable, these bars have also generated little profit from hosting academic events, as lectures are mostly free and the consumption of drinks are oftentimes

non-obligatory.

"When we drink, we can become a little bit detached from the real world and become fully immersed in the abstract and the purely intellectual. Yet in the end, everyone, including the bar itself, has to sober up and face the reality," he said.

However, despite the many uncertainties this nascent sector faces, Zhang still believes that what he does is truly meaningful. 

(Print Edition Title: Brains and Brews)

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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