Academic bars? Craft beer meets intellectual discourse at Shanghai’s Bunker, sparking a trend across China

Not much about Edward Luo conformed to expectations the first time we met. It was a couple of months after he had opened Bunker, the Shanghai bar that went viral in China this summer for holding free academic lectures, inspiring copycats nationwide. Wearing a grey graphic T-shirt and baggy trousers, his baby face and thick-rimmed glasses gave the impression of an esports athlete rather than the owner of a craft beer watering hole.

Bunker has organised more than 20 lectures since May, with topics ranging from why Chinese businessmen drink until they vomit (because doing so shows sincerity, thereby building trust) to a history of bebop in the United States (a case study of how avant-garde ideas can enter the mainstream). Speakers have included PhD students and professors from NYU Shanghai, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Yale University in the US.

At a time when public life in China has been subject to increasing controls, Bunker has pioneered a new form of cultural activity where young urbanites listen to scholars in dimly lit bars. It harks back to the original symposia, when ancient Greek elites gathered at after-dinner drinking parties to discuss philosophy, politics and the arts over bowls of diluted wine (the Greek word symposion means “to drink together”).

Though Bunker was the most famous bar in China this summer, few people know it was opened a year earlier by Luo, a 25-year-old associate at a multinational bank. With money borrowed from his parents, he invited a high-school friend who had just been fired to work in the bar full time. The goal was simple – to give young, idealistic people like himself a space in Shanghai to have interesting conversations.

“It takes time and effort to connect with someone in a big city. 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,” he tells me, seated at Bunker’s slim metallic bar top. On tap are nine craft beers sourced from across China. Luo chooses a lychee-infused sea salt gose from Mahanine Brewing in Inner Mongolia. I pick a tieguanyin and osmanthus beer from ET Brewery in Shenzhen, which is somehow both bitter and sweet.

Covering around 160 square feet, Bunker is smaller than some of my friends’ living rooms in Shanghai. Reinforced concrete walls and a suspended ceiling made of jagged metallic shards ensure the name is apt, but the harsh interior is softened by a few bright rainbow flags and a box of free menstrual products by the bathroom.