We Took Team Jing-A to Visit Tongzhou's Fake Jing-A

By Noelle Mateer

When it comes to Fake Jing-A and Real Jing-A, the number-one sign that they’re different is, well, the sign.

“Look, it’s a uterus,” a friend says, as we spot Fake Jing-A’s logo outside its shopping mall home. Sure enough, a red uterus adorns a large plastic placard advertising Fake Jing-A, which opened six weeks prior to our visit.

But things aren’t as they appear. What look like Fallopian tubes from a distance are in fact ram’s horns. And what seemed like a uterine outline is actually the pint of beer from which they sprout. Altogether, the insignia is supposed to represent a mountain goat, and said mountain goat is supposed to represent Fake Jing-A. This should probably be made clearer.

Before I plunge into the reproductive crux of this story, though, let’s clarify one thing: Fake Jing-A is not Fake Jing-A’s actual name. Rather, it goes by ‘Jing-A 1979,’ and it is a thinly veiled imitation of one of my favorite hangouts in all Beijing – the Jing-A Taproom in Courtyard 4’s 1949: The Hidden City.

But for the purposes of this article, I’ll refer to it as Jing-B. Because that’s what I’d have called it. Not that anyone asked me – I just showed up last month with a notebook and, more importantly, a gaggle of current and former Jing-A employees...

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