Sanlitun Bar Street, a tree-lined neighborhood of foreign diplomatic compounds, is located in the Chaoyang District northwest of the city center between the Workers Stadium (Gongrentiyuchang) and the Third Ring Road North.
There are also plenty of nightlife venues opening along the adjacent Gongrentiyuchang Street all the way east to Chaoyang Park. Most of these small, privately owned cafe/bars serve Western cuisine by day and imported beer, wine, and spirits by night. They attract a large number of foreign residents, diplomats, and students, as well as young, moneyed Beijingers. In the summer, most of these cafe/bars offer outdoor seating, pleasant places to while away the sunlit hours. In the evenings, most cafe/bars become meccas for after-dinner drinks and live music, particularly rock.
Sanlitun Bar Street is the liveliest and most compact nightlife district in Beijing.
Most of the bars and cafes are situated chockablock on the east side of Sanlitun Road running north from the intersection at Gongrentiyuchang North Road (west of the Third Ring Road East). Here a green sign announces (in English) that you are at the gateway to Sanlitun Bar Street. The sidewalk is strung with bright pennants and table umbrellas. The cafes, bars, and clubs line the street and alleyways for the next 4 blocks, but the farther north you walk, the more likely it is that the bars will be interspersed with small boutiques, art galleries, and rattan furniture shops. Eventually you reach the north end of Sanlitun Road, where the foreign embassies and consulates are located, but there are cafes and bars here, too.
Along the southern shore of the Liangma River, one block west off Sanlitun Road, is Schillers II, a bar and restaurant long popular with foreigners in Beijing and open daily from 5pm to 1am. If you follow the river east, you’ll come to the Third Ring Road area, the location of Beijings own Hard Rock Cafe.
If Sanlitun and the Third Ring Road don’t do you in, there’s another barhopping street within easy walking distance west of Sanlitun (just off Gongrentiyuchang North Road, toward the Workers Stadium): Dongdaqiao Xie Street. This little street curves south and west and is now popularly called "Sanlitun Bar Street South." Cafe/bar names run the gamut from Nashville to Dirty Nellies Irish Pub, but the best-known spot is Hidden Tree. Dondaqiao Xie Street connects to Beijings original expatriate bar, the ever-popular Franks Place, located directly across the street from the east entrance to Workers Stadium -- a most comfortable place to begin and end an extended barhop through Sanlitun.
