The Chinese street slang for hooker, by virtue of a homophone, is “chicken” (hence the male equivalent, “duck”). Beijing’s best-known spot for “chicken”, as far as Westerners are generally concerned, is a “lady bar” named Maggie’s. Maggie’s’ infamous allure transcends its market niche as a pick-up joint. On any given night, the crowd divides roughly into three sets: the working girls, mainly Mongolian; their clientele, mostly Viagra-aged Western businessmen; and expat voyeurs, primarily swinging-single drinkers, who revel in the interplay of the other two.
 

   What happens at Maggie’s stays at Maggie’s. Or so they say. Most any adopted Beijinger has a memorable run-in from the club to relate, regardless of whether he or she was actually there. We recall hearing of one foreign correspondent who happened upon his boss receiving a lap dance, and another who was mistaken for a working girl by her own colleague. On one occasion, a buff young Yale grad modeled in an ad shoot with Maggie's staff (He says it turned out to be disappointingly "tame"). On another, circa the present Bush Administration's first term, 48 members of a 50-person U.S. government delegation allegedly ended the night there.

 

     Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Ask the ogling observer types what draws them to Maggie’s, and they’ll speak of the dance floor and the billiards, the DJ repertoire of nostalgic Rock, the foot-long hot dogs with frittered onions, and of course the people-watching. One blogging patron put it ever so gently:

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“Because Maggies makes very little effort in hiding its disreputable raison d’etre, it is not the ideal place to go for a quiet beer. I generally head in there with friends from out of town for something of a rather childish novelty value. On most of these occasions I have felt like a naughty school boy, trying my best to look inconspicuous whilst feeling a touch ashamed and embarrassed to be in there.”

 

     A fixture on many a tour of “the real Beijing”, Maggie’s began serving the laowai (foreigner) community on the city’s East Side in 1993. As legend has it, the bar was originally opened by the kin of a senior Beijing Public Security official and a northern European business partner. Maggie’s has shifted management and locations several times since, and suffered a few scrapes with the law. But each time it has emerged with a snazzier look and a more exclusive location.

 

     The club is currently perched anomalously beside the south gate of historic Ritan Park, along a stately row of embassies, inside a white-walled courtyard behind red double-doors (full disclosure: my wife and I run a cafe inside Ritan Park, which means I hear some of the buzz about neighboring establishments). Whatever the substance of its much-discussed police connections, the “protective umbrella” of the local Public Security Bureau has kept Maggie’s covered, along with countless similar places in China that do "take-out".

 

     Except not during the prelude to the Beijing Olympics. In late March, police moved in on Maggie’s on orders from top Public Security authorities in the capital, and abruptly closed it down, say sources briefed by local police on the situation. (More on that below.)  The sting came just days after Maggie’s reopened, following a three-month remodeling job in anticipation of the Games. According to a sign posted on the door afterward, it was only to be shut for five days for a fire code inspection. But Maggie’s has yet to reopen.

 

      The closure spurred a tantalizing new chapter of Maggie’s lore. Rumor, theory and scantily reported innuendo flowed, and the news got Maggie’s die-hards whispering on Web forums such as Shanghai Expat.
By all accounts, the reason initially publicized for the closure -- a building code violation -- was mere pretense. Seemingly well-positioned insiders expected Maggie’s to be out of commission through at least the period of the Olympics. Beyond that, though, intelligence on the matter went soft. “More certain,” quipped one Shanghai Expat contributor, “is that the closure will likely lead to economic recession in Mongolia.”

     The hot skinny on Maggie’s, around Beijing and beyond, was that some of the bar’s ladies were found murdered on the fringes of Beijing - minus certain valuably traded organs. Here the details have varied. There were either two or three women, of either Mongolian or Russian extraction, maybe both. To our knowledge, however, this grisly subplot has never been officially verified.

     Whatever else happened, the conventional wisdom is that Maggie’s was bound to be ensnared in a much broader pre-Olympic dragnet on drugs, gambling, prostitution and other unlicensed activities. Police authorities launch crackdowns every summer to “sweep out the yellow” -- meaning, purge the sex trade -- from the vast array of fronts it employs in China, including bars, karaoke parlors, bathhouses, beauty salons, and hour-rate motels. But in Beijing, this year’s crackdown was launched earlier and has gone on longer. It has also carried tighter surveillance and heavier penalties.

     In one extreme case in April, police barged in on a Chinese man with a prostitute in the booth of a cheap corner massage parlor. Tough justice for a john in China would normally be 15 days in detention. Instead the gentleman, a native Beijinger in the garment business, was sentenced to a half-year of re-education through labor and fined 5,000 yuan, a friend of his informed us. Authorities also notified the man’s family and employer of his indiscretion.

    Soon after getting the news, his wife left him and his father died of a heart attack. The police told him they were “punishing offenders with severity” due to the Olympics. The man’s evening ended unhappily in more ways than one. He was not caught en flagrante, according to what the man told his friend. “He’d only just taken off his clothes.”

      Venues catering to tourists and expats seem to be at the front lines of the killjoy campaign, suggesting the priority is to distance foreign visitors, journalists and VIPS at the Olympics from the seedy side of the socialist paradise, rather than end the lucrative festivities entirely. Around the time Maggie’s was shuttered, police busted other unseemly hangouts in the nightlife hoods of Sanlitun and Maizidian, and in the process detained dozens foreigners and Chinese on either visa violations or suspicion of illegal drug trafficking. Still, some of those joints have since reopened, in certain cases under different names, report barflies in the midst.

     As to the nitty gritty of Maggie’s demise, in April, local police officials summoned other entertainment  business owners in Maggie's jurisdiction to a meeting where they offered their version of events. Two persons who attended recently briefed us on what they heard. The following is based on their readback of the meeting.

     During the course of the meeting, the presiding official never alluded to talk of women from Maggie’s offed for their organs. The institution’s undoing began, he asserted, with an anonymous tip from a letter posted to administrative offices of the municipal Public Security bureau. That letter complained of discrimination against Chinese patrons who were barred from entering Maggie's. “’China’s been liberated for sixty years. Why shouldn’t Chinese be permitted to enter!’” The writer's comment made provocative allusion to the foreign-run concessions of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, when segregation was enforced with signs stating, “No Chinese or dogs allowed.”

      The letter also charged that people at Maggie’s engaged in erotic dancing and took drugs such as ecstasy, the official said. No one asked how the purported letter-writer might have witnessed such things without entering the bar.

     It is commonly accepted as fact that illicit entertainment operations in China, as in other countries, have some sort of accommodation with neighborhood police, if not official connections who trump the police. But when senior authorities receive a tip from the grassroots or crackdown orders from on-high, they can be compelled to go over the local officers’ heads and probe their turf. Often, the ensuing investigations crack open the Pandora’s box. So it was in the case of Maggie’s, this official alleged.

     On the night of the Maggie’s sting, he said, the municipal Bureau of Public Security sent police investigators to sniff out the discrimination complaints. Maggie’s did not display any sign barring Chinese, they found, but did try to discourage some Chinese from entering, the officer said. Maggie’s employees tried to explain that they were a “members-only” joint. But by this time the police were distracted by other shady movements.

     While on stakeout, investigators spotted a pattern of male customers entering unaccompanied and exiting with women they met inside; from there they proceeded straight to hotels in the vicinity. In all, they trailed five such couples. At one five-star hotel, police kicked down the couple’s door. The evidence uncovered that night was sufficient for investigators to draw suspicions that Maggie’s was a “platform” for prostitution, the official said. He conducted the briefing as though those attendance were not already aware of this.

     Once investigators reporter their findings, city-level authorities called in the neighborhood patrols to close down the bar. In doing so police detained Maggie’s managers and legal representatives for questioning, the official said. He did not say what if any charges or other consequences came of it.

     From Maggie’s, the official said, the police investigators took the hunt to Sanlitun, where they proceeded to seal up other bars over the next couple days. In all, he said, city police had corralled a couple hundred suspected Mongolian prostitutes in the sweep and several times that number from Russia.

      Other business owners were to draw a lesson from the Maggie’s bust, the official stressed. In preparation for the Olympics, he said, authorities were “comprehensively putting the environment in order.” He called on proprietors to operate in accordance with the law and with safety guidelines, in order to prevent against fires, theft, miscreants and the employment of migrants without residency permits. At one point, he particularly singled out a representative from one of Beijing’s premier karaoke chains, and made an oblique reference to its alleged  prostitution links. “'Right now, no one has a protective umbrella,'” one of the sources quoted the official as saying. “'But as long as you operate legally, you will have no problem.'”

      The official added that he not know when, how or if Maggie’s would be able to reopen. But the die-hard Maggie's customers, like a lot of Beijingers, suspect that the close of the Olympics will permit all kinds of extracurriculars to resume.

    They may prove to be right. Earlier this week, Maggie's staff were spotted at the threshold of the club hosing down equipment and offloading supplies from a truck. We queried a bare-chested lad who identified himself as a Maggie's bouncer.

      Why were you closed down?

      "We weren't really closed down. It's the same here as at many other bars like us right now." 

      So why are you closed?

      "Authorities told us to...but I'm not too clear about it." 

      When will you be open again? 

      "It's going to be just about, oh, after the Olympics."