In this audio interview with The Nanfang, Andre talks about why he stayed in Dongguan, how he came up with the name for his pub, the city’s nightlife, and how it has changed over the years.

Hope you enjoy it.

Andre Caprioara

One for the Road has contacted us regarding our review, in which one of our staff visited One for the Road and wrote about their experience. In our view, the review was fair and based on the writer’s impressions of the food quality, ambiance, price, and service. The review attracted several comments, with some explicitly disagreeing with the review’s conclusions. Those comments all remain on the site and can be reviewed here.

The owner of One for the Road, Jason Cakebread, contacted us to dispute the review and requested us remove the bar’s listing and event information from The Nanfang.  The email chain below is in chronological order (all typos, spelling mistakes, etc have been retained):

Dear Madam/Sir,

You are entitled to write any form of review you wish about what ever establishment you wish.

However, I never gave you idiots permission to place One for the Road or her events in your website.

We do not want our good name associated with your sorry excuse of a website/magazine.

As I said, write any review you wish as the people who have gone to One for the Road know it’s full of shit.

But remove us from your crappy, out of date listings! (you had no permission from us to use our name)

Take our events off your sorry excuse of a website! (as I said you had no permission from us to use our name)

One for the Road’s listing and event information have been removed as of now, in accordance with Cakebread’s request.  We also contacted Cakebread to inform him of our intention to publish the email correspondence, and he had no objections.

This is a good opportunity to elaborate on what we do at The Nanfang. Our staff has been based in the Pearl River Delta for many years. I have lived in Beijing and Shanghai as well, while my other co-founder has spent years in Taiwan. We believe the PRD is the best place to live and work in all of China, and we launched the Nanfang to celebrate South China by providing information not found anywhere else. This includes the largest collection of bar and restaurant listings in English anywhere in the PRD as well as news and translations from the Chinese press.

However, we are not perfect. We are a very young site and there are still many things we need to do to make it better for our readers. Several of you have left us comments in our stories, left reviews of venues, or emailed us to disagree with how we do things, offer praise (thank you!) or suggestions. We deeply appreciate it, and have a lot of exciting things in the pipeline to share with you in the months ahead.

Our staff pour countless hours into their contributions to the site, and that includes restaurant and bar reviews. Most do it for no compensation at all, other than their love of the PRD. All reviews are edited by our team to ensure accuracy before they are posted to the site. We stand by every word of our reviews. However, we don’t expect everyone to agree with our conclusions, which is why we have a vibrant comments section that is open to everyone.

Also, we will not remove any review under threat from anyone. Our reviews are not done haphazardly and are based on the reviewer’s impressions of a venue based on price, quality, service and ambiance. In terms of service quality, things like food delivery times are factual representations and are not subjective in any way. By publishing this, we are passing along valuable information to our readers. Issues pertaining to food quality and ambiance are all subjective, which again is why we encourage dissenting opinions in our comments section.

We are publishing this email exchange so our readers understand why One for the Road’s listing and event information are no longer listed on The Nanfang. Although no longer found on our dining and nightlife pages, we still have over 1,000 venues in our database and that list grows everyday.  We will work closely with our bar and restaurant partners across the PRD to get the most relevant information to you in the best way we can.

(Photo courtesy Euronews.com)

One week after protests erupted in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and elsewhere in China over Japan’s claims to the Diaoyu Islands, protesters in Dongguan took to the streets to voice their displeasure yesterday.  The key difference in this case: the riot police were brought in to disperse the crowd.

While the original protests last week seemed to have the tacit approval of authorities, this latest one in Dongguan clearly did not.  The South China Morning Post reports (behind a paywall) that hundreds of protesters gathered in Dongguan yesterday and marched towards the city’s government plaza in Dongcheng District.  Before they got there though, riot police arrived and began trying to break up the protest.  This inevitably resulted in some scuffles, with protesters throwing objects at the police.

A 25-year-old man who was visiting Dongguan with a friend from a town outside the city was severely beaten by police, said the 17-year-old friend.

“We were just curious to see what was happening and suddenly we were rounded up by police carrying shields and long black batons,” she said, sobbing. Her green top was stained with her friend’s blood.

The distraught girl was looking for a doctor and lost track of her friend in the chaos.

“A policeman, without warning, hit my friend’s head with his baton. He was covered in blood. But they still beat him even though he was already bleeding,” she said. “The next thing I knew I was pushed away by police. I can’t find my friend and I can’t find a doctor. I don’t know what to do.”

One shop owner in Dongguan said messages began circulating earlier in the week calling for a protest to take place on Sunday, however the idea was scrapped when 20,000 people signed up.  He said organizers shut it down because they were worried it would be out of control.

You can watch footage of the protest here.