What I really enjoy is the isolation between me and each other, and in these isolation zones constructed by professional contrasts, the real me exists. I remember a wine account shared an article about me, titled "The Incredible Bartender." It was this article that made many friends discover my secret job and hidden identity as a bartender, a man who spends his days growing vegetables and flowers in Tuscany, living a poetic life away from the crowd. I've actually avoided using those three words to introduce myself, and it's not because I'm afraid of anything, because my prejudice against booze has been so finely sanded down over the years that it's not hurtful. And I was lucky to have an enlightened mother and a father who loved wine. I still remember the first time my mother sat in front of my bar. I made her a glass of lychee-flavored wine with a slight fragrance of flowers. After she took a picture of all the frost melting on the side of the glass, she swallowed it with great courage, leaving a simple "delicious" and 9 pictures of the bar on her wechat moments.

Now that I think of it, perhaps it was my mother's heroic breakthrough that suppressed the surprise and prejudice of my aunts and aunts. Yeah, how lucky I am. There are only two reasons to lie about being a bartender. One is fun, the other is because you don't feel qualified. I know that I am not as "single-minded" as most of my peers and devote most of my time to this job. They are usually either in the store or on their way there, or catching up on sleep lost from a night's work. It's a shame to say that I've always been a half-hearted professional. I even went to work at 9 a.m. after leaving the bar at 2 a.m. to take a job that gave me a new identity for the day, sometimes in an art gallery, sometimes in a media company, sometimes in the back of a restaurant. No matter how much pressure there is during the day, no matter how much rain, coming back to the bar at night, it is like having a special magic, all the sad clouds will disappear, and the small empty space surrounded by it always makes me feel relaxed. Being a bartender is like a stress reliever for me. It helps me juggle different tasks and get in better shape. Some people may say that too much work makes you tired, but for me, two negatives make a positive. Technically speaking, I haven't touched alcohol for quite a while since I moved from Shanghai to Tuscany. It wasn't until the summer vacation of the last two years when I returned to China. Thinking it was too far away from my old life, I chose a strange city and took a job in an art gallery in my field of study. Plan to immerse yourself in an interesting city in a work-on-the-go way. Of course, what attracts me most in the city is not only the history, culture and customs you can see in the daytime, but also the bars with different styles that open after sunset. Nightlife in different cities is like the shadow of different people, projecting different contours under the sun. It is not as direct and clear as when the daytime invades the sight, but it has a deep, fuzzy, ambiguous and charming resonance. So when I finished my curatorial work during the day, I would relax at night and follow the city streets to one bar after another to explore the human and taste under the night.

For me, different decorations, different lights, different tastes, different sights and sounds are all long awaited surprises. Some nights are warm and romantic, with cool breezes, and others feel like you can see everything in the world. One night in the early summer of 2019, I sat at the bar and struck up a conversation with the skinny bartender. There's a saying among bartenders that it's like we have some kind of radar in our business, that we can always tell who's in the same business. No sooner had I said, "More Campari, please," than he decisively asked me how long I had been doing this. This is a question that I have to count on my fingers: 2013, 2014, 2015... It'll be about six years by then. The young, skinny bartender immediately gave up the bar and called me "senior." I realized that the years, in addition to the annoying forehead gully, the original and "generation". Therefore, I was successfully "captured" by this title that night and worked part-time for the other side as a labor force for one night. It is true that I started to bartending in 2013, which is actually less than 10 years ago. In some industries, I may just be advanced, but I am not "young" in the bartending industry. Now that you think about it, bartending is really different from other professions in that it's relatively niche. At that time, the only people I could see, admire and call my predecessors were in their early 30s and 40s. This profession, which has existed in the West for centuries, was as new in China a decade ago as artificial intelligence has been in recent years. These ten years have really changed my appearance, my life, my pursuits, my aspirations, the ground under my feet, the work in my hands, the scenery in my eyes. What has not changed from beginning to end is the love for the dark night and the passion for the bar. The longing for a thousand years is romantic, silent and eternal. In the winter of 18, I, like my peers, had just stepped out of the house, eager for a new life and new friends. With the intention of deepening my friendship with my new friends, I followed my party friends into the pub, an often misunderstood place. I am so young to think that for the past 18 years I have been told by my elders to keep girls from coming home late and entering bars with such prejudice. And I felt like I was stealing candy from a jar, scared and happy. Even after nearly 10 years, I still remember that night. The crowd, the live music, the dim atmosphere, the flickering candlelight, and the alcohol hidden in the sweet and sour. It was as if I had strayed into a giant's garden. The spring was bright, the flowers were singing, and the scenery was beautiful, but there was a sign on the wall: No trespasser, heavy penalty. In the face of this new world, I tried to keep my head clear, but accidentally lost my phone, so I had to go back the next day, when the night had receded from here. I told the story later: The bar owner, seeing me as a pathetic man, hired me for odd jobs and prepaid my cell phone bill, which was deducted from my subsequent wages. About this unexpected olive branch, it suddenly occurred to me that I had read in the book that "University is the four years when you make mistakes at the lowest cost", so I didn't hesitate much, so I accepted it, telling myself that I had no choice but to make a living. Fresh and compromised, I entered the bar. This time, bartending this thing intermittently filled my entire youth. From university to Shanghai, and from Shanghai to abroad; From once unable to convince themselves, to later lead others. Later, when I mentioned my ridiculous phone debt, I would honestly think: If I had been lucky enough not to have lost my phone, how could I have had this hobby? As if the strange encounter of that night, not enough. In terms of luck, I have always felt lucky in the road of bartending, especially when I went from being ignorant to understanding, I found that I did not make a lot of mistakes, especially in a profession itself is not mature, in a very few people in the field, to have a reliable leader is so important. My first manager was an Iranian named Gao Sen, who used to work and study in the UK and then came to China for unknown reasons and came to Nanjing. I didn't get into the other person's personal business. His guidance to me, I really can't remember, to put it plainly is "free range", may also be he was not willing to control me at the beginning of the university odd job girl. His instructions were, you make it, you taste it, you wash it, you make it. He didn't take the initiative, but he answered all my questions. At that time, I was like a hundred thousand why, all day in his ear chattering: "Why shake", "why not stir", "why double filter", "why not filter"...... Now that I think about it, I wouldn't have been as patient as someone who was interrupting me at work. I also consider myself lucky to have been trusted in my early years. After some time washing glasses, watching guests and quietly practicing, on a work night with no warning, Ghosen suddenly handed me a guest's wine list: a Negroni. Waiting for me to react, he pushed the tool into my hand. It's a classic blend of three wines in equal proportions, and I've seen it many times, and I've drunk it many times, but this time it created a wonderful reaction in me, and what had been planted began to sprout.

What I really enjoy is the isolation between me and each other, and in these isolation zones constructed by professional contrasts, the real me exists. I remember a wine account shared an article about me, titled "The Incredible Bartender." It was this article that made many friends discover my secret job and hidden identity as a bartender, a man who spends his days growing vegetables and flowers in Tuscany, living a poetic life away from the crowd. I've actually avoided using those three words to introduce myself, and it's not because I'm afraid of anything, because my prejudice against booze has been so finely sanded down over the years that it's not hurtful. And I was lucky to have an enlightened mother and a father who loved wine. I still remember the first time my mother sat in front of my bar. I made her a glass of lychee-flavored wine with a slight fragrance of flowers. After she took a picture of all the frost melting on the side of the glass, she swallowed it with great courage, leaving a simple "delicious" and 9 pictures of the bar on her wechat moments.

Now that I think of it, perhaps it was my mother's heroic breakthrough that suppressed the surprise and prejudice of my aunts and aunts. Yeah, how lucky I am. There are only two reasons to lie about being a bartender. One is fun, the other is because you don't feel qualified. I know that I am not as "single-minded" as most of my peers and devote most of my time to this job. They are usually either in the store or on their way there, or catching up on sleep lost from a night's work. It's a shame to say that I've always been a half-hearted professional. I even went to work at 9 a.m. after leaving the bar at 2 a.m. to take a job that gave me a new identity for the day, sometimes in an art gallery, sometimes in a media company, sometimes in the back of a restaurant. No matter how much pressure there is during the day, no matter how much rain, coming back to the bar at night, it is like having a special magic, all the sad clouds will disappear, and the small empty space surrounded by it always makes me feel relaxed. Being a bartender is like a stress reliever for me. It helps me juggle different tasks and get in better shape. Some people may say that too much work makes you tired, but for me, two negatives make a positive. Technically speaking, I haven't touched alcohol for quite a while since I moved from Shanghai to Tuscany. It wasn't until the summer vacation of the last two years when I returned to China. Thinking it was too far away from my old life, I chose a strange city and took a job in an art gallery in my field of study. Plan to immerse yourself in an interesting city in a work-on-the-go way. Of course, what attracts me most in the city is not only the history, culture and customs you can see in the daytime, but also the bars with different styles that open after sunset. Nightlife in different cities is like the shadow of different people, projecting different contours under the sun. It is not as direct and clear as when the daytime invades the sight, but it has a deep, fuzzy, ambiguous and charming resonance. So when I finished my curatorial work during the day, I would relax at night and follow the city streets to one bar after another to explore the human and taste under the night.

For me, different decorations, different lights, different tastes, different sights and sounds are all long awaited surprises. Some nights are warm and romantic, with cool breezes, and others feel like you can see everything in the world. One night in the early summer of 2019, I sat at the bar and struck up a conversation with the skinny bartender. There's a saying among bartenders that it's like we have some kind of radar in our business, that we can always tell who's in the same business. No sooner had I said, "More Campari, please," than he decisively asked me how long I had been doing this. This is a question that I have to count on my fingers: 2013, 2014, 2015... It'll be about six years by then. The young, skinny bartender immediately gave up the bar and called me "senior." I realized that the years, in addition to the annoying forehead gully, the original and "generation". Therefore, I was successfully "captured" by this title that night and worked part-time for the other side as a labor force for one night. It is true that I started to bartending in 2013, which is actually less than 10 years ago. In some industries, I may just be advanced, but I am not "young" in the bartending industry. Now that you think about it, bartending is really different from other professions in that it's relatively niche. At that time, the only people I could see, admire and call my predecessors were in their early 30s and 40s. This profession, which has existed in the West for centuries, was as new in China a decade ago as artificial intelligence has been in recent years. These ten years have really changed my appearance, my life, my pursuits, my aspirations, the ground under my feet, the work in my hands, the scenery in my eyes. What has not changed from beginning to end is the love for the dark night and the passion for the bar. The longing for a thousand years is romantic, silent and eternal. In the winter of 18, I, like my peers, had just stepped out of the house, eager for a new life and new friends. With the intention of deepening my friendship with my new friends, I followed my party friends into the pub, an often misunderstood place. I am so young to think that for the past 18 years I have been told by my elders to keep girls from coming home late and entering bars with such prejudice. And I felt like I was stealing candy from a jar, scared and happy. Even after nearly 10 years, I still remember that night. The crowd, the live music, the dim atmosphere, the flickering candlelight, and the alcohol hidden in the sweet and sour. It was as if I had strayed into a giant's garden. The spring was bright, the flowers were singing, and the scenery was beautiful, but there was a sign on the wall: No trespasser, heavy penalty. In the face of this new world, I tried to keep my head clear, but accidentally lost my phone, so I had to go back the next day, when the night had receded from here. I told the story later: The bar owner, seeing me as a pathetic man, hired me for odd jobs and prepaid my cell phone bill, which was deducted from my subsequent wages. About this unexpected olive branch, it suddenly occurred to me that I had read in the book that "University is the four years when you make mistakes at the lowest cost", so I didn't hesitate much, so I accepted it, telling myself that I had no choice but to make a living. Fresh and compromised, I entered the bar. This time, bartending this thing intermittently filled my entire youth. From university to Shanghai, and from Shanghai to abroad; From once unable to convince themselves, to later lead others. Later, when I mentioned my ridiculous phone debt, I would honestly think: If I had been lucky enough not to have lost my phone, how could I have had this hobby? As if the strange encounter of that night, not enough. In terms of luck, I have always felt lucky in the road of bartending, especially when I went from being ignorant to understanding, I found that I did not make a lot of mistakes, especially in a profession itself is not mature, in a very few people in the field, to have a reliable leader is so important. My first manager was an Iranian named Gao Sen, who used to work and study in the UK and then came to China for unknown reasons and came to Nanjing. I didn't get into the other person's personal business. His guidance to me, I really can't remember, to put it plainly is "free range", may also be he was not willing to control me at the beginning of the university odd job girl. His instructions were, you make it, you taste it, you wash it, you make it. He didn't take the initiative, but he answered all my questions. At that time, I was like a hundred thousand why, all day in his ear chattering: "Why shake", "why not stir", "why double filter", "why not filter"...... Now that I think about it, I wouldn't have been as patient as someone who was interrupting me at work. I also consider myself lucky to have been trusted in my early years. After some time washing glasses, watching guests and quietly practicing, on a work night with no warning, Ghosen suddenly handed me a guest's wine list: a Negroni. Waiting for me to react, he pushed the tool into my hand. It's a classic blend of three wines in equal proportions, and I've seen it many times, and I've drunk it many times, but this time it created a wonderful reaction in me, and what had been planted began to sprout.