In Zhengzhou, Lao Wang is associated first and foremost with Target, but he still manages to get his fair share of outside adventuring. It’s well-known amongst his friends and patrons that he is involved with professional rally racing, though many aren’t entirely clear on the details. One misconception is that he’s actually a race car driver, something he gladly dispels and clarifies.

“It is my part-time job to be a co-pilot four times a year for a well-known professional rally driver in China. We’ve known each other for a long time — I organized an off-road club nine years ago to take people to explore the awesome landscapes of places like Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. I had a lot of experience outdoors and with navigating, so he asked me to begin participating in rallies with him in Western China,” he explained.

He’s aware of just how appealing this kind of thing may seem to many individuals, especially when they learn that it’s taken him as far as South America for races. Still, he’s quick to point out it’s not all fun and games, “I have to take every race seriously because it is my part-time job. People envy and admire it, but they don’t know what can happen to a lone racing car in those vast, deep sand dunes. They don’t know the hard work that comes when a car gets stuck in the desert.”

Lao Wang may be aware of and respectful to the dangers of his part-time gig, but it is apparent that he also enjoys a good challenge when he discusses his other adventures. In 2004, he drove 20 days from Beijing to Paris –for a business trip! Yet, perhaps, his most exciting work is done outside of a car altogether.

“Besides being a racing co-pilot, I climb snow-covered mountains with some American partners,” he told me, revealing something I’d not known in three years of frequenting his bar. “I’m a photographer and executor for some mountaineering documentaries we film, some of which have been played on TV stations and outdoors Web sites.”

It’s a passion he views favorably to the racing, saying, “Compared to the car racing, mountaineering is full of more fun and danger.” He then recounts the time that danger most struck home. “I was 7,500 meters high in Xinjiang and three of my toes froze so that I could not climb to the summit. I had to go back to our last camp at 7,000 meters. A young Swedish guy was with me and we had to excavate a small snow hole with our snow boards to wait out a storm. We were holding each other to stay warm until the storm stopped more than four hours later.”

While his side-work certainly provides the excitement and action in his life, Target remains Lao Wang’s main focus. It is through the pub that he has likely touched the most lives, and both he and Target are mentioned by name in the Lonely Planet travel guide to China. Amidst a less-than-complimentary write-up of Zhengzhou, the book’s writers make sure to advise tourists to stop in for a beer and to say “hi.”

Many people take the book’s advice, whether they’re merely stopping through the city on a larger Chinese tour or settling in to the ever-growing expat community. Lao Wang has had a front-row view of that expansion, which has mirrored and even affected the city’s growth.

While a strengthened national economy and increased foreign presence do both benefit Target, they also provide the opportunity for increased competition, something he has had to deal with in recent years. “More and more bars have opened and pulled lots of Chinese and foreigners away — people can go where they like,” he explained, “all bars’ businesses are getting much better now than even four years ago.”

It’s something he has learned to accept, not that he’s had much choice. Nevertheless, something has made itself clear after the heightened competition initially looked set to damage Target’s numbers.

“Even if regular customers like to shift bars and try new ones, most of them come back eventually,” he stated, explaining that he is now aware of such circumstance, “I think Target is like a kind of home in most people’s minds. It’s a place of freedom, mixed cultural backgrounds, good tunes, nice customers, and other elements that meet with people’s tastes. Chinese customers and foreigners are equal at Target. What I have to do is try to maintain the balance and keep every night wonderful.”

It is ultimately that feeling of home and people’s fondness for him that has allowed Target to ride out the storm of increasingly worthy competition over the last few years. In spite of bars now offering more beers, cheaper drink specials and even management/ownership from within the foreign community, people continue to pack into Target week after week, with no signs of decline. It seems he does indeed keep every night wonderful.

For the foreseeable future, Lao Wang is prepared to continue doing just that. “Target is like my boy. I’ve raised it for 16 years and cannot abandon it,” he said as he began summing up his reasons. “If I lost this job, I doubt whether I could land another one. My habits have changed to manage the bar — I don’t go to bed at night and wake up in the morning like everyone else on the planet.”

Lest his reasoning sounded merely pragmatic, he continued on. “Another reason is that the bar broadens my horizons and helps me keep pace with the world.”

With this, it seems that he has finally hit on the driving factor in this second act of his life. Whether risking his health climbing frozen mountains and navigating rally cars through deserts, or staying up all night taking in Jameson and rock ‘n’ roll, Lao Wang is a man determined to remain vital. Briefly considering the alternative, he reaffirmed just where he stands, “What would I do without the bar? Sit on the street and play Ma Jiang every day? No, Target makes me feel like a young guy. There are lots of things in common between me and the young generation.”

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