Shanghai Daily news

With the Euro Tunnel, the Taipei metro and the original conversion of Shanghai's bar and restaurant Sasha's under his belt, Chris Cooper is turning his attention to the creation of a chain of Brit pubs in China and boat building. Douglas Williams finds out more.

Chris Cooper in his British Bulldog Pub.

Chris Cooper, owner, manager and creator of the British Bulldog Pub at No. 1 Wulumuqi Road S, reminds me of a friend's old Ford Escort van.
The van was unremarkable except that its original engine had been replaced with that of an XR3i - it went like a rocket.
Cooper looks the sort of guy you'd find at an edge-of-town second-hand car auction. There's something mechanical about the man but there's also a mercantile, trader element to him. The scale and scope of Cooper's endeavors in both engineering and business he conceals beneath a disarmingly modest manner.
Not that he's backwards in coming forwards when it comes to talking about his pub. "Britain is the home of pubs, nowhere else in the world is pub-culture as developed as it is in the UK. Comedy and music are all done best by the Brits and this is what we give our customers in the setting of a traditional British pub, with traditional British beer and good wholesome grub," says the ex-miner from the English Cotswolds.
As a mining-engineer specializing in tunnels, Cooper was one of the first men through the Euro Tunnel - the tunnel linking the UK with France and one of the world's great engineering projects. Cooper spent three years working on the "Chunnel" at senior managerial level.
"The whole project was basically designed on the back of a cigarette packet with very little thought put into it at the outset," says the softly spoken Cooper. "We had to figure everything out as we went along."
Returning to the UK after a stint in Egypt, Cooper packed his toothbrush, some clean underpants and an undiscloseable amount of cash. A call to a travel agent and he was off to Asia. Thailand was his first stop but when he got bored of lying on the beach he moved to Taiwan where he spent nearly three years. Taipei's metro system now owes rather a lot to Cooper's cunning and ingenuity.
"Taiwan was everything I'd hoped it would be and it whetted my appetite for the Chinese mainland," says Cooper. His tunneling experience next took him all over China's vast hinterland where he worked on hydropower projects and road and rail tunnels.
"Back then we flew everywhere in these old Russian Tupolevs. It's a sign of how far things have come when China's air fleet is now one of the most modern in the world," says Cooper who has a Royal Air Force background and a pilot's license.
Shanghai's Dongping Road would probably be quite different were it not for Cooper. In 1994, he almost single-handedly transformed a big old villa and failing real estate agency into the wonderful watering hole and restaurant that is Sasha's.
"Things were very different in Shanghai back then. There were very few high-rise buildings, there were hardly any cars and the roads stopped at the edge of the city. Sasha's was one of the first free-standing top-end restaurants in Shanghai," recalls Cooper.
On the mercantile side Cooper sold Sasha's when he was made an offer he couldn't refuse, or rather an offer he'd have been bonkers to turn down. "You should never be sentimental about your business," says Cooper - "Mr Shrewd."
After a long overdue holiday and a spell of semi-retirement boredom once again got the better of Cooper. He made a failing publican an offer he couldn't refuse, well, a totally fool-proof, water-tight business plan backed by his Sasha's record, and established the British Bulldog Pub which opened three months ago. This is now a brand for which Cooper has big plans involving a chain of similar pubs across China.
Some exceedingly large UK backers are queuing in the wings looking to be part of the march of the British Bulldog. Cooper and his business partner have the experience and the wherewithal to make it happen and these backers know it.
Then there's the shipyard on the Pearl River near Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong Province in which 45-year-old Cooper is involved. With three large yachts currently in production, several others on the books and a recent move to a much larger yard Cooper is quietly confident that his life-long love of boats is on the verge of turning into a lucrative business.
"With the increasing affluence and the number of marinas springing up across China it's only natural that there's going to be a massive demand for boats in the Chinese market," says Cooper, a lifelong lover of boats and avid sailor.
If there are shares going in Cooper Inc Ltd, I'd like to buy my next month's salary's worth.
And so to the pub (Ed: If only): the British Bulldog Pub is on the corner of Dongping Road and Wulumuqi Road. In the UK this is the type of pub you would find anywhere and everywhere and in the UK it would be remarkably unremarkable. Here in Shanghai it is remarkable simply due to it's exact same, carbon-copy of a UK            pub nature.
The ale-house is on two levels, a bar on each, pool upstairs, darts downstairs. Dark wood and brass feature as does a large screen showing such perennial favorites as "Monty Python' and "Only Fools and Horses." Bands play British rock regularly.
The premium beer is McEwan's Export, cold, frothy, eminently quaffable and at 45 yuan (US$5.4) appreciably cheaper than some of the nearby competitors'. The homemade Cornish pasty is a slice of quintessential English deliciousness.
Of the future Cooper says: "I hope that some day I'll be able to moor my yacht outside a British Bulldog Pub in a Chinese marina."
Aspirations such as these demonstrate there's nothing of the second-hand car dealer or cheap van about Cooper - perhaps more a Jaguar owned by an astute entrepreneur.