Despite the closure of the Glamour Bar in Shanghai over the weekend due to his rental, Michelle Garnaut, the bar owner, plans to continue hosting the Shanghai International Literary Festival.

She made the surprise announcement on Friday night which stunned guests who showed up for her yearly holiday party. At the farewell part on Saturday night, Garnaut served tequila-laced drinks in etched Glamour shot-sized glassware.

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The festival is the idea of Garnaut, an Australian, which has become the biggest English-language literary event in China that featured celebrities such as Amy Tan, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, Gore Vidal, Gish Jen, Vikram Seth, Anchee Min, Colm Toibin and Ma Jian.

But it would downsize and be held together with the World Congress on Art Deco slated in November 2015 in Shanghai. The focus of next year's festival would be what the city was like when it was caught between the opium wars. This was in the 1930s when Shanghai's art scene was characterized by jazz and Art Deco Bund.

In the past, Glamour Bar frequently featured the city's colonial and brutal civil war past, complemented by the former office of a Japanese shipping company on the second floor of the same building which has pre-war European-style architecture, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Glamour Bar, which operated for eight years, also offered views of Shanghai's riverfront Bund and office skyscrapers across the Huangpu River.

Garnaut said she renewed the lease of her rooftop-and-terrace restaurant, M on the Bund, on the same building where she will open a casual bar. However, she will also close it temporarily in winter for repairs and fire-code upgrades.

Other than the literary festival, Glamour Bar was known for its disco nights, all-pink parties and New Year Eve's parties that attracted the city's expats.

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