We Be Clubbing

Chinese clubbing is something that has to be witnessed before you can completely digest the concept, but I'll give you a mental picture to get you started.  Clubbing is relatively new over here (within the past 5 years or so) and this fact has a huge impact on the scene.  The crowd is made up of lao ban (bosses), who can afford to spend lots of money on booze, and mei nu (pretty girls), who are pretty enough to get drinks bought for them.

Before I divulge all of the fascinating details of this new party phenomenon, I need you to try to remember your first couple of years of party life at college.  Did some of your time revolve around hanging out in dorm rooms with a couple of friends and drinking way too much?  On occasion, did a little bit of dancing go down? (Note: I realize that dancing may be a bit of a bold word for some, but there was probably at least a little bit of body moving to some music, right?) During those wild and crazy nights, did you or your friends ever have a bit of a spew fest?  There was the occasional puke-o-rama, wasn't there?

Keep this inexperienced drinking time of life in the back of your mind when reading about the Chinese club scene.  The parallels are plentiful.  

The other weekend, I went to Suzhou's Club 2, which appears to be like any other nice club that you may find in any city around the world at first glance.  There's techno pumping, strobe lights flashing and and a sea of people on the floor.  However, on closer inspection you quickly notice that there isn't really a dance floor.  Instead, the entire floor is full of small tables.  Around each table is a group of friends who drink, talk, and even dance a bit.  Instead of the dance floor transcending into a sea (Beyonce & Sean Paul lyric), it is gridded out more like farm land.  Each party has their own area.

So, I was walking around the club with one of my friends trying to get free drinks from Chinese bosses who want to get face by drinking with lao wai (white foreigners).  Soon enough, we had a couple of glasses full of Chivas whiskey and green tea handed to us.  Alright!  When drinking, Chinese typically chug down the entire contents of their glass in one gulp.  In this fashion, we got started throwing back green whiskey with our new found friends and playing drinking games.  The bar game of choice in Suzhou is a dice game where each player has 5 dice.  Everyone privately looks at their dice and they guess how many times one number has been rolled.  Each player needs to one up the previous guess or call bullshit.  If there are really 6 5s, or whatever the highest guess may be, the player who yelled bullshit needs to drink.  If not, the player who made the last guess needs to drink.  A lot of whiskey gets drunk real fast this way.

After the bosses that we were partying with started to get drunk, they wanted to get us to go dancing on top of the speakers with them.  It's more common to see guys dancing together at a club than a guy and girl.  The dancing consists of people standing shoulder to shoulder, fists by shoulders, and head swaying side to side.  EVERYONE does this dance.

So, after a little less than a minute of dancing, I was done and got down off the speaker. After reaching the floor, I jumped to dodge some guy yacking by the side of one speaker.  He quickly finished in a cool manner and then returned to his table to do some more drinking.  He might as well have been smoking a cigarette.  

The bosses, my friend an I returned to our table for some more drinks.  But, after a couple of minutes, one of the bosses at the neighboring table fell onto ours and started spewing all over the place.  He didn't pull it off nearly as well as the last guy I saw blowing chunks. Well, that was enough vomit to see in one night, so I decided to call it a night.

It is funny.  People get face by drinking large quantities of booze in China, but they don't lose face by throwing up.  Therefore, there's a lot of puke in any given night of the week at any club.

While there are a few differences, there are also many similarities that I have found between the Chinese club scene and US college freshmen scene: hanging out with small groups of friends, chugging alcohol, poor excuses for dancing, and yacking.  I remember my first beer (insult to anyone who can't handle their booze).