Transformation
Erik Nilsson
China Daily
Publication Date: 20-08-2008




Han Li's cover is about to be blown!
The 25-year-old graphic designer from Fujian province says she would "never dare" tell her parents what she gets up to in Beijing after work.
"My parents were poor farmers; their lives were full of hardship," she says. "But I want a more glamorous life. I work hard and play hard, too."
Han's passion for the capital's bars and clubs might shock the folks back home, but she epitomises China's young adults at the dawn of the 21st century.
The daily grind of chasing dreams and money brings an equally intense desire to "chill out", and Beijing's spectacular nightlife is a seduction few can resist.
A dissonant rumbling of dance beats and the glare of neon lights emanates from the hive of nightclubs flanking Beijing's Gongti Ximen.
A honking line of taxis, punctuated by the occasional Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Ferrari, creeps along the street in front of the chockablock strip of nightspots, while the sidewalk roils with crowds of clubbers.
It's a quarter to midnight on a Tuesday, and 26-year-old Sichuan native Chen Ye and her friends are here to "play".
"In China, we face so much pressure at work, pleasing our bosses, keeping good face and expanding client relationships, that we need to go out with friends and blow off steam," the advertising firm project manager says. "That's why I love nightlife; it's where I can escape and have fun."
Chen has joined the swelling ranks of mostly young and moneyed Chinese finding solace from the stress, and relishing in the glamour, of the country's fast-paced modernisation in its emerging nightlife scene.
"I like it because it's loud, crowded and exciting," Chen says. "I can be fashionable but don't have to care what anyone thinks and can act a little crazy if I want."
China's burgeoning nightlife scene--largely yet confined to its major metropolises--is still relatively young. Many industry insiders attribute its rapid development in recent years to a growth spurt marking the end of its turbulent teens.
Beijing's scene was born 17 years ago near Gongti Dongmen, when American Frank Siegel poured the first drink at Frank's Place, the city's first non-hotel bar. The nightspot was packed with an exclusively expatriate crowd who settled tabs with fistfuls of foreign exchange certificates, as non-nationals weren't then allowed to use Chinese currency.
"When I opened Frank's Place, it was a slam dunk," the 51-year-old from Newcastle, Pennsylvania says. "We got busy and stayed busy for about five years until there were other options."
The success of Frank's Place opened the capital's floodgates to a slew of new watering holes. Starting with Club Nightman's 1994 opening, nightclubs began popping up around the city.
Beijinger Jack Zhu, who runs the country's biggest nightlife website, clubzone.cn, with a membership of more than 260,000, says that when he returned from Canada in 2003, there were two mega-clubs--defined as larger than 1,000sqm--in Beijing and two in Shanghai. Today, there are 19 in the capital, in addition to several smaller e-clubs and about 400 bars.
"Now, it's an industry," Zhu says.
Increasingly, the outside world is taking notice. In the past few years, all of the World Top 10 DJs, including Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk and Carl Cox, have visited the country, and many have by now made several trips.
"China has been put on the club map of the world," says Zhang Youdai, the 21-year scene veteran hailed as the "Godfather of Chinese DJs" and the first Chinese DJ featured in Rolling Stone.
When Cox came in 2006, he told China Daily: "China is booming with fabrics, construction, cranes and new cars, and the music industry and club culture is growing with it, too.
"There is a group of Chinese people now with high disposable incomes who want to dress up and go to nightclubs that play this type of music China is a happening place, and that's why I'm here."
As its growing pains recede, China's maturing nightlife is diversifying.
Zhu points out as examples of this: ChinaDoll targets clientele from creative industries, while All Star, which opened last Friday, will features an NBA-oriented hip-hop theme.
ChinaDoll owner Ai Wan says that with this diversification, "Everybody uses their own ideas, so there's not so much copying"--a problem that once plagued the country's nightspot owners.
And with the scene's maturation, it has gone from something transplanted from the West to something cultivated in China.
"The biggest clubs that are always packed are the local clubs; they're more packed than the Western ones," Michael Xu, who opened Bed Bar in the capital's Dongcheng district in 2005, says.
Between swills of a cocktail imbibed in the street in front of Shooters in Beijing's Sanlitun bar district, Beijinger Yu Qiurui says: "Of course going to bars and clubs is a Chinese thing. I don't know why, but I can't think of it any other way."
Clad in baggy paints, a loose teal T-shirt and a black-and-white "truckers' cap", the 28-year-old Tom.com director says the appeal for her is meeting new people and dancing.
"I love hip-hop so much; I could sing along with it and dance to it every day of every year." But since discovering the capital's nightlife two years ago, she's indulged in its offerings about twice a week.
Alan Wong, who runs The Beach in the Block 8 complex near Chaoyang Park's West Gate, points out that China's nightlife is taking a path increasingly unique from that of the West.
Chinese clubs "are much larger than anywhere else in the world"--often exceeding 2,000sqm--and Chinese people don't just party on weekends, he explains.
"You can name any city in the world, you won't have 4,000 people cramming into a club on a Tuesday night," Wong says.
However, while a growing number of Chinese are embracing nightlife, many still shun it as something "bad people" do.
"People still have stereotypes about nightclubs, especially the parents' generation; they've never been to nightclubs, so they don't know what's happening," Zhu says.

China is opening up new freedoms despite the chinese politburo. Much has to do with modernized economy and new found riches. People go where the money flows and that's Beijing and Shanghai.