Last night’s excursion made me think about writing a club post.

Last night was weird. We had a “customer manager” at our table the whole night. It wouldn’t been so strange to have someone you don’t know there making you drink and play games if it weren’t for the fact that it was, uh, a guy!!! And at a regular club. At KTV, it’s common to have a “DJ” - a girl in a pretty dress who keeps the music going, drinks some, pushes you to order more food & beverage, etc., or even a “hostess” who personally accompanies you, but at a normal club, with a guy, it felt out of place.

That aside, clubs in China are pretty great. Some will argue against me, but let me provide a few reasons why they rock:

-There is no waiting in long lines
-No fugly dude to decide who can(not) enter
-No dress code. *my favorite*
-You can come and go as you please
-No body search. No ID check. No stamp
-No cover charge, so you can hop from one to the next
-Because there are so many, they aren’t as packed as those in the States
-Even on weekdays, the clubs are jumping
-Water is free
-Fruit and snacks
-Games, games, games, tons of drinking games
-Fights are rare

The downsides:
-The person who keeps checking to see if bottles are empty to take them away, or keeps pouring you more, or opening all the bottles at once. That’s annoying. Leave us alone. Our empty bottles are like trophies. You’re taking away from the experience! (note: once, I hid all the alcohol from the wait staff to keep them from doing this. They were going crazy looking for it.)
-Paying for tissue
-Dance floor is small, sometimes non-existent, because club managers try to fill the place with tables. The upside to this is you don’t have any wallflowers or wanderers. Which means everyone is engaged, doing there own thing, which leads to less conflict. There is no posturing and mean muggin’ like in the US. The separate tables create an atmosphere that feels more divided than US clubs, however. That said, it is actually not difficult to engage other groups for drinking or dancing
-The music is not so great
-Bathrooms are only big enough to…use the bathroom
-Things start and end really early. You can “shut it down” by staying until 2am. Sometimes this is a good thing because you have to go to work the next morning.