A Night in Shanghai

It's been a tendancy of mine over the years to end up in Shanghai for Chinese new year. This year was no exception only this year I was joined by Josh, an American who's been teaching English in Beijing for the best part of six months and had reached what could technically be described as breaking point. Josh had a thousand dollars to spend and after being cooped up in his Beijing apartment waiting for the outside world to be warm again by god he intended to spend it. Unfortunately I'd been designated as "fearless leader" apparently because I'd been to Shanghai before. I pointed out that on most previous occasions everytime I'd gone out in the evening I'd ended up roaring drunk and so was frankly useless as a guide. And I was right, we'd spent the day looking at different hotels around Shanghai, we were frankly exhausted from all the walking, so we stumbled off the Metro at Jing An Temple stop and started to wander aimlessly. Mostly I spent my time squinting my eyes at massage parlours and shops saying things like "I swear two years ago we stumbled past this to a really great bar" and then stumbling on not finding anything.

Eventually the feet went on autopilot our discussions turned more moronic than usual and we found ourselves wandering aimlessly usually in the direction of fireworks, the reasoning being that if there were fireworks it was a good chance that a bar was setting them off, so we should just head in their direction.

Unfortunately we'd get near them and they'd... stop. And we'd notice some a couple of streets over, only this time bigger, louder... better! Like the mythical cold beer mirage in the middle of the desert we wandered Shanghai's cold and opulent streets following the fireworks and looking for beer.

Eventually we gave up and decided to head to a small handful of bars we'd seen near the metro station. You may ask well why not just go to them then? Rather than wandering aimlessly? Well it's because we'd visited them previously and we'd realised that some, perhaps all of them were girly bars. What is a girly bar you may ask? Well essentially it's a bar full of young women who try to part as much of your cash from you as possible by getting you to buy them drinks, expensive drinks, in return you get their company and undivided attention. They run the whole spectrum from the seedy to the classy with practically every variation inbetween.

Walking up to the first bar in the strip, it looked quiet almost deserted, impossible to tell from the outside if it was open or not, certainly not much light was escaping from it's interior. I shrugged and said, "let's just try this one, and remember just a couple of drinks". We pushed in, the room went silent... nine pairs of eyes zero'd in on us in a heartbeat nine pairs of eyes attached to nine young, slim, mercenary young women. "Oh crap" I said, Josh laughed and walked to the bar. We sat down, the girls started to move in for the kill, the first few minutes in this situation are always a blur, the girls surround you, three each, they smile, they touch subtly your arm, your shoulders, they lean against you all the while softening you up ready to ask in a very demure voice "can I have a drink". Josh is a past master in this situations, his extensive training in the girly bars of Bangkok leave him well prepared, he sits down, he talks, essentially gibberish and giggles alot. The girls LOVE this, typically within five minutes he's got his arms around a girl each, and one on his lap. I on the otherhand have never found it quite so easy or at least until I've had some alcaholic lubrication to unwind my mental processes enough to let things flow. The girls sense this, two of them back off and the third, her name Cherry, from Chengdu, goes in for the kill and gets her drink. So things are progressing well and then another guy enters the bar, an Englishman who seemingly works in Shanghai, and we're treated to an expert display of how one should visit a girly bar.

He walks in, shrugs off his coat walks to one end of the bar set against the wall, sits down with his back to it and orders a Jack Daniels and Coke. Immediately he's limited his lines of attack, at most only two girls can come for him now, the first girl walks up to him, we shall call her "Miss Affectionate" he puts the Jack and Coke in her hand and orders himself a whisky. This is not how it's supposed to work. The drinks the girls actually drink are watered down, they probably contain all Coke and no Jack, the point being if they did drink all the drinks bought for them each night they'd destroy their livers inside of a year, that and they of course are getting a cut from each drink that's bought for them, no Jack means more of a cut. But this slight little Chinese girl has a real drink in her hand and now she's drinking it.

Frankly genius, the man is obviously a master. Then comes the coupe de grass, he looks along the shelves and spots a bottle of absinthe, gets a shot each and passes one to his companion while he knocks back his, by this point Miss Affectionate probably no older than 21 is feeling the effects already, she has a tiny body mass and probably hasn't drunk more than a beer in her life... she drinks the absinthe and.... the guy leaves, pays his bill and walks out with a huge grin on his face. All of this probably happened in the space of 45 minutes.

She turns around, her eyes fall on me, she marches straight up to me, wraps her arms around my neck and locks her lips to mine like a vice. Cherry, rather than being upset by this seems to be encouraged, I come up gasping for breath only for her to do likewise....

Some time passes, Miss Affectionate goes from drunk and horny to drunk and passed out and collapses across my lap, Cherry continues to be affectionate. Josh has been entertaining his three young ladies and between us we've probably spent the best part of $200, it's time to escape because frankly the girls are going to bankrupt us... we leave and debate with each other how long it will be before we go back... I'm not enthusiastic, Josh has about $600 more dollars to burn, Josh is enthusiastic.