BEAMING across the smoggy night sky, the twin searchlights at the entrance of the giant dance club GT Banana welcome a new Chinese elite who are ready for a good time.
On a recent Friday bartenders within the multilevel club were juggling Champagne bottles topped with sparklers while revellers lounged on white banquettes, drinking Chivas Regal and green tea. On the dance floor, which is designed to bounce underfoot
, hundreds of sweaty men and women wriggled to deafening Mandarin pop re-mixes under a downpour of bubbles. The Macarena, or something close to it, was on full display. Not to be outdone, a dozen young men giddily pushed through the throng in a conga line. Others stood and stared, in awe of the sensory overload.
Not long ago, Beijing nightlife meant private dinner parties, alcohol-soaked karaoke bars or visits to "lady massage" parlours. Universities are still known to lock dormitory doors around midnight.
But as the wave of global bankers, entertainment entrepreneurs and foreign college students has flooded the city, and development driven by the Olympic Games this summer demolishes ancient neighbourhoods and traditional communist inhibitions, the new moneyed class has come out to party.
"Fifteen years ago, everyone went to sleep at 9pm," said Wang Xiaodong, a 36-year-old professional DJ. "What could I do? Where could I go? There were no parties, nothing."
The country's market reforms also prised open Beijing's cultural armour, and foreigners began introducing techno music to locals hungry for sounds from the outside world. By the end of the Nineties, all-night parties on the Great Wall were drawing hundreds of Chinese and foreign ravers. The gatherings were banned in 2006 after reports depicting them as "wild orgies" surfaced in China's state-controlled media.
Still, Beijing's appetite for club culture and techno beats continued to grow, in part fuelled by the internet. "Before, there was no way to get this music, and I had to find it through friends who brought it from Europe," said Wang, who organised some of the Great Wall parties. "Now we can go online and hear the newest Berlin tracks at the same time as the Germans."
Jin Shu, a public relations executive who studied at Oxford before returning to Beijing five years ago, is thrilled that the capital is catching up. "Electronica is now more popular than hip-hop," he said. "Chinese have more of a desire to see and compare themselves to overseas night life, and this is what they are hearing."
Today, the Chinese seem to be discovering simultaneously the past 40 years of pop music, not only house and techno beats but classic rock, salsa and punk.
"It's the ultimate post-modernist laboratory," said Dan Stephenson, 31, who moved from Salt Lake City to Beijing six years ago and created the Syndicate, which puts on drum'n' bass parties at bars and clubs.
"The same guy who was riding a bike 10 years ago is now driving his new Ferrari to a club and drinking Champagne," he said.
VIP booths at clubs like Suzie Wong's can go for £280, more than many Chinese farmers make in a year. Block 8, a year-old luxury night-life complex that imports Australian white sand for its roof parties, sold 240 bottles of Möet & Chandon on one Saturday alone. In the last five years, monthly bottle sales of Champagne and Grey Goose vodka have doubled.
The authorities have taken a laissez-faire attitude towards nightlife but that is changing as officials scramble to clean up Beijing before the Olympic Games, which will be held August 8 to 24.
Over the past several months, police raided clubs in the Sanlitun district. Citing "security concerns," officials warned that clubs near Olympic sites may have to close during the Games. "Everyone is worried," said Yang Bing, who owns White Rabbit, a techno club in a drab basement. "The Olympics are just a big headache. We're looking forward to them being over so things can go back to normal."
The full article contains 679 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
