Spencer, a friendly, but Spacey guy we had met wandering around our local “Uni-mart”, had informed us of bars where foreigners were given free drinks. Spencer had promised to show us one of these bars. After meeting up with a couple of other Jinan acquaintances: Ray, Nick, Jess we let Spencer lead us to the club named Phebes. Grand throne- like chairs decorated the club’s entrance. I felt like a queen, beside my king, Nate. We had to wait for a while a table was prepared for us. Above us the ceiling was painted, as if to emulate European art. Instead of old European artwork, however, the ceiling was covered in images of half naked white women. I cringed, wondering what the perception of Westerners could be in a place like this.
I was looking forward to enjoying a few drinks around a big table, with my group of friends and colleagues surrounding me. Instead we were led through a packed room to a tiny round stand up table. A waitress came over with a bottle labelled “Jack Daniels” and some ice tea.
“Do you think that’s real?” Nate asked Spencer as he examined the bottle.
“No definitely not.” Spencer replied. “Maybe watered down.”
The waitress looked very serious. She didn’t smile or say hello as she proceeded to mix the whiskey and tea together in a jug. In fact no one in the club was smiling, even the people out drinking looked like they were doing it more out of obligation then for fun. I glanced around our table, in contrast to the serious expressions, the individuals around me were all laughing and smiling as Ray poured himself a drink.
Our little table drew a lot of attention. It is very common in China to yell “Gambei” (meaning bottoms up), and then finish your drink together. I was glad that our whisky was watered down when strangers started coming over to “Gambei” with everyone from the table. I watched Nate swallow his drink. The man who Nate was drinking with turned back to his table, returning with a jug of drink that looked similar to ours, and immediately refilled Nate’s cup. He yelled “Gambei!” and I watched Nate down his drink.
Suddenly Nate’s smile collapsed into a grimace, “That is biejiu!” Nate warned. Beijiu, the famous Chinese liquor, was not watered down, and could go up to 60% alcohol.
In the middle of the club there was a raised platform, which acted as a stage. I recalled the night clubs I had visited in Canada, America, and Europe, where any platform would have been saturated in drunken female dancers. In contrast this stage was covered in men, who stood around with serious expressions on their faces, texting on their phones. Eventually the men were cleared off of the stage to make way for a planned performance.
First there was a group of young ladies who preformed a choreographed dance. Again, I found it interesting that they remained serious throughout the entire performance. The women almost seemed to be dancing in a box. After the girls left the stage a man came on to sing. He was wearing a red jacket with red feathers hanging off of one arm that made him look like he was half chicken.
When the stage cleared off once again, our entire group got up on it to dance. Shortly afterwards we had some other club goers join us, and the dance club grew the most lively it had been since the start of the night.
"China" Figure it Out 