Kunming 昆明 - Part II

Continued from Kunming 昆明 - part I ...

I did promise to talk a bit about the club thing here. Clubs and bars are not really what you'd call traditional China, but they seem to be abundant in all big cities.


It's definitely an interesting mix of old and new.
The clubs usually have a mix of music, but all and all focused on trashy club-trance, technosized dance and Chinese hits, and most important - make it loud (nothing new so far).
Although these are - generally speaking - clubs, and the atmosphere is dancing, most of the clubs don't really have a proper dance floor (a few do), but rather the full place is filled with small round tables all over what was supposed to be the dance floor (and why not, if people are ready to stand there and buy an extra bottle).

Kundu club

These clubs usually add on some color in the way of some life acts - triplets of skinny dancers with minimal clothing, drag queens, Chinese pop wannabe singers. These moments are usually when the music might get semi-descent for a little while.

"Disco" in Kundu is as trashy a place as you can get, but it has an operational dance-floor, with a nice ratio of about 100 men/ 1 woman, and a wannabe radio-MC's that interrupt the music every roughly 20 seconds, so if you have some patience you can enjoy it. Around 1:15, just after the daily drag-queen finishes her thing, there's a moment of descent trance when they put on "Infected Mushroom".

Drinks of the day are warm Beers - bought at multiples (usually, about a dozen a time), or Whiskey mixed generously with room-temperature green tea. Either is drunk from very small glasses.
The beers are around 3-3.5%, and so is the mix of Whiskey with tea (thank god for that).
The whiskey, is the local breweries finest, usually bottled in your choice of Chivas Regal or Johnie Walker Black. If you really want to splash out - you are entertaining people or female company and you feel for some reason that you want to show off with spending extra money - you can usually opt in to pay twice and have the same Whiskey presented in a more classic way (say, in a 18 year-old Chivas bottle).

The tendency in the clubs is to try and get you a table, were you would normally be presented with a menu suggesting that you buy a whole bottle of Whiskey or a couple of dozen beer-bottles. They seem to fail to understand that one person does not require a whole bottle (or a table). And it's not necessarily a language barrier.
Not to despair. The trick is to arrive when the place is full - so they do not really have any tables to try and sit you at. Arriving to the main club areas after 11:30 or so, will usually allow one to just be ignored entering the place, and then go around as you will and enjoy.

This version of clubbing is so not standard, that it might actually be difficult in this case to get yourself a drink, or even find out where the bar is hidden.
Also, most of the clubs only (!) stock Whiskey and beers (bad beers), so you'd need to do some club-hopping to find out one where you can get your Cuba Libre flowing. But if you're ready to experiment a bit, and walk out whenever someone insists on escorting you to a table of your own - you'll be in for a good evening before too long.

While standing around the tables and drinking, it is highly important to have some drinking-facilitation. This comes in the form of games. There are a few favorites around, and it most of the clubs you'll see most of the people deeply occupied with padded glasses (usually red) from which they are rolling dice, or otherwise you'd see them playing cards or waving their hands frantically as they play group-stone-paper-scissors. I'm starting to slowly get the idea behind some of these, so might at some point do a post with the rules for some of these.
Getting the point, however, doesn't really help matters - as you might end up being too good and hence not drinking enough - bad company in other words.

Assorted Yunnan mushrooms on a Kunming street

There is one game, however, which stands out as a clear all-around favorite.
Called "get the foreigner drunk". EVERYBODY just loves this game, and I actually enjoyed it on my first night.
Really, if you don't mind drinking only the tea'd-Whiskey and warm beers, there is not particular need to spend money at all. You just get to a club, and stand or stroll slowly between the tables. They all stare at the foreigner anyway (Kunming is actually full with foreigners, but it seems they like to hang out together in foreigner-oriented bars, so I very rarely saw any foreigners inside the clubs so far), so before too long - someone will add to the smile a "cheers" movement. You can reply with an empty hand (which will speed up the next step), or cling glasses and have a sip (which will bring the next step just as fast), and then they'll signal you to get close to the table, where a glass is already being filled for you with beer/ whiskey. They might let you off the hook the first time (that's in the case that first toast will include all residents of the table), but by the second glass if they're patient, they'll make you understand they expect you to drink-up properly. This is because they person you just drank with did the same.


Only that the table is with 10 people around it, and once you've cleared the glass, it's being filled again so that you can drink with the next person down the line. When the table is more or less done with the round, there can be a few options (and don't forget, there is not much communication involved other than the toasts).
Possibly, if they found you really intriguing (and you have not found the experience too boring yet), they might continue with toasts, this time more sporadically, not in clear round-the-table order, and will point for you some nice girls (I cannot say about pointing boys for girls, as I hadn't had the pleasure). This is true event if they are themselves girls (assuming a mixed table). Also, usually, you'd find out quickly enough that a table nearby wants a piece of the action, so you'd be pulled a bit to have some drinks with them as well.
Sometimes, they'd actually release you after the first round by smiling politely while waving you goodbye.

Midday Siesta in Kunming, by the East Pagoda

On my first night here, I was actually pulled away from the table I was drinking with by some nice Chinese girl. The people at the table with me motioned me positively to go and follow her (she was not from the next table). I had a feeling that this was something of a more official nature, as I was following her towards the exit of the club, but just as we reached the exit, she turned right, and after a few more meters we reached a table with her friends. She just wanted to treat her friends for a round of their favorite game, after which I got the sign that I can go back to my original "friends".


At nights like this, you really get to appreciate the super-weak beers, the extra tea in the Whiskey, and especially the extra-small glasses. It all suddenly makes sense.

Taking a stroll - Kunming streets

I was surprised to find out that not a lot of people in the school (living here for a while) have noticed that, but Kunming has what seems to be a surprisingly big Gay community. At least on the male part. This might not be as straightforward to see, I guess (if you're blind), since a lot of men here can be seen as having somewhat of a gayish behavior - specially around foreigners in clubs - and even the gays tend to not kiss here outdoors, but still - this can get quite obvious. The men-women ratio, as mentioned, is not favoring men, so you might not be sure at a first glance, but on some nights in some clubs, and on the streets as well, this is becoming more and more obvious for anyone who cares to look.
I wouldn't know to say much about a gay "scene" here as such, and I didn't run into any gay clubs per-se, but they are definitely here in numbers, and not hiding.


Another option in Kunming, is to go for a bit of inspiration on Green-lake park. Specially in the evenings (or early mornings, as I hear well from my window), you can find people practice their Chinese-opera singing (usually, they have been practicing for many many years with no apparent success, but are not deterred by this technicality), Tai-chi, or what seems to be quite popular, dancing in groups to the sound of Techno. The Techno groups are mixed with a tendency for older crowd, and there's usually some sort of a leader-figure that in between tracks gives instructions about the steps for the next track. Really cool staff.

Street beggars - definitely exist here, but very easygoing for China - no groping, no heavy insitence - nothing like what one will experience in Shanghai or Shenzhen

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