The Curious Incident of the Bass, the Lake and the Night Time

Saturday night. I was sitting in the hotel room studying when I heard a knock at the door. I walked to the hotel room door and answered it. It was Gavin. He insisted that this was the only night that we would be able to go clubbing in Beijing without breaking the rules. We were under our parents watch now. So we researched a bit and were on our way through the frigid nights of Beijing in search of a club. We pulled up after stopping at 3 other clubs and arrived at something called Club Banana. The outside was next to a hotel, lit up for Christmas, but the lack of snow made it feel nothing like Christmas. At the front door of the club was a humiliated Chinese man wearing a Santa outfit and we went in. I walked through the door and I felt my heart shaking. Not out of anxiety or fear but because of the bass. The dance floor was on the second floor and they made us check our coats on the first floor. We walked up the stairs amidst odd hairdo’s and fashion statements into a line so that we could get frisked. The bass was intense. I got frisked and then Gavin and I walked in. It was dark and foggy. Multi tiered levels overlooked the dance floor. Everyone was doing the same dance move and I felt like I would fit right in with my limited skills at dancing. The walls were pock marks of changing color and tables at 400 kuai a seat were everywhere around the place. Flashing lights came from above the DJ’s raised throne and four honeycomb screens showed silhouettes of women dancing on a red background. Lights and lasers flashed down, and an occasional onslaught of fog showed the path of each beam. I had finally found the mysterious absence of Nightlife in Beijing. I doubt that this is where everyone goes after 9:30 in the evening, but there were a good deal of people. Thousands of deserted streets and one packed club. Gavin and I stepped out onto the dance floor and we realized why the base was as intense as it was. The entire dance floor was a subwoofer. The floor moved up and down and shook me and made everyone on the dance floor actually vibrate. I pushed my way into the mess of the crowd and eventually had a group of people that were interested in the foreigners on their dance floor. I saw two fine-o-mite girls dancing with each other and started making a move, when every other Chinese male went and surrounded them. Am I sensing a bit of xenophobia? No? It was still ok; we still had our circle of dancers. We took a break and wandered the club, thinking we could practice our Chinese with some pretty women. Here’s how most of the conversations went.
Us: Hey
Girls: What?
Us: We said hey!
Girls: I can’t hear you!
Us: What?
Girls: We can’t hear you!
Us: Forget it, we can’t hear you!
Of course we did talk with some, but that example was more than half of the conversations. We left shortly after, body shaking still from the tremendous bass. Gavin had no intention of going home, so we went to Houhai, the lake behind the Forbidden City. Nobody was there but peddlers of beer and cheap women… or was it women and cheap beer? I digress; we had no intention to indulge on any of that. We just wanted to go on the lake. It was completely frozen over. We wandered around the entire lake looking for a place to walk down. Men would grab our arms and tell us we should go to their bar. We pretended we were German and didn’t understand English. One guy followed us for a while, trying to sell us on something. But we just said no, until Gavin said, “We don’t want it, are you deaf? Oh wait, I’m sorry, I was saying the tones wrong. We DON’T want it? Now do you understand?” The man walked away fast, but kept glancing back as if he wanted to kill us. He was huddling in his light jacket to fight the not so light cold. We wandered around until we found a path to the lake. So we went down the ice skating path and slid out onto the lake. The lake was surrounded by countless lights from bars and small stops, but we wandered into the center of the lake, walking further into the void of darkness in Houhai. It was stunning. We skated onto the island in the center, and Gavin wanted to meditate there and then pee on the ice. I was just happy to be in the center of the expanse of ice around us. There were a few streaks of colored lights reflected on the surface from the buildings far off, but the ice was mostly scuffed from eight hours of ice skating. I looked out from the small pier on the island and saw an encroaching dome of fog enveloping the city. We slid back to the shore and hailed a cab home, slinking into the hotel as the hotel staff slept. It was an interesting night.