To Be or not To KTV?

In the first few weeks here in Nanchang we definitely made sure to check out the nightlife. If you haven’t heard by now, karaoke is kind of big here. To no surprise, before most of the other students got here the kids from the Netherlands and some of the Americans ended up at KTV (Karaoke Television) on almost a nightly basis. When you arrive the nice lady behind the desks escorts you to a room that has a couch that wraps around the back and sides of the room. This couch faces a large projection screen that plays all sorts of music videos, in English and Chinese, along with their lyrics at the bottom, so you can be a star for the night. Eventually it got to the point where no one would want to sing, so we would just make a playlist of songs we like and listened to them and hung out. The best part about KTV is that they are literally everywhere, so we got to go to a KTV that was just down the street from the dorm. Not having to worry about cabs in the beginning of this adventure was quite relieving.

            One of the other more club-like scenes that we have frequented is called SoHo. SoHo is a higher end club with some American-style electro tech music filled with Chinese people dressed like European pop-stars. The first time that we went to SoHo we paid for a VIP booth in the back corner of the booth because we had so many kids from the program with us. Assuming it was a special occasion one of the waiters asked us if it was somebodies birthday and three of my friends simultaneously said, “Trey’s”. It was too late to back out now so I gave them my phone number and let them know that my passport was “back in the room”. The club gave us a cake covered in fruit as well as some other gifts. At 11:30 pm they had this birthday song go off as well as balloons drop it was insane. Since then we have been back a few times as well as this similar club called LeNest.

Although sometimes it is fun to visit these big clubs we have also been to our fair share of quiet bars, to avoid the loud music and billows of cigarette smoke.