stories of a journeyman

flyers from DADA, hanging on my ( beautiful ) wall – click to enlarge

In lifestyle/scene-magazines from all over the world you can read about
the “nightlife”-city Shanghai – it seems to be the hotspot of partying.

It’s not!

Moreover it is just the try to be a hotspot.
If we talk about an active nightlife in popular cosmopolitan cities, we think of New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, Rio…you can go on listing for a looong time. Bar, Dancefloor, Circus, Darkroom – whatever you prefer, I’m sure you can get it there.

But not in Shanghai.
The clubs they have are limited and fundamentally specialized in the worst mainstream. But always up-to-date regarding the songs. I wrote about an earlier experience with some international douchebags at a place called RICHY ( “Shanghai is an international place. The usual douches who dance in front of the DJ’s pulpit differ in citizenship like they do at a UN conference.” ). Nevertheless, if you are very lucky, you can get to see specials like Dj Shadow or the 4 times DMC world champions C2C. I wasn’t blessed with that.

There are the fancy-chic-peach-posh-clubs, of course. The MINT is one of those places with too much styling-gel on heads that belong to expat-bodies walking around in sweat-soaked Armani shirts rubbing themselves to club-house-music on other bodies. Hellyeah I love it, especially if there is a 15m aquarium with sharks swimming in it’s bluish highlighted water where I can hide behind to watch this fascinating scene. The shark scene and the sweat-body-rubbing scene. It’s one of the worth-a-look-places. Favourite place in Shanghai to present celebraty-parties as the gallery pictures show. ( Link-List at bottom of page )

According to my lonely planet’s Shanghai special city-guide published in 2008, the Tongren Rd. should be Shanghai’s party-street no.1.
The internet “says” that the street closed. What does that mean? How can they close a street? Let me tell you, they can and they do. If I had to place a bet on what they will present on new Tongren Rd., I’d definitely place it on “malls, boutiques, fast-food restaurants and starbucks”.

The MAO LIVE in north-western Xuhui district offers in irregular intervals an opportunity for electronic-lovers to go to and live concerts, which is very rare in this city as “most of the chinese youngsters consume Pop from Taiwan or Hong Kong” and “Chinese people aren’t used to good music” says Pan Wen Zhe, lead-singer and bass-player in popular Shanghai Blues-Rock Band Sultans of Swing. At least the location is quite nice and compareable to lots of good locations I know in Germany. One of the few places where they created a stylish location in an old industrial building. Lucky one’s can meet some chinese Rockstars or western indie musicians like Ólafur Arnalds and electronic masterminds such as Richie Hawtin. Count the days until this places will be shut down – or the whole street.

The light somewhere at the end of the tunnel forms a pretty inconsiderable street called Xingfu Lu. Three small clubs present themselves here like pearls in a shell. ANAR, DADA and LOGO. Just a few seconds of walk away from each other, they give you, in my current opinion, a good ( if not the best ) offer to spend the night at weekends without cruising through the city. With a quite comfortable mix of locals and expats you have live music and canned beats in good quality. Not too big and not too small and the lowest beverage-prices in town. In addition to that you don’t pay to get in. Xtra-worth a try and my highest recommandation…

…if there wasn’t the crazyness ( for us westerners ) of karaoke. Favourite spare-time activity of most of eastern asian countries, so in Shanghai. PARTY WORLD is the place to be. A building with the abilty of a hotel complex, offering rooms in different price categories. Walking through the labyrinthine corridors and see people having private parties in each room is triple-xtra-worth to go there, because when it comes to Karaoke, they know how to party.

Conclusion is, those of you who are used to good quality music, if concerts or DJ-ing, schouldn’t expect the same here in Shanghai. If you are able to try new ways of going through the night and not focus too much on what you are used to back home, you will have a lot of fun and loads of laughter.

RICHY: Photos and reviews
MINT: website and photos and videos
MAO LIVEHOUSE: website and photo-slideshow
ANAR: website
DADA: photos
LOGO: website and photos and videos
PARTYWORLD: website and photos

MORE NIGHTLIFE