Let's Party in Shanghai!

Wednesday 5 October 2005

Woke up for lunch again. We had oysters and clams in a little sidewalk restaurant. Had to go to the bank to get more RMB. Bought a ton of pirated DVDs for my brother, which I will never watch. My stand on video piracy is this: I will get them for you if you so desire, but I will not partake in them.

Anyhoo, I'm drinking as I'm writing this, so forgive me if it's not entirely coherent. It's kinda appropriate for the contents further on anyway.

Picked up my tailor-made shit. They looked good.





Went for a walk in the French Concession Area, which was supposed to be a nice place with pretty houses. Could not see the fucking houses from the street because of all the fucking trees blocking the view - goddamn foliage! - and what I could see was pretty dull and boring anyway. I mean, European-style housing may be a rarity in China, but I see them all over the fucking place every-fucking-where.

Hmm, I seem to swear a lot more when I've had a drink or two in me. Ah well.

Took a walk in nearby Fuxing Park (復興公園), which is a real nice park with fountains and statues and shit. The coolest thing was, there were also a bunch of clubs located in it! You can see one of them in the picture below (the red building). Damned if I remember its name though.



There was also a long wall with every page of the day's newspaper tacked to it. All very nice and communal (or communist). No one shall be left behind; the people will have their news!



Also spotted: A statue of the Fathers of Communism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. They looked kinda gay. I mean that in the most positive way, of course. Ha.



Also, there was a huge-ass 24-hour Party World KTV in the vicinity. All of this makes me think that Fuxing Park is an awesome place indeed.



Dinner is a blur to me now. But after that we went across the river from the Bund, where they had a nice park by the bank, where you could see the pretty lights across the water. And of course they'd build the nicer park here, because it had a better view than the other bank did.

There was a bar and restaurant called Red Dot, which was kinda funny because Singapore is always referred to as a "little red dot" (which it is on the world map), but it's not run by a Singaporean.




Red Dot and phallic tower

So yeah, nice views of the Bund all round.













And also some crap along the riverbank.



We saw this huge neon billboard and I couldn't resist.



After that giggle we began the night proper with drinks at Paulaner München. A pretty good Filipino band was playing, and I got to take home a souvenir Oktoberfest mug.



Next was DKD - Decadence Kills Depression, which I think is a pretty awesome name for a club. It played decent techno/trance. By decent I mean that even I could get into it, so it's a good place to check out if you're ever in town. The (very) reasonable cover of 50 RMB included one drink. Vodka-redbull, anyone?



By the time we got to DKD it was almost midnight, so technically the rest of the post should be under the next day. But who cares?

Number Three: Zapata's, a Spanish-style bar with no cover charge. The crowd was mostly Caucasian expats and the music was OK when we walked in; some latino-flavored dance number. But it quickly shifted gears into retro. When the familiar strains of Y.M.C.A. began and everyone - and I mean everyone - in the club started going wild and singing along, I knew it was time to split.

In the cab riding away from Zapata's we passed another Paulaner's. This one was located in a mansion. A fucking mansion. Full of Paulaner's. I tell you, Shanghai's a crazy city, man.

The final stop was GuanDii (官邸), an awesome hip-hop place in (where else?) Fuxing Park, owned by (ex-?) MTV Asia VJ David Wu (吳大維). I'd been deprived of good hip-hop for so long (in clubs, anyway) it was a welcome relief. Nothing like some ol' bump-n-grind to get you in the party mood. Woohoo!

And that was my last night in Shanghai.