Karaoke Adventures

This should have been posted last Thursday, March 5th.

Note: If you’ve experienced karaoke in China before, then this will surely bore you. I’m talking about pure Chinese karaoke – the kind that you find in Asia (not in U.S. Asian-style restaurants, they are completely different).

So I went with my manager and co-teacher Craig, a South African who’s been working in Hefei here for quite some time now, to meet up with some of his friends from a competing English school called English First. These two guys, Jon and Gavin, had brought some of their students along -- 5 girls – and so we all proceeded to KTV.

KTV is a Chinese karaoke. It’s not precisely a restaurant, as there is not a kitchen. It’s not a bar – there is no proper bar with a bartender or barstools. It’s not really a club or disco – there’s no dance floor and loud music doesn’t play throughout the entire place. It’s more of a movie theater, in that there are individual theater-like rooms. When you walk in you visit a ticket-counter where you buy a room for a certain amount of hours. There’s a concession store where you can buy snacks, like fruit or vegetable plates, popcorn, chips or other munchies; and drinks, like soda, water, beer or liquor.

Here’s the crazy part.

You go into this theater-like room, about the size of a good-sized bedroom, that you’ve bought for X amount of hours and there’s a big flatscreen TV on one wall and a couch around the rest of the room. There’s a coffee table, too, that the couch winds around. In one corner there’s a little touch-screen monitor that’s kind of like a jukebox. You can choose songs from a huge library, both Asian and Western artists. I’ve never heard of any of the Asian artists, and for the most part the Western artists are all very pop-like. I’m talking about ‘90s Brittany Spears (pre-breakdown), Michael Jackson, Rihanna, Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, Hanson… chart-topping songs. Ones that you probably hear on the super-pop radio stations that teenage girls would probably go to see live in concert so they can take pictures of them on their cell phones and scream really loud.

This is a family event, too. On weekends, “the thing” to do is sing karaoke. In the States, you’d go see a film, maybe go out to dinner. With friends you’d go to a club, maybe drink a ton of alcohol or take a bunch of drugs depending on your social circle. Here you go sing. That’s it. Everybody in the family participates.

For me, it was hilarious. The difference between cultures was blatant. The westerners all needed to be at least 6 drinks deep before we actually began to get into it. So, in the meantime, the Chinese students crooned away. The Westerners in the party all picked either goofy rap songs, rock or oldies – the kind of songs you’d sing to at a proper house party. The Chinese students picked these really soft, love songs that all pretty much had the same idea: “I just broke up with my girlfriend. I want to be with you forever. Let’s be in love. You’re my only one.” Nothing to do with sex, drugs, partying, violence. Just straight up monogamous love. Like holding hands love. Like let’s have a picnic and watch the sunset love.

So we’d pretty much be switching between songs like the Chili Peppers’ “Hump De Bump” and “My Heart in Your Hands” by some Chinese lady.

To top it off, the Chinese take their karaoke seriously. They’re damn good singers. All of them. This is a nation of potential pop stars. You could run an American idol here and you’d have to weed through several million top grade vocalists in order to produce a winner. And the top several million would all be platinum-album caliber. You’d have to go pretty far down the line in order to come across some hack who you could have your judges make fun of enough to generate the first-month interest that has become the main reason people watch American idol.

Here we are, me, Craig and these other guys – hammered – singing the goofiest American and British pop songs or raunchy rock n’ roll and oldies rock, while these innocent Chinese students croon love ballads.

In the end it was a bunch of fun. Great experience. Probably not going to do it again. Ever. And I earned a sore throat that’s now turned into a full blown sinus infection. Lovin’ it.

Peace.