I’m not pretending that I made up the concept of strange English usage in Asia (although I did make up the word Chinglism)…but sometimes the old ideas are the best! Today, while bowling, I came across a girl who really, really must have liked the flower design on the front of her t-shirt…
Before arriving in China, I read that bowling was MASSIVE here. Huge. Everyone does it. I’d seen numbers thrown around about 15,000 lanes across Shanghai…well they must be pretty well hidden.
After a little research, we found a couple of places which match our needs: Cheap drinks, nice lanes, pool tables and those machines that you can grab toys out of (ok that last one is all me). Step forward: Orden Bowling Centre. Their logo is a panther with a bowling ball for a hand…I mean…does it get better than that?
Outside the building is a 20ft bowling pin, right on the street. While we were admiring this feat of modern technology, a man inquired as to whether we’d like the company of some ladyboys…maybe we were looking at this phallus a little too intently. I was up for it, but Oyt insisted that we need to perfect our bowling game so in we went…
The games were 25rmb each (£1.80 - it was peak time) and a beer was 15rmb (served in a delightful can, no glass). They seemed to have a nice mix of ghetto and class, as the lanes themselves were really nice, clean and bright. Our big problem was that we hadn’t eaten since lunch (and it was around 9pm now)…so we decided to check out the menu….
Oops.
I made a promise to myself three years ago, after visiting a shady-ass restaurant in Hong Kong with Jme, J and Daisy, that I would never EVER under ANY circumstances order ‘blind’ from a menu which is in a different language. Well I fell off the wagon, and it was a long way to the floor:
To describe this stuff is impossible…just try to imagine pearl barley, cold water and brine. Badly mixed. In our defence, these ‘products’ were labelled with ‘240g’ next to them…so I was sure they were going to be meat of some description (we really were that hungry). I managed about four spoons of each before just ordering another beer and carefully slipping the bowls into the bin while the assistants weren’t looking.
So, with our food mission still incomplete, we decided to strategize over a few games of pool. They had about 8 big American pool tables for 40rmb/hr…although after the first game we thought we’d pissed someone off as one of the assistants rushed over as soon as the black ball was pocketed. Thankfully, it was just because she wanted to rack the balls for us (it’s all part of the service!).
Ok so after 7 games we were almost dying of hunger…and where else do you go after a night out that the kebab house? Ok this wasn’t Adam’s kebab van…it was Anadolu Restaurant - the premier Turkish restaurant on that street in Shanghai.
The pricing structure was pretty strange…it seemed like if you took a plate it was between 80-100rmb, but shawarma style kebabs (Turkish expert says: durum) were 25rmb. I was pretty worried that one durum wouldn’t be enough for me, so I got one chicken and one beef, while the Turkish expert ordered the exotic sounding Iskender.
As many people are aware, I have a weird eating disorder which makes me eat really quickly for about 4 minutes, then I’m full. Well I just didn’t get full. I basically downed these things like it was 5pm in the middle of Ramadan…then I hit the wall. So full. SOOO FULLLL. It hurt…but it hurt nice. For the first time I understood what masochists might get out of S+M. Nice pain. Anyway….
While the meat-sweats were setting in, we paid and gtfo. The taxi ride was like a happy dream, and I had the best night’s sleep since arriving in Shanghai. Anadolu passed the ultimate kebab restaurant test: I might even consider going there sober (one day).
We really should have been suspicious about Muse. Sure, it’s a trendy, classy place…popular Chinese and foreigners alike…sure it has cocktail waiters juggling with flaming bottles…but when the DJ is billed as ‘The King of Snoop Dog’, you know something’s up.
Inside it was packed packed packed full of people…with just enough room to squeeze past (Hey! Don’t hate me just because I have to brush up next to some hot chicks just to get to the cloakroom!) on the way to the bar. We decided to explore, and there is a huge metal staircase which leads to a smaller, upstairs room which had a different DJ but a similar level of good looking people, minus the crowds at the bar. Good stuff!
We made our way to the dancefloor to the sounds of some great rap/hip-hop…but then suddenly and abruptly it went off, and a girl walked out from the DJ booth with a microphone. There must have been a band hidden somewhere because they started playing some stuff…and it was really bad. Not necessarily bad music, but that dancefloor cleared so fast you might have expected to have seen the police in there checking for Tibetan passports. We made our way with the crowd (sometimes you just have to go with the flow when there are a billion people moving in one direction) and headed back downstairs…where the trouble really began!
After about 25 minutes of hanging around downstairs, the DJ (who as previously mentioned is THE KING OF SNOOP DOG) was preparing to start his set. As we had been present upstairs on the changing of the last DJ -> band, we were prepared for a ‘rusty’ transition…what we weren’t prepared for was…
…all of the lights to go out and the music to stop.
One too many rice cookers in the kitchen and BANG! Powercut. Now I’m sure you’ve been in a club when something breaks before…they rush to fix it, the people shout and boo, it’s back up and running again in five minutes. Not in China baby! People stood in relative quiet, not hostile, chatting with their friends. Everyone finished their drinks and then some, again quite quietly, started to leave.
It was a bit like people leaving a funeral…calm, slow and drawn-out.
We, on the other hand, had realised that since all the rich mofos had left their comfy couches…we’d take advantage! Not only that, but in their rush to go home they also left plenty of Hennessey and some lovely ice-tea! Thanks guys (wherever you are)!
So we’d been planning all night how great Friday night was going to be. A world-supreme-master-champion DJ from Japan (DJ CoMa) was coming to a club called The Shelter (which we had never visited before), so we decided to splash out on a few beers at our place first. 3 
each (and a lot of classic mp3s) later we were ready to go…
The doors opened at 10pm, and we’d been advised to arrive pretty early as the place wasn’t huge and people had been known to be turned away. Well, we arrived at about 11pm to this:
Ok, I’m sort of lying (I stole that photo from their Smart Shanghai page) but still…it was pretty empty. We were in no rush, so we got a beer. Corona was 20rmb (9 ) and I think TsingTao was even cheaper (or maybe it was the other way round…anyway…) and it tasted good (although I was a little perturbed by the fact that the bargirl put the lime into it with tweezers)…but it didn’t really make the atmosphere much better.
It started filling up at around 12am…but the scene was a bit like going to a uni bar in England…like a Mojo or Pressure. It didn’t feel quite…right. So, since time is money…we went to Bonbon :D
Bonbon is a big club and on a Friday night has ‘international DJs’. It claims to have had more than 200 fly in to do sets…and it’s a really great venue for it. Pretty big main dancefloor, nice ’sideroom’ (although they were playing house music in it which suprised me since it was D+B (Matrix and Futurebound) in the main room) and lots of small booths and rooms to get lost in (and play the drinking dice game).
What we hadn’t really thought through was doing pre-drinking, then drinking followed by going to an ‘open bar’ club. As my friends know, I’m an alcoholic not a big drinker, and this was just a recipe for disaster! Anyway, 2am -> 4am is a bit of a blur…but I am 70% sure we ended up in City Diner, eating bacon burgers (sooooo goooood) and talking about David Beckham to some Korean students (who must have thought that we were retarded or worse…Welsh).
Overall, a great night out…and 10 hours of partying for around £20…expensive night :D Oh, and the toilets at Bonbon deserve a special mention for being so cyber:
China’s currency is the RMB or Ren Min Bi. You can get around 14RMB for every £1 you exchange…and as any travel guide will tell you, it’s very important to always remember the relative value of something that you’re buying on your trip…and with this in mind I’ve been doing a lot of calculations in my head (errrr what’s 360 divided by 14 again?!)
But no longer. No longer am I a slave to the international currency markets - I don’t need to be, because I have a new currency which has quickly become the ‘go-to’ relative price index for China. Ladies and Gentlemen, behold:
The Reeb Min Bi.
As you may remember, the local Shanghai beer is called ‘Reeb’, and tastes GREAT! It’s also around 16p per 660ml bottle…so three of those bad boys and I’m anyone’s for the night. Since finding this national treasure, I’ve found it difficult to enjoy spending money on say…a drink in a bar, without constantly calculating how many Reebs I could be buying for the same money. Another example:
Papa John’s. On the day I got my temporary residence permit, we decided to celebrate with a little taste of home…and what says home better than the ‘Land and Sea’ pizza from Papa John’s, which includes: Ham, prawns, pineapple, mushrooms and peas. Ok it’s a bit of a weird mix but believe me, it hit the spot. Overall, the meal came to around 190rmb or 86 . EIGHTY-SIX REEB MIN BI?! Even if a pizza was made of Kate Moss before the crack it still wouldn’t be worth eighty-six bottles of delicious beer!
That’s what the Reeb Min Bi gives you: context. Now I’ve stopped thinking ‘that bowl of curried pork with rice is so cheap at 25rmb’ and realised that at 11 , it better be a tasty god damn cut of meat to be worth it.
I welcome you to use the Reeb Min Bi in your daily lives, and see how it changes your perspective on shopping and the world in general. Wo ai ni, .
...and I'll be your friend
