PRIVILEGED members of the People's Liberation Army's Navy (PLAN) will be able to let their hair down at a karaoke bar to be built on their controversial new military base on Stonecutters Island.
Termed a ''singing performance room'', it will take pride of place in the new development to be built over the next three years. But it will only be open to the chosen few.
The bar will be situated in the Quay Club, which is to be built on a reclaimed plot along the main inner harbour wall. The club will overlook the 400-square-metre basin at the new base.
Other leisure facilities in the two-storey club will include snooker, table tennis, chess, cards, fitness equipment, reading and video areas, and a trophy room.
The Quay Club is one of a host of facilities to be built or reprovisioned in Hong Kong when legislators approved a $4 billion funding package earlier this month which finally ended the seven-year defence land saga.
Construction on the new base, which will give the Chinese approximately the same mooring area as the British had in the old HMS Tamar, is to start in the autumn after design work and an environmental impact study have been completed.