I’m sorry to say that Guangzhou has nothing remotely similar to the wham-glam-thank-you-ma’am of Shanghai and none of the enthused exhibitionist wank-offery of Beijing. I had high hopes for old Canton, but I guess Hong Kong’s the only southern city reprazenting Cantonese culture. Guangzhou is delightful, but it’s not fierce.
We started off at Wilber’s. The facilities were spacious, immaculate and had sexy lighting. If I lived in Guangzhou, it would be my regular nocturnal hangout—I mean, it’s the only interior with a personality in the city, and I would have loved to stay there, but alas, I had a job to do.
I had asked Fox, the charming concierge at the Ritz Carlton, where the hottest spot in Guangzhou for Nightlife would be, and he told me to tell the cab driver to take us to the clubbing street near Garden Hotel. While heading over there, we drove past Tang, which our other editorial team checked out on another weekend. A colleague said it was the hottest club in GZ, but he ain’t Nightlife and is more often than not delusional, so I wouldn’t know...
We stopped at this quaint tree-lined street and walked past a couple of establishments—all the clubs reminded me a bit of those in Wan Chai and Tai Po. We picked Chinabox, which looked relatively normal. One thing reassuring about going out, for most people, is that you can go to any modern city, and have relatively the same experience: the same standard drinks, the same Rihanna tracks, the same hoochie mamas who think they’re Rihanna.
We went upstairs to avoid overly fervent clubbers and the loud hip-hop. But the house band there was performing covers of Taiwanese pop just as loudly. So we opted to sit alfresco on the balcony, where gaudy spotlights shine on the foliage. We got a nice view of the Alice-in-Wonderland canopy that changed color every two seconds, from a sexy purple glow to a fabulously artificial acid green. It worked, in a hot-mess-art-installation kind of way.
We took a look at the menu and that entertained us for 20 minutes because the bar snacks listed in English were totally double-you tea effed. Do you speak Cantonese? Try figuring out some of the poetic and literal translations of ”fat beef,” “chicken also pointed,” “three wire powder,” “squid to be,” “cracking intestines” and “salt the chicken paw.”
Out of the blue, some guy went “WEI!? WAI?!? WAAAAI!??! WAAAAAAAAAAI!!?!?!” right behind us. It was so insanely rude and loud and mainland that it was pure comedy. I mean, he was completely unaware of his volume, his conduct or how a cell phone works. And then this woman from the next table suddenly joined him in screaming on her cell. ”WAI?!? WAAAAI!??! WAAAAAAAAAII!!?!?!” Pitch, please.