Tag Archives: birthday birthday

Friday night our friend Tracy invited us out to celebrate her 24th birthday with some of her friends. We found out that the 24th birthday is especially significant because, like all birthdays that are multiples of 12, it marks the completion of a Zodiac cycle. Apparently when your birth year rolls back around, it will bring great change, which I’m glad to have discovered weeks before my own 24th birthday.

When we asked Tracy where we were going she told us it was a place where you “drink beer and sing songs.” In China, this is the basic recipe for a fun night, to the horror of many westerners who could never understand the Chinese love for karaoke. We ducked through an inconspicuous door plastered with glamour baby photos – whose baby, I’m not sure, as the management did not exactly seem the baby-type. But, you can’t judge a man by his bar. Entering the place was like entering a hidden Chinese universe – it was impossibly dark, a thick inch of spat out sunflower seeds covered the floor, and the 4 cramped tables were overflowing with happy boisterous patrons, all privy to the dingy, underground “karaoke” bar. It could only have felt more like a speak-easy if we’d had to use a secret knocking pattern to enter.

This was not your typical karaoke – the back (or front) of the bar was a glassed-in studio, with dangling microphones and headsets. As opposed to typical KTV, where everyone sits together in a room in more traditional karaoke fashion with lyrics flashing on a big screen and the drunken soloist pouring his/her pent up emotions into the microphone they clench in their first. The best (and worst) part about karaoke in China is that everyone sings, no matter their skill, their age, or how much alcohol they have consumed. The problem in this place was that when in the studio, you could barely hear the song you were singing unless you wore the headset, in which case you couldn’t hear your own voice. This made for a hilarious array of vocal sounds. But in China it’s the eagerness and the effort of EVERYONE that makes karaoke so much fun. It’s not just a social activity and it’s definitely not just for when you’re drunk – it’s a culture, a favorite pastime, and an important outlet for people who don’t have very many emotional outlets, and disprove of emotional outbursts. Karaoke is a way to sing your heart out and by doing so communicate feelings and frustrations you otherwise couldn’t. It’s kind of deep, and endearing. Of course to us, it is still unfathomable how everyone has the courage to sit themselves in that glass studio / perch themselves at the microphone and belt out pop songs in front of their friends with such shatter-proof confidence. Because Tracy insisted, we all took our turn in the dreaded fishbowl studio.

English options were quite limited and I sang my own awkward rendition of a Taylor Swift song. I guess I don’t have much studio experience and it was surprisingly hard to hear yourself and find the right volume using the headset and microphone. The fact that you couldn’t make out the faces in front of you from behind the glass didn’t help, and I walked out with my head hanging anticipating the shit I would receive for my poor performance. But, I forgot I was in a bar surrounded by Chinese young people, all of whom seem to share an unshakeable positive attitude and particular appreciation for karaoke attempts. Some people went so far as to tell me I really “sing like a singer.” I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better reception, or a nicer caress of my musical ego.