11.11.11.

Unbeknownst to me (until early last week) China celebrates the eleventh of November by encouraging single people to go out for the evening. I was contemplating a quiet night in so as to save a few pennies, but I received an invite to from a friend I hadn’t seen for a couple of months to go downtown Shanghai and make a night of it.

I didn’t take much persuading. My friend Zack is bit of a celebrity in Songjiang and Shanghai, he was an English teacher but now he’s earning his crust playing gigs around Shanghai, both he and his brother are quite talented musicians but in very different mediums.

There was no definitive plan for the night, but living in a city this size there are always options. Eight of us set off from Songjiang for the one hour taxi ride to an area known as the French Concession. For 300 RMB per taxi we had the drivers for the night, they would take us wherever we wanted to go and wait until we were ready to head back home.

The night started off in JZ Club – a jazz bar, but the drinks there are way too expensive and the atmosphere wasn’t really what we were seeking for our night out. So . . .  we moved on to the next club – The Shelter, aptly named as it is little more than a bomb shelter. 

I was a happy man to hear Reggae tunes being played as we walked in (about an hour earlier I had been expressing my contempt at the lack of reggae venues in Shanghai) and having been there before (I went there when I first moved to Shanghai to hear Peter Cook of Joy Division DJ) I knew that the atmosphere was likely to be more in line with our expectations and the drinks affordable.

We bagged ourselves a sofa and drank a few beers before dancing the night away. I was in the fortunate position to be envied by most of the men in the club as I was accompanied by the four single, young, attractive Chinese girls that we had brought along with us – Zack was somewhere else with his girlfriend (they turned up about an hour later and stayed with us for the rest of the night) so it was just myself and Jon (Zack’s brother – who happens to have a KTV girlfriend) making the most of Singles Night in Shanghai.