Carrie-OK

Well, it's happened. After successfully avoiding it for three whole months, I have finally experienced the Asian cultural phenomenon that is karaoke (卡拉OK, kǎ lā OK). Saturday night Benson texted me asking me and the roommate if we wanted to hang out. We met him and one of his friends outside the dorm and he said, “well, what do you want to do? I know, let’s go sing some songs!” Knowing that resistance was futile – and that I had nothing better to do anyway – I made a mild show of protest and gave in.

We walked to the nearest karaoke bar just a few minutes from the campus and stepped through the double glass doors into some kind of space fantasy – the room was bathed in the dim glow of colour-changing lights installed all up and down the walls and under the glass floor, offset by alternating mirrored wall tiles. A chandelier with beads hanging all the way to the floor lit one end of the room and slick black leather couches lurked in the corners. And that was just the lobby. We never actually got to see the rest of it, because the place was full. Unlike the west, where (according to my limited experience) karaoke is usually performed in a crowded, noisy bar in front of a bunch of drunk strangers, karaoke bars in Asia usually consist of little private rooms which you rent by the hour for a cozy evening of drinking, snacking and singing with your friends. They do have people singing karaoke publicly, too, but the private room karaoke seems to be the standard here.

Anyway, after we got turned away from the first bar, we went on to the next one, which was even more grandiose with a colourful, two-storey art deco design covering half the block over the entranceway. We entered the somewhat less impressive lobby, paid for four hours in one of the smaller rooms, and were escorted down a dim corridor to a room that looked like someone’s outdated basement entertainment room – loud, swirly wallpaper covered the walls and ceiling, closing in around the worn vinyl couches and pitted granite coffee table. A large TV and karaoke machine sat against the wall opposite the couches.

As we were settling in, the staff informed us that we needed to order some food or drinks, so we ordered popcorn and dried shredded squid and started picking songs. Benson and his friend kicked things off with a few of their favourites (Benson really loves Faye Wong, or 王菲) and I was relieved to discover that their voices weren’t much better than mine. My roommate, being a fan of Mando-Pop, was slightly better off than I was – there were only a handful of English songs on the machine, and of these the only ones I was really familiar with were “Hey Jude” and “You Are My Sunshine.” She bravely sang a few songs in English and Chinese and I did the two I knew, along with a few Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys songs I didn’t know well enough to follow along even with the lyrics. Our friends looked pretty bored, to be honest, but it turned out to be a much less painful experience than I thought.

Chinese word of the day:
随便
suí biàn
As one wishes; "whatever"