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Heads Up
New Day for Shanghai Nights
“BRING in the boys!” an announcer howled on a recent Saturday afternoon at Cotton’s, a bar in Shanghai.
The
occasion was a daylong celebration with drag shows, Chinese opera
performances, mock same-sex weddings — and, yes, a “hot body” contest —
to help conclude Shanghai’s first Gay Pride Week. And as seven
beefcakes, including two from New York and one from Indonesia,
strutted onto an outdoor stage, a crowd of hundreds erupted in whoops
and hollers before awarding the hottest body title to a strapping,
six-foot-tall Shanghainese who went by the name Grant. He was wearing a
pink “Beware Pickpockets and Loose Women” T-shirt, until he wasn’t.
“We
realized that now is the right time,” Tiffany Lemay, one of the
organizers, said of the week’s events. Well almost. Although China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, visits by the local authorities
prompted the cancellation of several gay pride activities. Still, the
revelry bore witness (in some cases bared witnesses) to a growing gay
scene that, despite the occasional setback, has contributed to
Shanghai’s already vibrant night life in ways once hard to imagine.
There’s
even an epicenter: a trio of bars in the French Concession neighborhood
known as the Gay Triangle. Many visitors start there at the
long-running Eddy’s (1877 Huaihai Zhong Road; 86-21-6282-0521; www.eddys-bar.com),
a tony concrete-walled bar offering the kind of Chinese exotica
(Mao-inspired art, antique door panels) that Westerners and the
Shanghainese who congregate with them can’t seem to resist.
A stone’s throw away is Shanghai Studio (1950 Huaihai Zhong Road, Unit 4; 86-21-6283-1043; www.shanghai-studio.com),
a onetime bomb shelter where a more eclectic, hipper crowd wends its
way through a warren of rooms that includes a dance floor and a men’s
underwear shop called MANifesto. Completing the triad is the intimate
Transit Lounge (141 Tai An Road; 86-21-6283-3051), a favorite among
Japanese men who come for the swanky red banquettes, loungey vibe and
mojitos.
With their international mix of patrons, these and other
spots point to Shanghai’s cosmopolitan makeup. But more locally
oriented establishments offer something for everyone, too. Consider Boboswww.bobosbar.com).
Exceedingly well hidden within a compound of residential high rises (go
through the main gate, turn right, look for the glass dome and head
downstairs), it’s where you’ll find the somewhat hairier, fuller-bodied
set, known as panda bears, loading up on carbs and singing karaoke on a
stage flanked by an illuminated rainbow. (Bugaoyuan Clubhouse, 307 Shanxi Nan Road; 86-21-6471-2887;
Or on Fridays through Sundays, there is Lai Lai (235 An Guo Road, second floor; 86-21-6546-1218), an endearingly shabby
dance hall where mostly middle-aged men sneak away for a little
ballroom action. Arrive early; by 9 p.m., the band goes silent and the
floor clears out.
As elsewhere, lesbians have fewer options in
Shanghai. But Shanghai Studio hosts a women’s night on the last
Saturday of each month, while Tuesdays and Saturdays are marked off for
lesbians at, respectively, the bar Frangipani (399 Dagu Road;
86-21-5375-0084; www.frangipanibar.com) and the club Red Station (200 Taikang Road, fourth floor).
A number of Web sites, including www.utopia-asia.com and www.shanghaiist.com, offer broad-ranging, up-to-date information on Shanghai’s gay scene.
But on the Saturday night of gay pride, it was the beefcakes who resurfaced at D2 (505 Zhong Shan Nan Road, south alley; 86-21-6152-6543; www.clubd2.cn),
a three-level club in the new Cool Docks retail and entertainment
complex on the Huangpu River. Amid smoke, laser beams and the thumping
of techo-dance music,
a flesh-to-flesh mass of mostly Chinese muscle men suggested that now
might be a good time to invest in fitness centers in Shanghai; it
seemed the whole city had become one giant hot-body contest. Fully
clothed, however, was a 30-year-old local named Pete. “Yeah, that’s the
trend right now,” he said of the sea of brawn around him.