Hong Kong Karaoke or be damned!

(A slightly fictionalised composite account of a true story....all memory is fiction anyway.)

The taxi driver screwed up his face as he looked at us through his rear view mirror. ‘No idea’, he said. Impossible. Hong Kong has thousands of karaoke bars. My friend Michelle employed the dreadful act of speaking louder to make herself understood, ‘We’d like to go to a KARAOKE bar. Can you take us to one?’, she shouted, ‘you know, singing’. As she cleared her throat, ready to launch into ‘Girls just wanna have fun’, the driver’s face suddenly lit up, ‘Ah yes!’. He nodded enthusiastically as he negotiated traffic like a kart driver. We didn’t realise that he literally meant a bar called Yes. Yes 11th to be exact. An improbable name for a bar in an improbable location – a fifteen story office building. We were in the middle of the Kowloon district, karaoke central, and I was about to confront my greatest fear – singing in public.

In Yes 11th, no one was singing anything yet. The concrete flooring and black décor made it a little foreboding. There were café style tables and wrought iron chairs in the centre, but we chose one of the comfy lounges along the side wall. There were private rooms, like most mainstream karaoke bars, but since we didn’t really know how it worked, we thought we’d make some observations first. Plus, you had to pay for private rooms by the hour, per person. We ordered the first round of drinks and waited to see what would happen. A great pile of steaming meat landed on our table, compliments of the manager. We eyed them warily and decided to call the dish ‘BBQ chicken wings’ even though there was no mention of it on the menu. Indeed, it tasted like chicken. The manager came over, shouting incomprehensibly at us in a menacing way but then broke into jolly laughter and wandered away. We couldn’t tell if he was pleased or cross that there were Westerners in his bar – we discovered later that Westerners normally headed to Neway or Red Box; Hong Kong karaoke institutions.

Neither the manager nor the “chicken” helped calm my nerves. I didn’t yet understand why people would put themselves through this.

A large group of young men and women came in and started fiddling around with the microphone, chatting to the owner and scrolling through song lists. Finally, they started to sing. They were having a great time, singing harmonies and duets. Romantic looking young men crooned love ballads – a performance complete with wringing hands, tortured expressions and dramatic arm waving. A girl with bright blue eye shadow at the next table told me Hong Kong people work so hard and are so reserved in behaviour, but at karaoke, it was their chance to shine, to stand out from the crowd and become famous for a moment. Those who really wanted to live the dream could even enter competitions, hire fantastic themed rooms, and generally pretend they were a rock star.

Eventually, one of the girls in the big group walked over to us smiling and, rather shyly, handed over the mike. This was it. Sing or leave. Michelle took the mike. We scrolled nervously through the list of songs available and settled on a Shakira number. ‘I don’t think I can do this’, I told her. Already my voice was wobbly, my throat dry. There was a little encouraging applause and then the music started. With tiny tiny voices, Michelle and I started to sing together. I saw smiling, encouraging faces. People were nodding quietly, not covering their ears in distress. We got a little louder, started smiling and relaxing instead of focusing intently on the written lyrics, and even finished with a vocal flourish.

The mojitos had done their job. Our last notes sung, we beamed happily when the whole bar, by now half full, erupted into loud cheers and clapping. I could breathe again. And perhaps I discovered that elusive element that made karaoke strangely intoxicating. The smiles were infectious, there was a sense of joyful camaraderie, and shared (sometimes traumatic!) experience. It was the perfect opportunity to step out of ordinary life and be someone else, even if only for three and a half minutes. Certainly there was no other place where strangers would listen patiently while I wrung the life out of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

Five songs later the pretty girl who brought over the mike came back to prise it gently from our hands, smiling and nodding, but firm. 

For copyright purposes, I think I need to let you know that an edited version of this blog first appeared in The Weekend Australian, October 2010 (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/theres-no-stopping-the-karaoke-queens/story-e6frg8rf-1225941028931).