Chinese Karaoke Evening

The English school where Baiba is working had won some kind of competition between other centers in Beijing so they arranged some leisure activity for their staff. Luckily they told to Baiba to invite also me to spend evening with them… I heard that it was going to be karaoke night, cool!

After everyone had finish their work the whole group (around 15 people) head towards one KTV (which means karaoke in here) place. First of all, karaoke places in here are something completely different than I have seen before. When we first entered the place, there was a front desk and a bar/shop for drinks. They will guide people according their reservation to some designated room that have been booked. Yes, a room. Here you go with a group (work colleagues, friends etc.) and rent a room for karaoke so there is no need  at stand on a stage in front of all people. The room we were in was about 10-15sq meters, it had two flat screen TVs on both sides and a video projector to show chosen karaoke songs on a big screen, plus nice couches with bar-tables. Everything worked with touch screen where it was possible to adjust volume, choose songs etc. Oh and not to forget, there was even a mirror ball on the sealing to create some atmosphere.

When you book the room, you can order some drinks there already but in the case they ran out or anything else is needed there is only one thing that you have to do: Press “service” button next to the door and a staff member will run there and you can order some more drinks (or whatever is the case)… How handy is that!  

Chinese seems to like sing karaoke and even I was brave enough to give it a go (or actually I was kind of forced under the pressure) since there were also good collection of English songs… When playing a karaoke song, it is possible to choose how the song will be played, instrumental or not. As my turn came up the song was only instrumental but after I started to sing few lines, someone did a friendly favour to everyone and turned the real vocalist voice on so my voice kind of disappeared. I knew already that I can’t sing and now it is proven again. After my song I concentrated to play a drinking games by using dice with two other guys… That was more for me.  

Despite my singing skills, evening itself was a really great experience!