Uyghur Clubbing

On Friday afternoon I get a WeChat from K, a male classmate of mine: “Hi Sarah. Today 7:30 pm local time. 360 music club.”

Huh? I thought to myself. What’s going on?

The message wasn’t clear as to what we would be doing. I knew 360 was a Uyghur club and it was close to my house. But there was no “hope to see you there,” or “my friends are going, would you like to join us?” I sent a message back inquiring about the nature of this gathering, but there was no response.

At 7:15 pm (it is common for everything to happen at the last minute here), I get a call from K. “I know I said 7:30, but actually it starts at 8. So I’ll see you then, yeah?”

“K, sure, but what’s going on? Who is going and what’s this all about?”

“It’s my birthday, so we’re going to party tonight. A bunch of my friends are getting together.”

“Oh! Ok, then. I’ll see you there.”

I arrive fashionably late at 8:15 pm local time (10:15 pm Beijing time), going through the metal detector, opening my purse for inspection, and undergoing the body frisk by the female security guard who pats me down from under my armpits to my thighs. Ahead of me in the lobby is a wall of wooden shelves separated into square cubbies, each holding a different bottle of yangjiu (foreign liquor): Skyy, Ballentine’s, Bacardi, etc. Inside the music is pulsing to an electronic beat.    

I go inside to look, but K isn’t here yet. The security guards are really friendly and helpful, noticing that I was wandering around by myself, they suggest I go to the second floor to check for my friend and asking, “Would you like to sit down?” as they offer me their stools. “Who reserved the table?” I give them K’s name, and the security guard translates K’s name into Chinese—the awkward monosyllabic sounds of a Uyghur name translated into Chinese are clunky in his mouth—for the Han boss who is holding a clipboard. “How the hell should I know?” snaps the boss, “There are two Ks who have a reservation tonight and they both don’t match the phone number she has” (K has a really common Uyghur name).

I hang around in the lobby for the next 45 minutes. I look in the mirrors over the sinks outside the bathroom, and notice my hair is flat and greasy. I fix my hair into a ponytail. The Han bathroom attendant with a pixie cut and gold earrings sitting in the corner stares at me as she lights incense sticks and cracks sunflower seeds, periodically yawning and rubbing her face with her hands.

K calls me twice to apologize for being late, saying that the traffic is really bad. He arrives at 9 pm with two Uyghur girls, one is a Chinese teacher (she spent eight years in Shanghai in Chinese school, so her Chinese is almost better than her Uyghur) with a round face I recognize from a previous event, and one is a girl with a short, pixie cut and red lipstick who greets me with, “Hi” and a small wave. K is wearing a shirt that says, “Istanbul: The City that Never Sleeps.”

I follow them into the dance club. The room is pitch black except for the colorful neon lights and disco balls flashing and rotating around the room at a dizzyingly fast pace. Uyghur music—Turkic style dutar (two-stringed guitar-like instrument) strumming with high-pitched trumpets blasting a cheerful tune—is booming from the surround sound speakers at an ear-splitting volume and the bass beat is thumping so loud the entire room seems to be vibrating. In front of us at the far end of the two-story high ceilinged room, is a stage with its curtains pulled open. A man is standing in the center of the stage holding a microphone and screaming/singing into it about missing his mother and his homeland (a very common theme in Uyghur songs). In the stage background are several Greek-style columned pillars and a soft red light illuminating them. On the two sides of the stage are placed some kind of Roman style statue of a person holding a tray of flowers. On the far right and left inside the walls in the foreground of the stage have a huge built in display case with 4 feet tall matryoshka Russian dolls (the traditional kind you can stack inside one another).    

The remaining three sides of the room are lined with two levels (a first floor and a second floor, the second floor like a loft) of tables surrounded by plush booths, where Uyghurs sit smoking cigarettes or hookah, drinking Red Label Jack mixed with iced tea, and eating dapanji (Big Plate Chicken). I can smell the taste of the spicy peppers and cumin exuding out of the dishes as we walk by. I notice that most of the women are not wearing headscarves, except for a few women wearing stylish Arabic style headscarves, or headscarves that are loosely tied around the forehead to show the front two inches of their hair. The tables encircle the dance floor, which is a raised platform lined with metal banisters, located in front of the stage. On the ceiling hang 4 huge chandeliers, the ceiling decorated with ornate gold trim in a delicate flower pattern.

Here is a picture from inside the club with the two levels of tables and the plushy booths. You can see a woman dancing Uyghur dance on the dance floor on the right. It was so dark it was hard to get good pictures. 

We arrive at our table—K greeting the guy already sitting with two touches on each cheek, a greeting reserved for male relatives or the closest of male friends—with a huge curved couch-like booth that could seat ~15 people, and the women sit on one side of the couch-booth, and the men sit on the other. As we wait for the food to arrive, the tasty smell of fruity and spicy hookah scents surround us. I notice the group at the table behind us has two women in skin-tight sequined black dresses celebrating their birthdays, each wearing a silver princess crown and blowing out the candles on a cake. A huge bouquet of roses sits in the middle of the table, and a 5-year old girl sits next to them wearing a paper crown. Each time a new person arrives at our table, everyone stands to greet them, us ladies touching our hearts and bowing slightly if it’s a guy, or shaking hands and touching each cheek to the other if it’s a lady. One of the guys suggests getting some yangjiu, but K says, “let’s not drink alcohol.”

Otherwise, everyone is distracting themselves by playing on their phones in an effort to seem cool and aloof. One of the guys makes a comment about it, joking that maybe we should open a WeChat group and talk to each other on there. The girls (except for me in a passive effort to avoid perpetuating the patriarchy) periodically stand to pour tea and honey into everyone’s glasses. One of the boys teases the Chinese teacher about being more Chinese than Uyghur (she just came back from Shanghai one year ago), and asks her jokingly in Chinese, “So what do you think of Xinjiang (xinjiang zenmeyang)? You see this food here, it’s all the Xinjiang specialty food (xinjiang techan), you should have a try!” I laugh out loud at his incredibly good impression of a Chinese person.

Performers emerge periodically to dance on the platform. First, a pair of ladies dressed in traditional Uyghur dancing costume dancing traditional Uyghur dance. A little while later, two Uyghur women emerge dressed in Indian costume, dancing to Indian music in traditional form. Lastly there is a Uyghur in short white shorts and a long flowing gown that drags behind her like a wedding veil, which she whips seductively around as the audience catches glimpses of her bare legs.

An American EDM song comes on, and the club patrons flood the dance floor, dancing what in Uyghur is called “disco,” which for them means American wedding free-style dancing to Western pop music. Everyone bobs around like a white guy that can’t dance and I’m thankful for all my years of training at grade school and high school dances. I notice that some of the women on the dance floor are wearing skirts with slits that go above their knee and some are showing the top of their cleavage, and I’m surprised and slightly scandalized as this is a rare sight indeed.

When a Latin pop music song with Spanish lyrics plays in the background, I sit back in the booth and sigh a breath of relaxation. This place, this night feels like a truly global experience, an example of the internationalism that is so alive in this city that sits at the intersection of so many cultures: Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Indian, Uyghur, Chinese, American… Even Latino culture if you count the music, and Greek and Roman if you count the decorations.

The song changes to a slower pace, and pairs of women go up onto the dance platform to “tansa,” the Uyghur version of waltzing. Next, the song changes to Uyghur music and the floor floods again with people dancing “ussul,” Uyghur style dancing that involves twirling your hands and wrists, waving your arms and walking around in a circular pattern without touching your partner. Generally, it’s danced between a man and a woman, but women-women and men-men paired dancing ussul is not uncommon either.

People dancing ussul on the dance floor/platform

I still remember my first foray into Uyghur dance back in 2014, the first time I went to a Uyghur club. E advised me that day, “Just wave your hands in front of your face as if to say, ‘look at my pretty face,’ and wave your hands in front of your chest, torso and hips as if to say, ‘look at my pretty body.’” I felt so awkward and ugly and stupid and clumsy and uncoordinated that day, but I tried my best. I still feel awkward doing it, but I just keep eye contact with my partner and smiling as wide as I can the whole time.

Over the next four songs, a couple of the guys ask me to dance (it’s rude to refuse a dance), and then two of the girls ask me to dance. Ussul is incredibly flirtatious and sexy, and I love that it’s the one time Uyghurs will publically engage in an open display of sexuality and human attraction in an otherwise incredibly repressed society. They are super kind to me, telling me how well I dance and asking me who taught me.

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Before too long, I get up to leave, saying good-bye to everyone and tughulghan kuningizge mubarek (Happy Birthday) to K. I walk home in the mild spring evening, my ears ringing and my clothes and hair smelling of smoke.