Tibetan Nights

By Will Connor

 

“Ni hao,” I said to the cab driver when I realized he didn’t speak Tibetan. “Wo-men xiang qu Babila. Ni zhi dao bu zhi dao zhe ge jiu ba?” He knew. All the cab drivers knew. Babila is the most popular disco/karaoke/nangma bar in Lhasa, Tibet, China. Nor was he surprised to be driving my friends and me there on a Wednesday night. The fun at Babila is not limited to the weekends; the club is full every night from opening until the sun comes up. And with good reason – they have it all! Live DJ’s, full light show and dance floor, singing rooms, a variety stage show and three floors full of friendly waiters, waitresses, and “beer girls” to fulfill all your drinking needs.

Babila isn’t exactly a never-before-seen phenomenon in China, it is simply the only club in Tibet that combines all the nightlife styles into one venue. Lhasa, the capital city of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (T.A.R.), is full of places to go after dark for musical entertainment. Most of the clubs in town are nangma bars, which offer variety shows that include performances by singers, comedians, dancers, and fashion models. Originally nangmas were where Tibetans went to drink and sing their favourite folk songs with a live backing band of folk musicians. These days, the nangma bars have adopted a westernized Chinese approach to the entertainment. The folk musician band has been replaced with either canned baking tracks or a live rock band.

The contingency of non-Tibetans attending the clubs today as led to the addition of  comedians and occasional fashion shows. I have seen comedy acts in clubs in Chengdu and Haikou, but the ones in Lhasa are often geared towards Tibetans, using Tibetan language and themes. It doesn’t matter really, since half of the at is slapstick style comedy and the themes are more or less universal, or at least pan-Chinese in nature, such as referring to Xi You Ji, the famous story of Journey to the West, etc.

The fashions shows are also entirely Tibetan in nature, sporting the traditional garb of the various Tibetan ethnic groups that reside in or near the T.A.R. These displays are just what you would expect, with the dressed up models strutting out onto stage and walking about while some folk oriented music blasts from the club’s sound system. The only difference from a runway show may be that they all come out at once and form patterns on the stage that brings each of the models to the front row at one point of another before the show ends.

Similarly, there are dance numbers too, that resemble a cross between the fashion shows and the musical presentations. These too are Tibetan in nature. Sometimes the dancers play instruments (or pretend to do so) and they are often more thematic, representing only one ethnic group instead of many, as the fashion displays tend to do. All of these interludes are intended to give the non-Tibetan patrons a taste of Tibetan culture and entertain the Tibetans living away from home (some region outside of the Lhasa area), reminding them of their heritage as unifying the Tibetan ethnic groups simultaneously.

One uniquely Tibetan thing that occurs at the nangma bars is the giving of Kataks, or white scarves, to the performers during their presentations. Kataks are similar to the offering of a lei here in Hawaii. They are given as a blessing or a symbol of respect and admiration for the artists performance. People will purchase kataks from the waitresses and then run up on stage at the appropriate moment and throw the scarf over the singers head in mid-verse and scurry back to their seat so the next person can do the same. I had my experience with the offering of a katak at a performance by an Amdo mandolin player named Dube (doo-bay). Dr. Anna Morcom had just gone up to throw one over his head and came back to me and said “you need to give him one! He’ll love it!” and she handed me a white scarf with which to do the deed. I waited in the wings for the right moment and rushed up on stage to participate in the Tibetan tradition expecting to sneak on and off stage silently as all the others had done all night long, but instead I was greeted with a roaring cheer from the mostly Tibetan audience! I suppose they hadn’t seen a big white guy very often at the club, and certainly not one that visibly enjoyed the Tibetan folk music that filled the bar that night. It was a wonderful experience for me as much as for Dube, who at first seemed astonished by my size and then changed his expression to yield a giant smile across his face as he mumbled “tashi delek” as a thank you for my actions and support.

 

I noticed that Tibetans as well as non-Tibetans not only attend the clubs, but they own the clubs. Most Tibetan entrepreneurs seem to open a nangma bar, although there are many nangmas owned by people of Han Chinese, Yi, Naxi, or Mongolian  descent. The difference is mostly the material performed in the bar and the language in which the material is presented. The Tibetan owners lean towards an entirely Tibetan language show with a selection of music and fashion taken from various regions of the T.A.R. This slightly limits the range of clientele to those that speak Tibetan fluently, therefore some of the other club owners choose to host a multi language show or one entirely in Mandarin Chinese.  These clubs are usually larger, but have less variety of performances and ones that are somewhat geared towards a visiting audience or tourists.

 

The bars that are entirely karaoke or dance halls are almost always Han owned. The songs provided are normally Mandarin language or in some cases English and are not much different from their Eastern Chinese counterparts, except the also provide mostly Tibetan pop songs among their singing selections, albeit they are the Mandarin language versions of the songs.

Dancing and karaoke makes its way in the nangma bars as well, and not just as a room upstairs set aside for those few that want to dance and sing. The variety shows make concessions for these audience members right on stage with the rest of the entertainment. Occasionally a patron will be handed the microphone to belt out their version of a hit song or the management will clear the stage and pipe in a popular tune so those that know the accompanying dance (usually a “circle style” folk dance altered to meet the needs of the video for the song) can take over for a few minutes and play their part in reenacting their favourite VCD scenes. The bar doesn’t let them do this for too long though, because that would reduce the amount of beverage sales, and since there is not usually a cover charge, that is how the clubs make most of their money.

The sporadic dancers at the nangma bars seem to be primarily Tibetan clients. The songs played for these dance interludes are almost always modernized folk songs or popular songs based on folk styles. The non-Tibetan patrons don’t always know the music well enough to follow along. On the other hand, the dance floors at the clubs like Babila, where club-goers are expected to dance all night, are primarily Chinese folks from other regions or European or American ex-Pats that are used to cutting a rug until the break of dawn. (I would interject here, though, that I definitely saw and danced with many Tibetans who not only had the stamina of the rest of the crowd, they were probably the best dancers in the club!)

The one thing I can say about all Tibetan nightclubs, is that while there is always an element of something familiar in them for any patron, there is also something refreshing and new as well. The people amazingly friendly and willing to share tables or are ready to drag you out to the dance floor immediately after your first toast of the night (of which, many will follow!) The music ranges from folk to pop to techno, sometimes rocking, sometimes cheesy, but never is it dull. Any club you may set foot into will have a clientele base of Tibetans, Han, Europeans, Americans, and usually several other Chinese minority groups represented. Whether you are sitting on a couch watching the variety shows, or you are in the middle of the dance floor or holding the microphone for your temporary moment of musical glory, spending time in a Tibetan nightclub will most assuredly bring you a night of unparalleled excitement and fun! I cannot recommend it enough!

 

 

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