February 7th 2005

Chinese New Years Eve saw the welcoming of the Renaissance Masters tour, headed up by Hernan Cataneo in the fabulous Hong Kong city. A top night to party in the usually quiet club land of HK, but what a night to pick as Chinese New Year is the most important date in every China man's diary. Finding out about club nights is no easy feat whether you live in HK or if you have the great fortune of being a visitor. Even more so, bearing in mind that the Renaissance website had the tendency to freeze Internet browsers when trying to retrieve information about the Asian tour. All that basically means is we had no idea about mostly everything to do with night and no clear way of finding out, so eagerness got the better of us and we decided to get there for the very respectable time of 10:30pm. Jumping in a taxi, hoping that the taxi driver would be able to speak English and even more would know where or what was HITEC, the apparent venue for the night. We tried not to let the taxi driver's apparent bewilderment bother us and just enjoyed the amazing night lights of Hong Kong's spectacular skyline as we drove out of Hong Kong Island and headed underwater towards Kowloon.

The taxi driver's newly found confidence didn't really inspire us as we headed into what seemed to be the most undeveloped and unimpressive part of this city. No need to worry though, because there in neon lights in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere was the glimmering sign of HITEC. A big old rectangular building that looked little more than a factory. In actual fact it is an exhibition centre, but has become relatively run down compared with the impressive buildings that have sprung up in practically every square inch of this city. This added to the secretive feel to the night, not only was it impossible to find out any information on the Internet or in magazines but also, now it became apparent that perhaps this was what was going to make the night that bit more special. A hidden club night!

A handful of security guards gathered outside next to empty queuing ropes, where were the clubbers? More to the point why was it completely silent, we couldn't even hear the infamous sound of traffic anymore! Quick entry soon followed, shortly followed by even more confusion as we entered the building to see groups of guards gathered together but no ticket counter, no-one trying to intercept our free and uninterrupted walk straight into the main room. Oh my God, the night had been cancelled; it was all making sense that was why we couldn't find anything out on the Internet. Luckily, a couple of fellers saw us standing dazed and confused, and told us in fact we were the first arrivals as the event was not due to open for another 30 minutes. Much to our good fortune they were too polite to send us packing and instead they happily ushered us through, not even once trying to question or inquire as to our guest list places. If only life was that easy back home!

We walked into what seemed to be the brightest and deadliest silent room that I had ever been to in all my life. In fact not only that, I would go further to say the most uncomfortable room too. There is something about a run down exhibition centre, with hundreds of sleepy security guards and not a place to comfortably lean, never-mind sit or perch, which is ever so unnerving. Little were we to know, that we would still be stood there over an hour and a half later, in utter silence, soon starting to understand the guards sleepiness. A group of HongKongese backstage guys who were trying to fight their boredom gathered in a circle playing kick about with a paper ball, but still there was no sign of anything but discomfort. And then just when all hope had nearly died and we were getting prepared to leave, the kick about king jumped on the decks, the lights were dimmed and two nervous looking clubbers walked in to our empty room. A joyous sight for all a hundred odd guards, at last something to do! We were soon to be informed that the police had issues with safety so delayed the opening, which I can understand, as surely all those security guards would cause a right excited stampede in the event of an emergency and in the event of having something real to do.

Trying to encourage the blood back into our legs and build our all but dead enthusiasm was the next problem, but the desire to quench with a glug of beer soon got us moving. We entered the partitioned back half of the room, to solve the riddle of how to get a drink. And a riddle it sure was. After a few attempts and much pondering, we had it sussed, you had to walk 20 metres to the far right of the room to buy a one token fits all $50 drink. (How much! Yeah, Hong Kong is expensive compared to it's motherland China, but well £3.50 for a tiny bottle of water seemed a bit steep to us.) To then walk back another 20 metres to the opposite side of the room to arrive at a trestle style drink's table. Strange system, but I'm sure it made sense in some small way. After that horrific wait, it was a bit annoying to discover that you weren't allowed to leave the blaring light and empty void of the drink's room without first having drunk all of the contents of our plastic cups. After necking the drinks with annoyance, off we returned hoping that the main room had more than just a ton of guards in it.

The atmosphere was very slow to build, probably because of the enormous wait everyone had endured to get in, and then I'm sure the drink ban didn't help matters too much either. Having not tasted the HK club scene before, we were expecting the HongKongese to be not so forthcoming as western clubbers and we were pretty much right, there was the odd movement that vaguely seemed like an attempt to dance, although until a big crowd had gathered it was hard to tell.

The first DJ was a local HongKongese, who played a strange mix of what seemed to be nothing more than a lucky dip into his record bag, which of course did little to warm the timid crowd. The light show and large screen visuals provided more of a vibe and with the help of some skateboarder looking young American guys jumping about, things got going a bit more. After an hour of confused tunes, Hernan appeared to an eager crowd who more than excitedly greeted his arrival. He did nothing but please as he brought it back round with his mix of happily driven tunes in a true Renaissance style. To the extent that even the slightly bemused security guards started tapping their feet in time.

The sound system left little to be desired as it reverberated off the carpeted walls and muffled even the sharpest of tunes. But it didn't matter too much anymore, as we had moaned for England for the first 2 hours, we surely couldn't moan anymore! The place seemed fairly full up by now and even the bright lights of the drinks' room had people all lounging about on the floor. The friendly locals couldn't control their eagerness to find out why two westerners like us had found out about this secret party and soon we were bombarded with many odd but friendly characters chatting like they'd had a few too many energy drinks. Gotta give them credit though, most of the people in the club stayed till 6am then had to go straight round to their families' apartments to celebrate the arrival of the Chinese New Year and to have an all day eat as much as you can banquet. After a bit of questing we found out that HK club events were few and far between nowadays because of major police restrictions. So when they were arranged the message was spread feverously between friends until all the people in the know had delayed, cancelled or simply ignored any previous engagements. A real shame for the eager clubbers of HK because it was obvious that the crowd were in awe of Hernan's talents and mostly didn't even express any annoyance for the awful initial wait.

All in all a great night under adverse circumstances and the bizarreness just added to the 'timberdong' flavour.
By Chris Linge

www.rennaissanceuk.com

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