Beijing these days also offers much more than the karaoke and bland hotel bars you’ll find in many other Chinese cities. A trend For huge discos swept the city in the late 1980s, and they are still popular, packed every night with young, affluent Chinese. For reigners, the interest probably lies in observing as nauch as participating. The formula is always the same: a few hours of cheesy techno, followed by the slushy half-hour, when a singer conies on stage and dancers pair off, followed by a more raucous last hour or two when only the serious clubbers are left and the mood becomes much less restrained. Recently, more sophisticated Western-style nightclubs have opened, which feature the
latest DJs flown in from the West or Japan.
  The fashion for modern urbanites, however, is for bars. In 1995 there was one bar at the south end of Sanlitun, and it was losing money. A new manager bought it, believing the place had potential but that the feng shui was wrong - the toilet was opposite the door and all the wealth was going down it. He changed the name, moved the loo, and so revolutionized the city’s nightlife.
Now the area is choked with bars, with new ones opening all the time. Many are rip-offs of their popular neighbours - if one does well, soon four more will open around it with nearly the same name. Originally aimed at the city’s foreign commnnity, they are now patronized as  much by locals. For Western visitors, the scene around Sanlitun can look eerily familiar  pretty much everything is just like home, including the prices. An alternative bar scene exists in Haidian, around the university district in the northwest. With a largely student clientele, the bars here arc cheaper and hipper, with a little more edge to them.
  The bars have given a huge boost to the city’s music scene, providing much  needed venues. You can now hear classical zither or bamboo tunes, jazz, deep house, or head-banging grindcore on most nights of the week. Meanwhile, most visitors take in at least a taste of Belling Opera and the superb Chinese acrobats - highly recommended - both of which seem pretty timeless.

 A recent development has been a fashion for Chinese translations of Western plays, such as The Mousetrap, or home-grown dramatists experimenting with foreign forms.
  Cinemas these days are dedicated to feeding a seemingly insatiable appetitefor kung fid movies rather than edifying the populace, although there is plenty,of opportunity to catch the serious and fairy controversial movies emerging from a new wave of younger film makers.