Simon Lewis: Comrade Hack

K rings at 8am to say she’s drunk, she’s not been to bed yet, she’s been drinking free champagne, she’s quit her job, will we meet her for breakfast.

N is blurry after last night’s cocktails. We went to Cloud 9, the highest bar in the world, on the 87th floor of the Hyatt in Pudong (there are 88 floors in all, 8s being lucky). The view was, obviously, awesome. For once there was no cloud cover so you could see the city spread out and twinkling below like the mother of all Christmas light tangles. The only blackness was the strip of the Huangpu River. The TV Tower next door looked just as daft as in the daytime – the Thunderbirds ship that never got built, the Eiffel Tower on steroids.

But the bar had no atmosphere – hotel bars never do. Everyone who didn’t have a window seat (such as us) kept asking the black clad waiters if and when they could be moved. Some Koreans asked for their Martinis to be taken back because there weren’t enough olives on the stick. Four men lit huge cigars and stunk the place out. To keep the riff raff out there was a minimum spend of 120 yuan per person, that’s nearly a tenner, which, it turns out, gets you one and half weak cocktails.

I discover K was just around the corner, hosting a party called a champagne mixer, for ex-pat movers and shakers. She was doing it every month, she got around 400 people a time, and it was all paid for by the Hyatt. It sounds like more fun than Cloud 9. She is remarkably perky for someone who’s been up all night, talking about job offers and New Year plans.

The year of the pig is imminent. There are decorative pigs everyone and you can even buy a real, flat pig face, eyes and ears and squashed up snout and all, wrapped in plastic and tied with red ribbon, which looks like the kind of thing that gets found in the fridge of a serial killer.

It’s my year; I was born in a pig year. I assumed that this would be lucky for me but K tells me no; when it’s your year you have to be careful, it’s not an auspicious time at all. I ask how this bad luck can be negated. Turns out, it’s easy: red is powerful and lucky and when it’s next to your skin it neutralises ill energies nearby. So – you have to wear red underpants. All year long. It’s not a wind up either; now I realise why I keep seeing them in the shops. Sometimes they have the character for bliss or luck written on them in gold.

The ashtray has coffee grains in the bottom, so that when you grind out a cigarette you get a whiff, not of baccy, but of coffee. A simple idea, obvious when you think about it. I tell K how impressed I was with similar details in Japan.

For example, in H’s house, you could run the bath then just leave it – when the water reaches the desired level, the tap switches off automatically and, even better, a tune plays in the living room to alert you. Then of course you bathe Japanese style, which is to have a shower while standing next to the bath, and only when you are completely clean, get in for a soak.
Everyone shares the same water. When it gets cold there is a button to warm it up.

We go to Moganshan, a load of art galleries in an old factory.
Originally, a bunch of artists used the place as studios because the rent was so cheap. Eventually, as has happened with a similar space called 798 in Beijing, the shabby art galleries will give way to upscale clubs, restaurants and swankier galleries. This life cycle, which might take fifty years in the west, takes five over here; the boutiques are already taking shape.

There is a lot of McStruggle art – that is, images in the socialist realist Cultural Revolution style, of, say, Red Guards or lantern jawed peasants, only instead of little red books they’re waving I-pods or whatever. Foreign visitors love this stuff, ex-pats disdain it, every Chinese artist goes thorough a phase of doing it.

From a teahouse in the old water tower, you can see the area, and it is a typical China mash-up: next to the factory art complex is a real factory, then a half demolished building with an empty fountain out front where feral dogs roam, then a blasted wasteland, then a clutch of brand new high rises.

K bumps into a friend from Luxemburg who does reiki at a spa. I try not to hold this against her. I do not believe in Reiki (massaging the energies – yeah right) and I’m not sure I really believe in Luxemburg either. They whizz off to have lunch on the other side of town. Still, K has not been to bed. I assume that’s the last I’ll see of her today but no; she rings at seven to see if we want to go to a gig. Sure.

A trio of Chinese Ramones wannabes are squealing and thrashing guitars. They’re all got Beatles mop tops. One of K’s gay friends is telling me how he is going to dress as Barbarella for a drag performance. Last week the theme was cowgirls and Indians and he had a holster made and put a water pistol in it and filled the pistol with vodka and went round squirting his pistol in people’s mouths – can I imagine it? Yes I can.

K bounces up. It’s gone 10pm. I don’t want to ask her but by my calculation she hasn’t been to sleep now for 36 hours. She says that she’s going on to Attica, this fantastic new mega club where everyone is up for it. We, however, are not, and return to the hotel feeling old.