I had never heard of KTV. Although I’d seen the big neon signs advertising this Chinese equivalent of karaoke many times, it just never registered. I’d been here in Nanjing a couple of months when, one night, cutting through a small landing in the basement of one of the nicest hotels in town, a colleague and I saw a handful of beautiful girls dressed in little more than negligee standing against the wall, near several unmarked doors. Explaining to me, with a cynical chuckle, that they were massage parlor attendants, my friend then went on to tell me something about KTV. According to him, there were two kinds: the one where people get together to sing songs and have a few drinks, and the other kind that either is or isn’t a front for prostitution, depending on what your definition of “is” is. This didn’t really surprise me. Nanjing, like everywhere else, has its share of vice, obvious to anyone inquisitive enough to ask about the seedy, pink-lit, late night barbershops that are in almost every neighborhood here in the city. Although neither variety appealed to me, over time I came to understand just how popular the phenomenon is. Students would mention it to me. I’d see middle-aged couples going into and out of entertainment centers. And one Sunday afternoon, I passed a crowd in the street watching a pudgy little man, dressed in black and wearing a pinkie ring and earring, who crooned a pop song into a microphone that he thoughtfully held in both of his hands. Concentrating. Holding the key. Keeping the time. If he was having fun, it was the kind that a jazzman has when doing a ballad. When, about a month ago, a friend suggested that we try it out, I had become curious. We rented a little room with a couch, a TV, two mikes, and a console to select some music. Copacabana, Blame It On The Bossa Nova, Knock Three Times and many other shoe store classics were butchered but I didn’t care. I was hooked. We had booked an hour but ended up staying for three. A couple of weeks later, we were downtown and decided to try a new place with different songs. Seeing a huge KTV lit up on the side of a high-rise, we walked in and took an elevator up. When the door opened we were greeted by a heavily made up hostess standing with her back to some other heavily made up hostesses lounging in the lobby. Walking out a few minutes later, I asked what the name of the place was: The Pink Lady. We tried Party World across the street. Seeing a fat kid in the lobby with his mom and dad, we stayed. In the relative quiet between songs, I could hear the music from other rooms seeping in along with the voices of unseen singers that sometimes sounded as if they were being tortured. By the time I left that night I had come to the firm conclusion that it was impossible for anyone to sound good at this. So when some other friends invited me out with them last week, I looked forward to croaking and joking my way through a few tunes and having a couple of drinks. I did do this. And they did, too. The only difference was that they didn’t croak. They sounded really good. It was a nice time, but on a duet I trashed Lemon Tree so badly that I totally lost my partner by the beginning of the second verse. The Banana Boat Song was different from Harry Belafonte’s, so we had to cut that one, and It’s Not Unusual was even more of a disaster than when Tom Jones does it. I had the vague, uneasy sensation that I was stomping through the KTV flowerbed and then pissing all over it. As I nervously waited for the endless, increasingly tense intro of Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone to finish, I found myself thoughtfully holding the mike in both of my hands and concentrating…just like that pudgy little dude dressed in black had. My friends had never heard the original so I think that I saved some face. But it doesn’t really matter. I’ve been humming that intro every day since then.