No one likes the person who, after a few drinks, thinks they’re on American Idol and front loads the song queue with Whitney Houston power ballads, maintaining a vice-like grip on the microphone. At least that’s my fear when I find myself in a karaoke bar, which rarely happens because I’m too embarrassed to suggest it. It’s about getting blitzed on $6 PBR-and-a-shot combos and not being mortified when you massacre “Baby One More Time.” In fact, someone who actually sings, or, heaven forbid, has the gall to find the harmony line a third above the melody, is a killjoy. Here’s the thing about karaoke in the States: It’s not really about singing. (Some proof: Here’s me singing Mika’s 2007 earworm “Grace Kelly.”) After college, I bounced around a few post-grad groups, but in the end, I resorted to singing YouTube karaoke into my computer microphone, alone in my room like it was some shameful secret. In the bizarro world of undergraduate musical extracurriculars, we were exceedingly cool, or at least thought we were. There were no impromptu a cappella battles, but we did roll on campus in matching black-and-white hoodies and almost exclusively attended a cappella parties, where it wasn’t uncommon to break into song after a few cups of Everclear-spiked Kool-Aid. Confession: My identity as an early adult revolved around a membership in one of my university’s exclusive a cappella groups, which, admittedly, fulfilled more than a few Pitch Perfect stereotypes. In truth, I’d been looking forward to our karaoke night a little. But we were meeting Shanghai friends, so I blotted my face dry and stepped into a pair of heels. I’d buried my face into my nonplussed husband’s chest and wept warm tears into his T-shirt. And yet, just hours before our arrival at Taipei Chun K, I’d felt the warm terror of regret burbling in my throat. It all felt very daring and romantic at the start, and I’d fantasized that perhaps, under my nervy exterior, I was secretly an adventurer. I’d been laid off from my job as an editor in New York City in February, and my itchy-footed husband, Jon, proposed the trip.
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![quarter after one karaoke quarter after one karaoke](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U4j8UroIWqU/sddefault.jpg)
I’m about a quarter of the way through a six-month trek across the Eastern Hemisphere, a very out-of-character life pivot that I’m now beginning to question.
![quarter after one karaoke quarter after one karaoke](https://gonola.com/images/2018/04/RT_CatsMeow2.jpg)
It’s where I find myself one Sunday evening in May, feeling terribly sober as I’m nearly sideswiped by a pair of giggling Shanghai girls teetering arm-in-arm down the dimly-lit hallway. Such is the scene at the Dapuqiao station branch of Taipei Chun K, a chain of cavernous, multi-story karaoke halls kitted out with blinking LED lights, shimmering disco balls, and faux marble floors. By nightfall, Shanghai’s karaoke palaces are glittering spectacles of neon and chrome, teeming with drunken hordes screeching Chinese love songs into the early morning hours.