Nightlife in China: Bars, Clubs and How Drinking Actually Works

Published 2026-10-31 · 71Asia Tours

Somewhere around the third night in any Chinese city, dinner ends at nine, the hotel lobby goes quiet, and you start wondering what people here actually do after dark. The answer is: quite a lot. The going-out scene in mainland cities has grown fast over the last decade, and it is friendlier to foreigners than you might expect. You just need to know where the crowds gather and how the unwritten rules work.

First, the legal basics

The legal drinking age is 18, though nobody cards you at a convenience store. Beer there costs 3 to 10 yuan and nobody blinks if you drink it walking down the street. Bars and clubs are a different story: upmarket clubs in Beijing and Shanghai increasingly scan passports at the door, so carry yours if a big night is possible. There is no last call in the American sense. Small bars close when business dies, often between midnight and 2am; clubs run until 4am or later. One hard rule worth respecting: drink-driving enforcement is strict and the checkpoints are real. DiDi is cheap, so the choice is easy.

Where the night happens

Chinese nightlife clusters hard. There is rarely one bar here and another there; there is a district, and everyone goes to the district. Learn its name on your first evening and the whole city opens up.

Beijing: Sanlitun remains the centre of gravity, with the big clubs near Worker's Stadium a short ride away.
Shanghai: Julu Road and the streets around it, low bars spilling onto the pavement, plus rooftop bars in the towers near the Bund.
Chengdu: Jiuyanqiao, a strip of bars along the river that gets loud after 11pm.
Chongqing: Nine Streets (Jiujie) in Nan'an, plus hotel rooftop bars where the skyline does half the work.
Xi'an: Defu Lane near the South Gate, a compact lane of small pubs and folk-music bars.
Zhangjiajie and Lhasa: thin. Expect hotel bars and a few traveller pubs, nothing more.

Craft beer and rooftops

The craft beer wave reached China properly around 2015 and never left. Slow Boat in Beijing and Boxing Cat in Shanghai now have imitators in every big city, pouring pints at 40 to 60 yuan. Rooftop cocktails in hotel bars run 60 to 120 yuan, which feels steep next to street food prices until you compare it with the same drink in Madrid or Los Angeles.

Clubs and the table system

Big Chinese clubs work differently from Western ones. Cover charge is rare, but the business runs on reserved tables and bottle service. If you walk in without a table you can usually still dance near the DJ, but the seats and the sparklers belong to whoever booked. Peak time starts around 11pm, not 10. If a promoter on WeChat offers your group a free table, it is often genuine; clubs import atmosphere this way. Just agree on what is included before you sit down.

KTV, livehouses and other options

KTV, private-room karaoke, is the other half of a night out. Rooms are rented by the hour, the bill is split between friends, and drinks arrive via phone order. It is far more fun than it sounds even when you cannot read the songbook, because the English catalogues are bigger than you would think. The livehouse scene, small venues hosting indie bands and folk singers, is also worth a look: Mao Livehouse has branches in most major cities, and the jazz basements of Shanghai still hold their own. In Chengdu, small folk bars with one guitarist and forty listeners are practically a genre of their own.

What it costs

Convenience store beer: 3 to 10 yuan.
Draft beer in a normal bar: 25 to 45 yuan.
Cocktail in an independent bar: 50 to 90 yuan.
Cocktail at a hotel rooftop: 60 to 120 yuan.
Club table with bottles: from about 800 yuan, split between the group.

Cash is pointless here. Your Alipay or WeChat Pay QR code covers everything from the corner store to the club, and the trendier bars usually have an English menu or a photo-based ordering screen.

Baijiu, toasts and staying out of trouble

Sooner or later someone will toast you with baijiu, the clear sorghum spirit that runs 40 to 60 percent alcohol. "Ganbei" literally means "dry cup", but you are allowed to sip; a friendly "suibian" (whatever suits you) with your glass mostly full gets a laugh rather than offence. What you should not do is let a stranger in a bar keep refilling your glass while you look away. Drink-spiking exists here as anywhere, and the tea-ceremony and art-student scams around tourist areas still catch travellers every month. Decline politely and walk on.

Getting home is the easiest part. Metro systems shut down around 11pm, but DiDi works at any hour and the taxi stands near bar districts stay busy until closing time.

Hong Kong, Macao and Taipei

All three run on the same 18-plus rule, but the scenes differ. Hong Kong's Lan Kwai Fong is the region's loudest street party on Friday and Saturday nights, with happy hours in Soho earlier in the evening; prices run roughly double the mainland. Macao is quieter: hotel bars with casino lighting, a few taverns around Old Taipa, and bottle shops if you want to drink by the waterfront. Taipei is the most relaxed of the three, with craft beer bars, convenience store beer drunk in the park, and most places closing by 2am.

One final note from experience: altitude changes how alcohol hits you. In Lhasa, the second beer lands like a fourth. Take the first night easy, find your district, and the rest of the trip sorts itself out.

Written by the team at 71Asia Tours, a China-based tour operator with licensed Spanish- and English-speaking guides. Browse all tours · About us · Our guides · Reviews · FAQ