There are like a hundred things going through my head as the bouncer points what looks like a laser gun at my eye, and none of them have anything to do with clubbing. We weren’t even going to go in originally–the place looked way too fancy for what I was wearing/feeling. Plus the sign outside reads “private club”; there isn’t even an entrance, just a red carpet, a neon-lit podium and, like, a hundred guys in really nice suits. I start walking past their “you are not good enough to even look this way” deal, but after rounding the corner I hear the music and see party pics being projected onto the opposite wall a few stories up. Party pics being projected on a wall. OK, now I’m listening. It’s enough to make me stop in my tracks and go back. This was my first night in Hong Kong, and I decide it’s worth all the hoopla to check it out.

By the way, I didn’t fly to China to go clubbing. I went to see local boy Jasper Wong’s two-day, three-part art-event-slash-gallery opening called Pow Wow. They took the name of the Native American gathering because, well, it’s a gathering. People flew in from all over the world to take part, and the event is split into the Pow (art) events and the Wow (music) event. “It also just kind of looked nice–the letters and words,” says the ever-sheepish Jasper. Looking nice is an understatement. Even the invites were in leather envelopes with the event image pressed onto them. Nice touch. Jasper’s collaborator in the first art event is one young Wu Yue from France, who worked as motion director for Kid Cudi’s Day N Nite video. If you didn’t see that maybe you saw, oh I don’t know, the Lebron Nike Airmax artist series shoe featuring his illustrations. The music part of the event had DJ Verbal of m-flo and Teriyaki Boyz (who is also pals with a certain Kanye West). Do you see why I needed to get on a plane for this? What’s interesting is that Jasper only started putting the event together around the holidays, which is when I met him; he casually said in passing back then, “I’m doing this thing. You should come out.”

Skip ahead four months and I’m standing outside a club that’s way too fancy for me, preparing to be shot in the eye with a red laser. Maybe it was to see if I was on drugs. Maybe it was a retina scan to make sure I wasn’t on their 86 list. I was just happy they were inviting me to go up and check the place out even though I was wearing kicks. It’s only Wednesday and apparently this is the most happening spot in town. I learned later that it is a heavy locals club. I don’t know what that means until the weekend, when I’m drowning in streets that are First-Friday-esque, shut down and flooded with hoards of Europeans and Americans; the only real way to tell it’s China is all the Han character signs above our heads mixed in with uber nightclubs that have chic big-city names like Volar, Space Bar and Halo. Most of my over-the-top clubbie club experiences are a blur, with the art event being the most amazing thing I’ve been to in a long time. The area Jasper opened his gallery in is just outside of the Central District, where the arts and galleries are; so you could say he is singlehandedly expanding that area. Not too shabby for a quiet and humble illustrator from Kalani High School.

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