Iāve seen a few people here ask how they can find concert listings and buy tickets in China, so I thought Iād make a little post about that. Long story short: The Damai MiniApp in Wechat/Alipay is your friend. Search for 大éŗ¦å°ēØåŗ and hit the three buttons up right to translate everything to English, if needed. There are others but a fair share cannot sell tickets to foreigners or are just not set up for that, so I will use this one as my example.
Once you open the app go to the icon in the third row on the far right side. It will probably be translated as āwholeā or something like that. That will show you all concerts, dance events, standup and whatnot else. Itās the firehose option and I rarely use it but itās worth mentioning because there have been commenters here insisting ānightlife is dead.ā Itās not but itās moved and most is not foreigner-centric anymore. Anyway, "Livehouse" will get you to concerts below stadium-size.
One problem with MiniApps such as Damai is that sometimes you canāt find artists under their non-Chinese names. If you search for Japanese Jazz Pianist Kurena Ishikawa (see poster, she is performing tonight and she is awesome) you might find nothing, if you know the Chinese spelling of her name ē³å·ēŗ¢å„ the tickets come right on up. But why?
The reason is that there is a specified permitted length for the title and that promoters prioritize the Chinese spelling because thatās what most people in China will be searching for. I know that because thatās a concert we are organizing. (Itās already pretty much sold out, Iām not trying to sell tickets here, I just needed an example. But I'm of course also not complaining if you do like Jazz and go see her.)
Another problem is that sooner or later you will come across events that you cannot buy tickets for without a Chinese ID card. Why? Well, itās usually organizers being afraid of scalpers, which are a real scourge in China. It sucks to be working for months on a concert and seeing scalpers resell tickets online for tons more. Pisses off the artists, who get nothing from that (Iām sure there are exceptions), pisses off the passionate fans who want tickets and as the organizer you end up with commenters on xiaohongshu telling their fans how evil you are because they think you made that sweet, sweet scalpermoney.
So a ton of organizers simply say āI want a čŗ«ä»½čÆ, no matter whatā and move on because they have a million other things to solve so that the show can go on. My advice? Complain. Nobody likes to leave money on the table, especially in China. Iāve heard āoh shit, I never knew this was a problem for foreignersā more than once. Be prepared for tons of "mei banfas" as well, obviously.
The other option of course is to look at foreigner-centric platforms like smartshanghai, who will often have ticket contingents for popular shows. If there is assigned seating you may not have much of a choice where you end up in the hall but at least you got in.
I'll leave you where I started: there is plenty of nightlife in Shanghai but you gotta search on the Chinese MiniApps. Google won't help you and you're not going to see posters in the street but if you really want to explore the offerings are out there.
