By Alec Ash
Go inside the north gate of the Worker’s Stadium. Enter Club Mix. Turn left, push through crowds of the beautiful and the desperate and go downstairs into the club’s cavernous basement. Toward the front, next to the dancefloor with the big screen. There – off to one side, on your left. Those two marble tables with six giant bottles of Chivas Regal on display, alongside two bottles of rosé on ice, platters of fruit, jugs of whisky mixed with green tea, and cocktails in science-lab style flasks with out-sized straws. That’s right, the booth with ten girls in short dresses and lipstick, pouting into their smart phones. Now look at the short Chinese guy sitting in the throne-like chair in the middle of them all with the bowtie on. That’s Cirl.
You would be forgiven for thinking Cirl would have to be a fu'erdai a “rich second generation,” to be king of this harem of pretty ladies. He’s not – it’s just that his game is really fu*king good. Cirl is a professional Pick Up Artist (PUA), and tonight he is a peacock on display. His hair is slicked back and spiked with gel like some poisonous deep sea creature. His earrings glisten like magpie’s treasures. Tucked behind them, hang a pair of backwards-facing sunglasses. His white shirt is so crisp you can feel the iron’s edge. His eyes, thick with eyeliner, are venus fly traps. He is doing a magic trick for the prey next to him, tapping and swiping at digital cards on his phone app (“Magic Princess”), to her amazement.
“Chinese girls accept approaches from strangers less easily”
Cirl is part of a small new PUA group in Beijing known either as PUACirl or more simply as “Bad Boys” (huainanhai). He is 22, a music graduate from Hunan province and his ‘thing’ is magic and sleight of hand. He’s also pretty good at drinking games, such as the shaizi dice game that is on the table and keeping his companion well lubricated. Nearby, his partner-in-crime Chen Guang, also 22, is talking to another girl. Chen Guang’s specialty is psychology. He became a PUA after he was dumped by a girl in high school, an event that led him to begin researching the mysteries of the female mind. He has a broad, easy smile and is an infectious conversationalist.
18-year-old student, Wang Xupang, begins his "male God" fashion transformation
Also in the booth, besides your humble correspondent, are two other lucky guys. One is 18 and looks like he should be in school. The other is chubby and ill at ease. They are both paying RMB4800 for the privilege, as part of Cirl and Chen Guang’s three-day course called “Becoming a Male God.” This is the first night – an opportunity to test their skills with the ladies in a live situation and watch how their senseis operate.
A-Du (“the fatty,” as Chen Guang uncharitably calls him) is 23 and from Beijing. “I came here to change myself,” he says, by way of justification for buying into the course. “I want the PUAs to teach me how to talk with girls and change my behavior … they have more information about what girls want.” But he’s not here just to be a player. He wants to find a wife. A-Du (who asked us to use this pseudonym) has three ex-girlfriends – one is married, another is engaged and the third he’s lost track of. “Chinese girls want a guy to have an apartment, a car and money,” he says. “I have no apartment, no car, no money.” Instead, he figures, he can find a girl who will marry him if he has game.
Pick Up Artistry is a relatively new scene in urban China, but it is growing fast. Cirl and Chen Guang are two among many PUAs in Beijing and there are others in cities from Shanghai to Shenzhen. Websites serve as compendiums of wisdom and forums for discussion, most notably paoxue.com (literally “pick up studies”), which was founded in 2008 by a pioneer PUA called Pan Sheng or “Cold Love”, and has more than 300,000 registered users. Their techniques come out of the broader PUA scene in America and Europe (they’ve all read The Game), but are adapted for China.
“Girls accept approaches from strangers less easily” in China, says Chen Guang, although he admits that this is changing generationally with the post-90s age group of urban children more comfortable with a hook-up culture. And it’s not just a more sexually conservative set of customs that changes the rules of engagement. “Chinese girls are materialistic,” he continues, and many go to clubs like Mix in order to find a rich guy (“it’s like work”). Part of what they practice, and teach, is “displaying value,” which comes close to outright dishonest pretense. Those six huge bottles of Chivas on the table – one was for drinking, the other five only borrowed for show.
“I want the PUAs to teach me how to talk with girls and change my behavior … they have more information about what girls want”
There are risks besides rejection. If you get a reputation as a playboy (huahuagongzi) in China, Chen Guang explained, it can ruin you – the perennial problem of losing face. Pick Up Artist is not a term that the majority of Chinese people are familiar with, and skirt chasers are seen as bad elements. But the biggest difference for the PUA scene in China is what can be at stake in a country with an estimated 34 million more men than women. For those “bare branches” (guanggun), the pressure to find a partner is huge, and pick up techniques aren't just for fun.
Cirl’s “Becoming a Male God” course takes advantage of this. The first paragraph of its marketing materials is an oddly dry run-down of population statistics. “According to the 6th (2011) national census,” it reads, “the male population [in China] is 686,852,572, or 51.27 percent; the female population is 652,872,280, or 48.73 percent.” That’s 105 men for every 100 woman, the blurb continues, switching font color to red for emphasis. Also in red, the statistic that there are 23,150,000 more unmarried men than unmarried women. This is where the sales pitch comes in – with competition this fierce, your game had better be good.
For Cirl’s two new protégés, the transformation has already begun. The first day of the three-day course was devoted to a comprehensive make-over, with the help of two stylists. For 18-year-old Wang Xupang, his tutors told him he looked too much like a student. Instead they shaved his head, and kitted him out in shiny boots, trousers hitched up to mid-shin (nothing like flashing some ankle to make the girls go crazy), a black t-shirt with a flower motif, and a baseball cap set at a hip-hop angle that Chen Guang and the stylists painstakingly altered and discussed.
Cirl and Chen Guang go on the prowl in Sanlitun
A-Du was a trickier proposition. He was awkwardly big boned, with an uneven pudding bowl mop of hair (“all hair but no style,” according to Chen Guang), thick frame glasses and wore a t-shirt and shorts. First, off with the glasses. Next, they shaved one side of his head, sweeping what remained over to the left in a curtain and tinged it red. Finally, after three hours trying on clothes in Sanlitun, they settled on the outfit – an expensive-looking white v-neck baring his chest, with silky black trousers and smart red leather shoes.
“It’s not comfortable,” complained the newly minted ladykiller.
Chen Guang clicked his disapproval. “Why do you think girls wear high heels and tight dresses when they go out?” he chided. “Do you think it's comfortable? No. It’s for attraction.” He paused, checking that his message had sunk in, and pointed at A-Du's get-up. “It’s the same.”
Looking the part only gets you halfway. Day two is devoted to technique, from how to approach a girl (“from an angle”) to the art of chatting her up, tested again that night in a different club. Other valuable information imparted includes where to hunt for girls in the first place, grading the four main possibilities – on the street, in clubs, on messaging apps, and in your social circle – according to quality, difficulty, efficiency and “potential for follow up.” (The dating app Momo is, unsurprisingly, a favorite among PUAs.) And finally on day three, they learn the mysterious but essential skill of “displaying value,” before being released into the world as “male gods”.
But for now, A-Du and Wang Xupang are untrained and out in the field, with beautiful ladies sat either side of them on Club Mix’s leather couch. Cirl is otherwise occupied, and has left them unchaperoned. A-Du leans over to the lady sitting next to him, who is buried deep in her phone, and hovers there for a moment like a reluctant mosquito, before shouting in her ear:
“DO YOU COME HERE OFTEN?”
She gives him the faintest of nods, without looking up or breaking rhythm as she thumbs away at her oversized screen. A-Du retreats and pours himself a glass of Chivas and tea. If there’s one game he knows how to play, it’s the waiting game.
Find out more about the Bad Boys PUA group, and sign up for the next "Becoming a Male God" course, here: www.puahome.com. You can also follow Cirl's public WeChat account by adding the WeChat ID "puacirl".
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