Bathed in the fluorescent glow of bright red, purple, and blue lights, a group of young and enthusiastic North Korean women there sang pop songs before a rapt audience of mainly Chinese men (in my two hours there, I saw maybe two female customers). Between songs, the performers sometimes left the stage to mingle with the crowd, chatting with the middle-aged male clientele. At one point they invited diners onto the stage for a particularly awkward performance.
This wasn’t a place you went to for the food. I paid too much for a beef dish that tasted like hot sauce; the pricey cold noodles were bland. But the chain is able to justify high prices because of the entertainment, renowned for both its energy and its, well, overall strangeness. The performers are government employees known for expressing their love of country using glow sticks.
came into the restaurant expecting to see gaudy totalitarian propaganda from a country whose leader routinely threatens to turn the US “to ashes.” Instead, I found that the performance and the waitstaff often came across as a source of cultural diplomacy. The restaurant workers didn’t speak Chinese well, but most of the songs they sang were classic Chinese songs, not North Korean ones. They performed many classic Chinese ballads from the ’70s and ’80s, and the Chinese customers were singing along. [...]
There is a paradox about this line of restaurants. They are designed to put on staggeringly eye-catching performances — the stage is awash in neon colors, the attire is garish, the performances are slightly manic, there are glowing props — and yet they officially prohibit photography. When I tried taking pictures, I was repeatedly chided by the waitresses, who came running over to stop me every time I took out my camera (which is why my hastily taken photos are so blurry). The combined effect of the visuals that draw you in and the ban on photography is that you feel you’re being let in on a secret.
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