On Tuesday and Thursday nights at the Long Bar, one is treated to a "Fashion Show," an hour-long performance not unlike the cabaret scene at the close of La Dolce Vita. As in Fellini's film, the Fashion Show's highlight is a file of bathingsuit-clad women marching to and fro holding enormous beach balls aloft. Equally surreal are the ranks of Western businessmen and middle-aged expats, often drunk, horny, and full of colonial bravado. Added to the mix is a sliver group of McKinnon and his ilk—a cadre of Internet entrepreneurs, reflective of the new Shanghai, where the word "Internet" tumbles from the lips of international bankers and sampan pilots alike. Located adjacent to the Ritz Carlton in the modern Shanghai Centre, the ten-yard long, dark wood bar is a convenient—and because of the Fashion Show—attractive watering hole.
McKinnon is one of many Americans in their late twenties with dot com fever in the Far East. This crop of ambitious, well-scrubbed Americans stands in stark relief to most Long Bar patrons. "You have the engineer type. He works for GM or Boeing, and doesn't give a shit about China. He likes the Long Bar because he can drink his beer, eat his hamburger, talk loud with other engineers, and maybe even get lucky with one of the local 'professional girls,'" says McKinnon.
The semi-weekly Fashion Show is unique to Shanghai. It consists of between six and eight Chinese women modeling clothes to the frenetic beat of outdated American pop music; Madonna remains very popular. The women parade through the long and narrow space between the bar and a row of tables, performing synchronized dance steps and tearing away one outfit after another. Prototypical Ugly Americans, often sporting bad comb-overs and short-sleeved dress shirts, spank together their palms and call out "Yeah, baby, yeah," as the models at last strip down to modest one-piece bathing suits.
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