Going bananas

Coco Banana, a popular nightspot, is the place in Beijing to find professional pole performers, a brawny cupid and a sinewy Egyptian pharaoh.

The club's medium-sized dance floor is packed on weekends, and even during the wee hours of some weekday mornings. The mostly Chinese crowd seethes to trance beats beneath constellations of disco balls and elaborate mechanized colored lights.

Coco's high-outlay layout is not unique among Beijing's nightlife offerings but is well assembled as a whole.