Chen has joined the swelling ranks of mostly young and moneyed Chinese finding solace from the stress, and relishing in the glamour, of the country's fast-paced modernization in its emerging nightlife scene.

"I like it because it's loud, crowded and exciting," Chen says. "I can be fashionable but don't have to care what anyone thinks and can act a little crazy if I want."

China's burgeoning nightlife scene - largely yet confined to its major metropolises - is still relatively young. Many industry insiders attribute its rapid development in recent years to a growth spurt marking the end of its turbulent teens.

Beijing's scene was born 17 years ago near Gongti Dongmen, when American Frank Siegel poured the first drink at Frank's Place, the city's first non-hotel bar. The nightspot was packed with an exclusively expatriate crowd who settled tabs with fistfuls of foreign exchange certificates, as non-nationals weren't then allowed to use Chinese currency.

"When I opened Frank's Place, it was a slam dunk," the 51-year-old from Newcastle, Pennsylvania says. "We got busy and stayed busy for about five years until there were other options."

The success of Frank's Place opened the capital's floodgates to a slew of new watering holes. Starting with Club Nightman's 1994 opening, nightclubs began popping up around the city.

Beijinger Jack Zhu, who runs the country's biggest nightlife website, clubzone.cn, with a membership of more than 260,000, says that when he returned from Canada in 2003, there were two mega-clubs - defined as larger than 1,000 sq m - in Beijing and two in Shanghai. Today, there are 19 in the capital, in addition to several smaller e-clubs and about 400 bars.

"Now, it's an industry," Zhu says.

Increasingly, the outside world is taking notice. In the past few years, all of the World Top 10 DJs, including Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk and Carl Cox, have visited the country, and many have by now made several trips.

"China has been put on the club map of the world," says Zhang Youdai, the 21-year scene veteran hailed as the "Godfather of Chinese DJs" and the first Chinese DJ featured in Rolling Stone.

When Cox came in 2006, he told China Daily: "China is booming with fabrics, construction, cranes and new cars, and the music industry and club culture is growing with it, too.

"There is a group of Chinese people now with high disposable incomes who want to dress up and go to nightclubs that play this type of music China is a happening place, and that's why I'm here."