I first heard about .TAG through a friend, an extreme sports presenter who hosts every autumn in Chengdu—the capital city of Sichuan in central China. There's this club, he told me, on top of a 21-storey skyscraper that's run by a hard-ass 30-something single mum and stays open for three days at a time.

When he found .TAG five years ago, the club was scarcely a year old, and he'd heard about it through a co-host of his the season before. Intrigued, he began asking strangers if they'd heard of such a place. He was met mostly with confusion, until eventually someone wrote down some Chinese characters on a piece of paper and told him to show it to a taxi driver.

.TAG occupies the top floor of the 21-storey Poly Centre in Chengdu

But searching for a nondescript skyscraper in the country's sixth-biggest business capital is like looking for a needle in a haystack. To get to .TAG back then, you’d have to go round the back of a 7-Eleven, onto a desolate street, and into the marble lobby of a high-rise building. The enormous entrance, at least 20-feet high, complete with a circular front desk and decadent chandelier, would normally be all but deserted—bar the snoozing security guard, rocked back in his chair, eyes closed, breathing heavily.

At the back of the lobby, and through a narrow corridor, barely wider than an ordinary door, and about 60 metres long, you’d turn left past a wall of metal mailboxes that gave way to an elevator. Here you might come across an eclectic crowd of people waiting, each destined for a different floor—perhaps some kids playing video games, an old man hunched over with groceries, an elderly woman clutching her post or a group of streetwear-clad hype beasts. At level 21, exiting the elevator into yet another eerie corridor, and following the faint sound of bass—through two huge curtains like the entrance to an industrial meat fridge—, you’d arrive at .TAG.

The lobby of the Poly Centre

Founded in 2014 by a group of Chinese and Dutch DJs and business minds, .TAG sits to the left of the elevator on the 21st floor of Chengdu's Poly Centre, a large property development in the city's rapidly growing Jinjiang District. It's small, holding about 200 people at full capacity, and spread across two floors. The double-height main room is downstairs and the smaller Hidden Bar sits above, accessible via a mezzanine walkway, which plays host to more ambient, housey sets and deep drunken conversations. The club's name stands for "To Another Galaxy," a nod to both the escapism it offers and its sky-high location. It's known among the city's party people as the "it" spot, and it's now solely owned and managed by 38-year-old Ellen Zhang, a Chengdu native and one of the club's founders.

In the six years since its opening, .TAG has had its ups, and more than its fair share of downs—namely in the form of sudden, prolonged government-enforced closures, which has led to both financial strain and uncertainty in an already uncertain Chinese clubbing landscape. The outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan at the end of last year, and subsequent pandemic, is only one of such closures.

.TAG founder Ellen Zhang by the elevator to the club

The first time I went to .TAG was in October 2019. It was a Thursday, Halloween, and German DJ Henning Baer was booked to play for a third time. I'd met Ellen for dinner beforehand, at a vegan Tibetan hot-pot place that came with high praise from Nicolas Endlicher (AKA MCMLXXXV) of Herrensauna, and had a couple of drinks at Yi Tong, Ellen's new cafe-slash-record store concept which was set to open the following evening. I'd already spoken to Ellen on the phone and over WeChat, but she was even better in person: a five-foot-three badass with a buzzcut and a clear command of Chengdu's club scene.

Hakka born and raised, (hailing from Chengdu), Ellen is undoubtedly a people person, and though her haircut is a recent development, she's rightly earned herself a longstanding reputation for being a boss. She introduced me to some of her crew: Hao, founder of fashion concept store Sihe Four, and one of .TAG's resident DJs, magnetic not only in his striking and symmetrical beauty—poker straight hair past his shoulders, a perfect moustache and armfuls of tattoos—but his warmth; as well as Belgian-born DJ Aymen and New Zealander, Kristen (otherwise known as Kaishandao), who were grappling with go-pros and aux cords, setting up for the inaugural broadcast on Chengdu Community Radio.

What became clear to me within the first five minutes was the feeling of family that holds .TAG, and all of its side projects, together. Yi Tong shares an entrance with DJ school 33 Studio, a huge glass-edged box filled with hardware belonging to Chengdu techno royalty Xiaolong, who often plays live sets at .TAG. Over the course of the evening, various characters wandered in and out: Ellen's mum, DJs, friends and coworkers, all while Ellen's four-year old son ran around the open-air walkway that links her apartment, bar and record store on the rooftop of the 12-storey SOHO building.

My journey to .TAG was different from my friend's, and fortunately a lot more straightforward, necessitating only a short walk across a back-alley car mechanics to get there from the SOHO building. The area has changed a lot since its opening, but while the street—now populated with several late-night food joints and an Irish pub—felt busy, the Poly Centre itself was all but deserted. No crowds of people standing by the elevator, no one loitering in the corridors, just the security guard in the lobby, snoozing. The building felt huge and deserted, and walking down the glassy polished floors of its narrow halls is like nothing I've ever done to get to a club—it's a far cry from the dank basements and post-industrial settings of clubs in London, Berlin and Tbilisi. When we arrived at the 21st floor, there was life. Groups of club-goers congregated in the corridor sipping beers and laughing, their backs pressed against the windows that look out over Chengdu's skyline.

Inside, Ellen quickly rushed off to get drinks, while a kind stranger paid for my cloakroom via WeChat scanner. I arrived when Hao's set had already started, and he was commanding the crowd with a blend of moody industrial and melodic techno. The energy at .TAG was infectious. The crowd, the majority of whom (as always) were local to Chengdu, were unpretentious, friendly and giving 3 AM energy before the clock struck midnight. "The girls party the hardest," Hao told me matter of factly. "It's always the girls and the gays left at the closing." One such religious raver is Cora—former model and actress, now Ellen's right-hand woman and one of .TAG's resident DJs—who adopted me immediately, taking me to the bar, scheming, trying to decide at what point in the night she was going to take Henning's shirt off. "He never plays topless," she giggled, "but last time I made him take it off. Look at him! I had to. The gay guys loved it."

Chengdu's techno scene is considered a safe space for the city's LGBTQ+ community, and it's cultivated and nurtured by those within it. "I would say the parties here are pretty gay," says Aymen. "I don't know how or why that is exactly, but we all feel safe on the dance floor." Hao and Kristen told me the same thing. Kristen introduced me to her girlfriend, who's a part of .TAG's extended family, and though I didn't get to meet Hao's boyfriend, a paper artist now based in Beijing, I'm shown a scattering of his intricate 3D sculptures, which he's custom-made for past .TAG parties.

From top to bottom: The view of Chengdu's skyline at sunrise from the 21st floor of the Poly Centre; Yi Tong; Aymen and Cora, resident DJs at .TAG; Kristen, AKA Kaishandao; The crowd at .TAG

Ten years ago, there "wasn't really anything" for underground clubbers in Chengdu, according to Ellen, who spent the best part of her early 20s travelling to Beijing and Shanghai to party at clubs like the now permanently closed White Rabbit, which in its heyday Ellen remembers hosted the likes of Nick Höppner and Carlos Gibbs. "That club always had very good music," says Ellen. "But Chengdu was different—that kind of underground didn't really exist."

Back then, the city's best answer to its Eastern counterparts was Xiongmao (AKA Panda Club)—a prolific party venue that pandered to all, booking big-name electronic DJs (who would often stop by for a drink at Ellen's bar before their sets) but also playing everything from hip-hop to rock. "I met so many DJs through that club," she says. "At that time, it was really the only place in Chengdu for us ravers." But despite its popularity among self-professed party animals like Ellen, Panda Club's tenure lasted just three years. "They had a lot of problems," Ellen explained. "They were opening and closing the whole time. It was a beautiful big space, but the scene was too small." Panda Club existed in three different locations, with its first forced closure owing to drug problems. When the owners opened up at a third and final location, the fun lasted one night only; due to noise complaints from a neighbouring school, the club closed permanently.

The closure of Panda Club meant Ellen and her friends lost their go-to party place, and despite the buzz of bars and music venues cropping up in Chengdu, nothing could quite fill the void. Ellen's own bar—a rooftop spot set against the city's skyline accessed through the lobby of the Super 8 Motel—was the next best thing. Steeped in an ambient red glow and nestled on the far corner of SOHO building's top floor, the already popular Hakka Bar became notorious among stoners, NOS-lovers and the neighbourhood's party people.

"After Panda closed, Hakka was the only place for the ravers to go," says Ellen, who soon began booking local DJs and hosting small events at the bar on weekends. But owing to its size and proximity to neighbours, Hakka Bar wasn't the answer to the hole in Chengdu's growing techno scene. "It wasn't a club," says Ellen. "It's not really a party place." Open every evening from 5 PM to the early hours of the morning, Hakka Bar soon began drawing in crowds—and noise levels—that were too much for its four small walls and courtyard.

Bottom: Seafood crew with Kyle Geiger

China isn't exactly a place built for clubs. Drugs are—technically—punishable by death (though this is very rarely enforced), music is censored and the internet and social media is highly controlled. But the hedonistic spirit of raving is—contrary to what the news so often perpetuates—not one that's incongruous with Chinese culture. Dancing happens in every park and public square; Guangchuang Wu, otherwise known as square dancing, is practiced by over 100 million people in China, particularly retired and middle-aged women. On my ten-minute journey home from .TAG, I passed a group of women doing dance aerobics, another crowd practising tai chi and a third fighting with swords. The feeling of activity, community and sheer joy I witness as I stroll through People's Park, filled with men playing Mahjong, old couples and hoards of people singing and waving flags, is a stark contrast to the image of cold, repressed China that's so often painted by Western media.

Nevertheless, club culture is not something that has typically flourished in China, particularly in Ellen's youth. "When my friends and I would travel, we'd look at the scene and see it working," she says. "But not in China. Not in Chengdu." Panda's closure—the near-constant run-ins with the police, the incessant noise complaints, the financial losses—embodied everything Chengdu's techno scene was up against. But the community Panda built paved the way for the next generation. "After meeting so many DJs, so many people who were in this world and knew it and loved it, we felt like if there was ever a time that something like this could work, it was now."

And so .TAG was born. Ellen and her partners secured the double-storey lot on the 21st floor of the Poly Centre, which opened only a matter of months before .TAG did. Rent was cheap, the views were unbeatable, and the location was a stone's throw away from the SOHO building that housed Hakka Bar. Admittedly, .TAG's founders had no experience in opening a club ("we were a group of DJs and party people"), but they knew Chengdu. They'd watched Panda Club's rise and fall, and had a good idea of where to tread carefully.

"We didn't know everything," Ellen says. "But we were smart, and we thought a lot about the club space and its identity. We spent half a year thinking about what we could do and what the .TAG style would be—how to market it, how to bring in the right crowd, how to get nice people to come. It's a party place, of course, but we wanted it to bring in cool people who understood what we were trying to do."

Fortunately, getting a small crowd was easy, thanks to Ellen's core group of friends and the solidarity of the pre-existing scene, but getting the word out about .TAG beyond the Hakka Bar crew was harder. Elsewhere, promoters use social media to drum up hype about new parties and venues, but in China things are very different, owing to what's known as The Great Firewall of China.

"In Europe, a club can just post the lineup," Ellen says, "or make a poster. In China, most people don't understand this music. They don't know who your DJ is, and they can't just Google them, so we need a lot of information to show people what we do." Downloading YouTube videos and Mixcloud sets via VPN and translating artist bios into Chinese, Ellen's team used pretty much any approach they could think of to get their message out there. "The first year, we didn't do it so professionally," she says, "but we were still getting people to come. For the local people, .TAG was very special—they had never seen any club like this. There were other underground spots, sure—bars and clubs, but they all looked a little bit hippyish, not this electronic industrial vibe with lights working with the music."

Before long, other clubs began cropping up in Poly, joining .TAG and the original bar-slash-club, Here We Go, that preceded it. In the daytime, the Poly Centre was home to office workers and businessmen, but after dark, it drew a different crowd, party-hopping from one floor to another. "It became this magical building in Chengdu," Ellen says. "If you wanted to hear hip-hop, you'd go to the 19th floor, if you wanted rock and roll, the tenth, if you wanted an afterparty, the 16th."

Kristen says this hedonistic heyday was often close to carnage. "The halls were lined with people inhaling balloons. The elevator was always so packed that you'd just have to pray you didn't plummet into oblivion. There were fights, but there was no security. I once saw Ellen drag a guy out by his collar."

As the Poly Centre got more popular, so did its parties. The good times were not without negative repercussions. Noise complaints and fights became more frequent. "The place became famous in China in a very negative way," says Ellen. "People were sharing videos on social media showing laughing gas, drugs and sexual harassment."

Meanwhile in Beijing, China's government was in flux. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party and effectual president of China, had come into power in 2013, but it wasn't until four years after his inauguration that Chengdu's underground, and the Poly Centre, began to feel the tremors of change.

In the summer of 2017, responding to extremely high levels of pollution in China, Xi Jinping's government ordered the Central Environmental Protection committee to investigate water, air and noise levels throughout the country. When the time came for them to visit Chengdu, the city's local authorities responded in panic and shut the Poly Centre down. "We didn't know why they were coming," Ellen said. "Before it was never like this. But they worried—they didn't know how to control this building. If the government comes from Beijing and there's clubs and bars and drugs and noise, they don't know what will happen. But if everything is quiet, they have no problem." And so .TAG, along with every other establishment in Poly, closed, with little inkling as to when, or if, they'd ever be allowed to reopen.

In the interim, Ellen poured her energy into communicating with those in charge and convincing Chengdu authorities of .TAG's cultural and community value. "I had no idea what was happening," Ellen says. "So I was just waiting, and trying to make the local government like us. They didn't know what we were doing, they just knew that we were loud. So I bought 20 USBs from the internet and copied some really nice music onto them, and then I went into the government office and gave them to everyone. I went to talk to them and I said, 'OK, this is the music we're playing, this is what we do.'" Somehow, it paid off. After two months, .TAG was allowed to reopen.

Ellen's efforts to build and sustain a good rapport with the police have proved to be imperative, ultimately allowing .TAG to be the last club standing in the Poly, while all others were eventually forced to close. "We try our best to work with the government and the police," Ellen said. That primarily means cracking down on drugs and controlling the crowd. Though there are people at .TAG who take drugs, Ellen's policy is zero tolerance, and if you're caught consuming any illicit substance in view of others, you'll be kicked out. Laughing gas too—one of the easiest and most popular ways for clubs to make money in Chengdu—is banned. "We are the only ones who don't sell balloons," Ellen says. "And we make sure no one is standing outside the door selling them."

Chengdu, so far at least, also seems to have been saved from the stress of its raves being raided, something that has become more commonplace in other areas of China over the past few years. In spring and summer 2019, for example, a series of raids swept clubs in Beijing, Xuzhou and Shanghai, where DJ Elise lived for five years. "Life there seems way more complicated than it used to be," she tells me. "Police are taking bigger action." In April 2019, they hit underground club Dada, and according to friends on the ground and Reddit users, police officers targeted mostly men when collecting urine samples for narcotic testing, and specifically foreigners, for whom a positive test result can mean immediate deportation. In July 2019, 16 of the 19 people arrested in raids in Xuzhou were non-Chinese.

But despite swerving drug raids, about a year after .TAG's initial closure, Ellen got another call from the police. "They gave us two weeks to shut down." But she protested. .TAG had a hefty lineup of international DJs, including Bradley Zero and the Honey Soundsystem crew, booked to play. "I tried to explain to them, but they just said, 'We strongly suggest you do not open your club.'" She didn't.

Hakka Bar

In the five weeks that followed, Ellen and her team moved their parties to outer-city locations to uphold the bookings that were already scheduled. "We found another space in an old shopping centre," says Ben Kazcor, .TAG’s former booker. "It was super stressful, and the venue was much bigger than .TAG, but we worked really hard and it paid off in the end." Then, just over a month later, .TAG was allowed to reopen. "I don't know why," Ellen admits. "We were super lucky—I guess we also have a drugs problem and a noise problem, but we do our best to cooperate." .TAG built up its international bookings, thanks, in large part, to Ben, a former resident of Basel's Elysia, who fell in love with .TAG at first sight. "I had been booked to play there on an Asia tour, and from that moment I just never wanted to leave."

Ben was initially welcomed into the .TAG team as a night manager, before taking over bookings from Cora shortly afterwards. He's responsible for the .TAG/ Herrensauna connection, having met Berlin booker Jordan Davidson during his time throwing parties in Basel. He's also responsible for sparking the change in .TAG's visual identity, enlisting the help of his graphic designer girlfriend Nicole Jung to conceive a more uniform approach to party promotion. "I said from the beginning that that was something I thought we should change. We needed to speak one language with it, rather than have every poster looking totally different."

Almost everyone I met seemed to have some connection to Berlin, and it's not hard to see both cities' techno crowds as kindred spirits. "There are a lot of parallels between going out in Berlin and Chengdu, surprisingly," says Henning. ".TAG have managed to create an under-the-radar space in such a country, in spite of the political situation, with so much love for techno and it doesn't actually matter if it's a Friday or Saturday or a Thursday, because these aren't 'regular' people—they live more like outlaw creatives, and they'll be there regardless." As well as being named China's most fashionable city, Chengdu has also been dubbed the gay capital of China. "It's really a similar vibe somehow," Ben Kaczor, .TAG's former booker, agrees. "But in Chengdu, it's still less about how you dress and who you are—all the things I don't like about clubbing these days. In .TAG you can really feel that everything is focused on the music."

.TAG parties normally continue past sunrise

On Henning’s third visit to .TAG, he brought a ruckus to the modest main room (helped, no doubt, by the entire tray of vodka shots he'd requested in the booth), oscillating between muscular big-room techno, UK breakbeat-inflected bangers and a sprinkling of ghetto house. Ellen darted on and off the stage, taking over the lights—an aspect of the club's atmosphere that's of the utmost importance to her. "Most clubs here don't pay the same amount of attention to the visuals," she explained. "But it adds so much to the experience of the music." And she's right—as the strobe clapped against the gnarled branches suspended over the .TAG dance floor (in light of Halloween), I felt like I was in some kind of twisted fantasy.

This is typical of Ellen's hands-on approach to running things at .TAG. She's there almost every night the club is open, handling everything from the visuals, to artist care, to, at times, managing the door. Often she's dancing right up until the end, and this time was no different.

"She does it with pure love," says Henning. "And that's what makes this club so special. Running a club is difficult anywhere—let alone China with its political pressures. It takes a strong mind and a lot of passion to run a club like this. And then you have people like Cora and Agu who feel it and they love it—they give that energy to the place. These are the perfect ingredients for crazy, wild and intense parties, and this is what you can also feel as a DJ."

It's one of the most exciting things about .TAG to me, too—women running the show—but Ellen told me it's not unusual for Chengdu. Nearby nightclub Funky Town is also run by women. As I came to learn, it's not unusual for businesses, restaurants and shops to be fronted by women. 30.9 percent of all businesses in China are female-owned, a staggering statistic when compared to, say, Japan’s 17.6 percent, and over half of all tech start-ups in the country are led by women.

As is customary for headliners in .TAG, Henning played an open-ended set—normally a minimum of seven hours. In the final three, the place was at its most intimate. Ellen, inspired by her visits to Panorama Bar, had newly installed shutters on .TAG's windows, which she was commanding through a remote control. Shadows of bodies and hands danced against the white light that streams in between them, and under the window, Kristen sat with her arms around Ellen. "I fucking love you," I heard her say. "I have so much respect for you. You don't know how much I appreciate the chance you've given me—all of us."

Henning continued to play until about 9.30 AM, when there were still 20 people on the dance floor, and the headaches (his, mainly) had already begun to set in. I headed back to my hotel—while others, more hesitant to call it a night, crossed the bridge to Taiga club to continue the party.

Chengdu

Though few people move to Berlin to escape the party lifestyle, after six months living in Chengdu, Ben uprooted to Europe's techno capital. "Chengdu was too much for me," he laughs. "The parties there are super intense and constant, and when you do it every Friday and Saturday, it's hard to focus on anything else." Despite relocating, Ben continued to work for .TAG for the next three months, before leaving his role as booker in autumn 2019 and leaving the responsibility in Aymen's hands.

Since then, .TAG has continued to act as a key node for techno in East Asia, propelling smaller name DJs—like Chengdu's Xiaolong—into (albeit niche) techno stardom in China's scene. "Even lesser-known DJs have a kind of carte blanche there," Ben says. "That's what makes it so special—the club is really open for everyone and if you smash it there, you can build yourself up a really good name in Asia, without having to have a Boiler Room or whatever else you'd need in Europe to make it."

The club also maintains close ties with other techno institutions on the continent, particularly Savage in Hanoi and The Lighthouse in Saigon—collaborating on both international and Asia-based bookings. The day after Henning Baer's hedonistic Halloween celebration, Hao, Luca and Qiuqiu jetted off to play .TAG nights at both clubs. And with Hao now running regular gay party, Seafood, and .TAG playing host to many more queer-orientated collectives, the club is establishing itself not only as a paradigm for the experience of techno music in China, but as a place where identity and sexuality are celebrated, no matter their nature.

Ellen is focusing on expansion in the form of Yi Tong's sky-high record store/cafe concept and the radio set-up it houses, Chengdu Community Radio, where DJ mixes will be broadcast live on video-hosting site Bilibili, as well as uploaded to YouTube.

"It'd also be nice if we didn't have to close again," Ellen said back in October, but that's one goal that's already been broken due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. Along with everything else, the pandemic disrupted what has become a much-fabled affair in .TAG's universe, such as Chinese New Year, which Chengdu's techno community had been psyching themselves up for ever since the revelries ended last year. Ordinarily, during the festive period, the club hosts parties every night for five consecutive days, and Ellen barely sleeps. Because it's a national holiday, the authorities are lax—or totally inoperative—and Chengdu's most dedicated ravers can dance undisturbed.

But owing to pandemic-related travel restrictions both within China and internationally, and prohibitions put in place by China's government, .TAG remained closed and Chengdu became a ghost-town. "The city is empty," Cora explained when I caught up with her back in February. "No one dares to travel in China, and no one goes outside. Everything is closed, not only the clubs but also the shops. Nobody is working." Schools closed, Ellen's son remained at home, and it meant that DJs such as Copenhagen's Mama Snake spent time cooking dumplings and hanging at house parties instead of playing at .TAG—or anywhere else in China for that matter.

"This virus has pushed the pause button all over China," Ellen said. "But although we have to passively accept this insurmountable difficulty, I believe that there will always be hope."

At the end of March, when restrictions began to lift across China, but intensified in Europe, .TAG threw a (soft) reopening party, for friends only, to celebrate the club's sixth birthday. A week into my own quarantine in Berlin, I streamed Hao, Aymen and Cora's sets live from my living room. As they sent me selfies from .TAG's bathroom, I felt incredibly nostalgic but also hopeful that eventually, after doing our time, we too, would come out the other side.

That's not to say that .TAG has gone unscathed by the effects of the virus. Though it's now fully reopened, due to ongoing travel restrictions, .TAG's focus has been on local DJs, and, Ellen tells me, the Chengdu crowd is still depleted. "Some industries—like education, for example—are still requiring employees not to travel or gather until the pandemic is under control," she explains. "So some of our regulars still haven't made it back to the dance floor." Measures have also been put in place to monitor public gatherings, so in order to enter the club, people must scan their health QR code and be registered (with their name, ID number and telephone number).

Naturally, as with any small business forced to close, the club has also suffered financial losses, and help from the government has been harder to access than in places like Germany, for example. "During the outbreak, we were unable to pay any employees," Ellen says. "The government has no direct subsidy, so everyone's life is very difficult." Though .TAG's landlord has offered a small rent subsidy, Ellen says the 1000 yuan reduction (equivalent to 130 euros) hasn't really made much difference, although she's now able to pay rent monthly, as opposed to three months in advance, which takes some of the pressure off.

The pandemic is the latest—and most severe—of a series of hurdles Ellen and co. have faced in trying to make .TAG a success. But Ben sums up the feeling of everyone involved with the club. ".TAG is not a place that's run by business," he explains. "It's a place that's run by heart."