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Welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service.

It's Saturday night in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen

and scores of people are ready to party in this city's

notorious bars and clubs known for loud music, prostitutes and endless shots of

Bayhio Chinese rice liquor. The water gate was a

don't play like.

Many feel the night isn't complete

without singing along to pop music in a karaoke bar.

And for a growing number, that experience is even better with ketamine, a white powder that

snorted in lines to get a high. I'm Celia Hatton and in this week's assignment I've come to

Southern China to uncover the real story behind a drug that's soaring in popularity.

Most karaoke bars seem almost exactly like this one. There's no general bar area for drinking.

Instead, the entire place is made up a private rooms. Now each room has a

karaoke machine and a big TV screen that shows song lyrics and some seating, some

sofas. Now the room that I'm standing in is pretty gaudy actually. It's covered in

glittery red glittery wallpaper and leopard skin cushion covers and there's lots of

odd futuristic metal sculptures on the wall to add decoration.

Now, the point of the whole thing is that people who come here are in their own room.

So when the door closes behind them,

...