Few places on earth can claim to be as diverse as Hong Kong.  Walking through the buzzing streets in the centre of town on a gorgeous Friday evening, the bars are filling with people from all walks of life - and from all corners of the globe. A far cry from the often excluding nightlife found elsewhere in Asia, the people here are a mix of post-work and pre-club, and everyone is out for a good time.

I first head down to SoHo, the busiest part of town, to check out a couple of the bars there. Drinks certainly aren't cheap: you're looking at around 50 to 60 Hong Kong dollars (i.e. about a fiver) for a double, but the atmosphere is pretty fun and most of the bars have DJs playing and nice soundsystems so the cost doesn't seem extortionate. Most places here are pumping out beats somewhere between downtempo house and electro type stuff - it's not exactly Panoramabar, but it could certainly be worse. With midnight approaching, it's time to head to my real destination for the evening - a bar in Central called Yumla.

Since its opening in 2003, Yumla has always been about the music. From the moment I walk in, there's a notable absence of the businessmen in designer suits that I'd found down in SoHo - sure, it's pretty small, but there's already people dancing on the crowded dancefloor. The focus here is clearly on the underground, with the frankly superb soundsystem playfully punching out some techy, European-tinged beats. I ask the owner, Dan, how he feels about bringing this kind of music to Asia. Is he trying to create the beginnings of another Berlin?

"London and Berlin do what suits them and we do what suits us. Yumla DJs don't have access to the same promo / production scene as our European counterparts so the music is inevitably a few months behind their curve... but that's only an issue if you're making comparisons. If anything, the lack of a home scene simply means we all follow our own individual instincts instead trying to fit in with a local crowd. Techno and house music are immense...there are infinite directions a DJ can go and still be totally relevant. Staying focussed is simply a matter of learning how to quickly identify the useless shit before it clogs up your life. Then you can spend your time really getting to know the good stuff."

And what's it like trying to run a bar like Yumla in a town where most other places are sticking to a well-trodden, safer path?

"The vibe in Hong Kong is unashamedly commercial; with Yumla being pretty much the only venue with an identifiable music policy. There are one-off parties and sporadic events put on by promoters who really do deserve medals (considering the continually shifting hoops they need to jump through) but as far as a fixed venue techno club vibe goes... we are it. Being small and below the radar frees us from the commercial constraints of running a bigger venue: Hong Kong is not a cheap place to set-up shop so anything over a certain size is forced to dilute whatever good intentions they had just to meet overheads. Yumla is established enough to be able to do whatever we want with relatively few risks. For me, operating a music venue with this kind of freedom and flexibility is more important than anything else. If Yumla was in Berlin we'd be five or six times larger, but that's simply a reflection of the clubbing population – not our aspirations as a venue."

And what parts of the underground are they aiming for exactly?  Is this a strictly techno affair?

"Our foundation is techno and tech-house, those types of music ARE Yumla. From melodic to industrial and everything in between. We do put on regular drum & bass and electro-break / techfunk nights but they are not nearly as popular. Variety is important to me and it's always worth flipping the music of Yumla a couple of times a month to keep our crowd and resident DJs open-minded. Not liking the alternative is far better than not even knowing it exists! I hire a certain mindset of DJ with a view to fulfilling Yumla's music policy – so this aspect is very deliberate. However I am not enforcing some strict master plan: DJs and their musical choices evolve over time, and they do so because they feel the growth is necessary, not because we tell them to change. In fact we never tell the DJs what to play. Some of our residents have been playing here every month since 2003, and I've heard their individual styles morph and grow, so that aspect is very organic."

One thing I'm really interested in is how the DJs here get hold of their music.  Does being away from vinyl culture ever prove to be restrictive?

"All of the Yumla DJs embraced CDs and digital sales a long time ago – the cost of importing vinyl (quickly) to SE Asia is bloody expensive and I think some European labels just insult overseas supporters by not offering digital releases alongside vinyl. Cost aside, outlets like Juno make shipping records reasonably painless and at least half of our DJs regularly buy and play 12"s alongside whichever digital medium they prefer, be that CDs, Traktor or Serato... but the bulk of music on rotation is digital. I personally hate the sound quality of compressed audio – VBR MP3 and AAC should be fucking banned when you consider all the sonic & archival benefits of FLAC – but as MP3 is now the de facto shop standard, Yumla has a minimum bitrate policy in place and our residents respect that. There isn't much else we can do until market leaders like Beatport drop the idiotic WAV surcharge or start offering audiophile codecs like FLAC. All the key DJ software platforms support it. No excuse."

Yumla opens pretty early and closes very late.  What does that mean for their music?

"Yumla is – and always will be – about long sets. Perhaps not the Väthian marathons of yore, but many of our DJs (myself included) will run the full 6-7 hours solo or we'll have two people hosting the entire night. Long sets allow you the freedom to develop a conversation with the crowd... you have plenty of time to play older or weirder music alongside the new promos... there is time to experiment with your mixes and if you are aiming for something really clever and completely fuck it up, the mistakes are more easily forgiven. I can't imagine anything worse than listening to six DJs all playing 90 minutes each... bang, bang, bang... no-one is getting anything out of that. You can't get an entire crowd of people to trust you in just 90 minutes."

Until recently. Yumla have been booking top names from overseas to play to the clued-up crowd here, but the recent economic downturn has hit hard, and despite the fact that the bar is busy all night, Dan tells me that there's not quite enough cash around to pull international scale artists in right now.

"The economy sucks right now and our takings reflect the general uncertainty everyone feels about spending money... not to mention that half our regular crowd (being young European expatriates) were the group hardest hit by multinational layoffs. But there are still people hungry for real house music so the crowd are still coming out. Also, Yumla is tiny so a small turnout is a good turnout! We've had to adjust our operational methods a bit, but the music & vibe remain unchanged."

As Dan dashes off for a gig in Japan the next day, he leaves me chatting with some of the other DJs from the local area. First I speak to Ivan Sit, who has a residency playing downtempo house for the after-work crowd at Dragon's Eye in town. With his set for the evening already over, it's clear that there's only one place he wants to be - Yumla. The overwhelming feeling here of an inclusive, diverse community spirit is utterly remarkable. Everyone is chatting to everyone else, and not at all in a socialite, exclusive kind of way. People come to Yumla for the music, but they sure as hell enjoy the company too.

I end my evening speaking to Yumla resident Wendy Wen. Keen to play in Europe at the earliest opportunity, Wendy is thoroughly passionate about the music here and as the sun comes up I speak with her and her friends about how the crowds have taken to Wendy's minimal techno sets. It's clear that before Yumla opened, there was nowhere like this for people to hang out and enjoy these kinds of things, and it's highly unlikely that Wendy would have had the opportunity to bring her minimal sound to the dancefloor. "That's the best thing about Yumla," Wendy says.  "It's all about giving people a chance."

www.yumla.com