China's opening to the west has brought fundamental change to Hong Kong, and among the losers from the transformation have been the city's once-famous nightclubs.

This year the two biggest have closed: Club Volvo and its nearest competitor, Club Paris. Only Club de Hong Kong survives, where punters seeking the mysterious delights of karaoke and ever-so-attentive hostesses face a minimum door charge of HK$2,500-$3,000 (£200-£240).

Back in their heyday of the 1980s, customers at Club Volvo (later renamed Club Bboss) would be driven to their private booth in golf carts kitted out as gold Rolls-Royces. This was nouveau-riche conspicuous consumption, with sometimes shady business deals done under the cover of whirling lights and lavish floor shows.

"There was a latent violence. You felt you were in the presence of people who would do something untoward if you looked at them wrong, as if you're in one of those Cantonese movies when everything is about to explode around you," remembers a cameraman who filmed there in the early 1990s.

But as Hong Kong's manufacturing moved to southern China, so did many of its businessmen, and their taste in nightlife. When Club Volvo/Bboss closed this year, one 20-year-old hostess told reporters she was choosing to retire as this kind of nightclub was a "sunset industry" in Hong Kong. Her predecessors started real estate empires and bought Mercedes cars on the proceeds of their work.

When Bboss opened in 1984, the deputy director of the Xinhua news agency, whose building was then the de facto embassy of Beijing in still-British Hong Kong, was asked to cut the ribbon. A dancefloor could cater for 400 in a space of 6,500 sq m (70,000 sq ft). Decor ranged from ersatz Versailles to Japanese, always with a generous helping of glitz.

"Those days, my dear, money was like sand," said Neva Shaw, whose career began as a showgirl during the Vietnam war before she began running her own late-night bar, The Professional Club.

"The most famous was always Club Volvo. The money spent there had no limit. These girls were like geishas. There was a patron to be found, a lifestyle to be maintained. They charged depending on the 'john' [client] up to HK$10,000 for a short time, then returned to the club to hook another one … I saw one girl take out a wad of bills big enough to choke on, to deposit in the bank.

"Those days are gone," said Shaw, who is now retired in California.

At Club de Hong Kong, the decor is still flashy. One bar is called the Heartbeat; another offers views across the harbour towards the brilliantly illuminated skyline of Hong Kong island. An androgynous, tightly groomed woman in a tuxedo explained that only karaoke, not a live floor show, was on offer.

Nightlife survives in Hong Kong as it always has, focused around the red‑light district of Wanchai, where Thai, Filipina and other nationalities have replaced local Chinese women in "pole bars". Mainland customers do sometimes appear, but are not popular because of what is seen as their parsimony.

But even in Wanchai, the big old clubs have died – the China Palace, China Town and Tonnochy Night Club are all gone. In Kowloon, Bottoms Up, which featured in The Man With the Golden Gun, and the Red Lion have gone.

Due to celebrate 40 years on the same spot, however, is Ned Kelly's Last Stand. It offers no floor shows of sexy girls or barely disguised prostitution at all.