{"id":2259,"date":"2010-09-06T16:35:30","date_gmt":"2010-09-06T16:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=2259"},"modified":"2017-12-22T09:13:05","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T13:13:05","slug":"zhang-bei-music-festival-part1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/zhang-bei-music-festival-part1\/","title":{"rendered":"Zhang Bei Grasslands Music Festival (\u5f20\u5317\u8349\u539f\u97f3\u4e50\u8282) Part One – Getting Out of the Smog and Into the Countryside"},"content":{"rendered":"

After our ridiculously difficult journey to the Yi Xian Festival in May, you’d think we would have been turned off by the prospect of once again heading out into the middle of nowhere China for a music festival.\u00a0 Well, you’d be wrong, because one late July weekend, we decided to do just that.\u00a0 As is usually the case with concerts and music festivals here in China, little is done to advertise<\/strong> (\u505a\u5e7f\u544a – <\/strong>zu\u00f2 gu\u01ceng g\u00e0o) such events.\u00a0 At least, if there is some sort of promotional campaign going on for live music<\/strong> (\u73b0\u573a\u7684\u97f3\u4e50 – xi\u00e0n ch\u01ceng de y\u012bn yu\u00e8) here, it somehow always manages to elude me.\u00a0 Whereas back at home I am inundated with fliers, e-mails, posters, and facebook invites for shows on a daily basis, I have to actually seek out live music here in Beijing.\u00a0 Of course, back at home there are tons of people working in music promotion, from huge companies like Live Nation to small, grass-roots marketing businesses.\u00a0 Here in the Middle Kingdom, the live music business is still in its infancy, and as such there aren’t a great deal of promoters out there.\u00a0 As I mentioned in my first post about festivals, another problem is that many people who do decide to put on a show or festival don’t exactly know what they’re doing to begin with.\u00a0 That being said, having been in China for a total of about 1.5 years now, I can say that things are quickly improving when it comes to concerts and music festivals.<\/p>\n

Despite the lack of proper promotion, we still managed to find out about the Zhang Bei Grasslands Music Festival<\/strong> (\u5f20\u5317\u8349\u539f\u97f3\u4e50\u8282 – Zh\u0101ng b\u011bi c\u01ceo yu\u00e1n y\u012bn yu\u00e8 ji\u00e9), also known as the InMusic Festival.\u00a0 After doing my best to dig up some information on the festival online, I found out that this was to be the second year <\/strong>(\u7b2c\u4e8c\u5e74 – d\u00ec \u00e8r ni\u00e1n) of the festival.\u00a0 Most of what was posted online about the festival was in Chinese, and my Chinese reading abilities are not great<\/strong> (\u4e0d\u592a\u597d – b\u00f9 t\u00e0i h\u01ceo), so it took a while to translate the details.\u00a0 I was able to figure out that there was going to be a direct<\/strong> (\u76f4\u8fbe\u7684 – zh\u00ed d\u00e1 de) bus heading there from Beijing.\u00a0 After the trials and tribulations of the Yi Xian trip, you could imagine my excitement.\u00a0 I called the phone number<\/strong> (\u7535\u8bdd\u53f7\u7801 – di\u00e0n hu\u00e0 h\u00e0o m\u01ce) listed on the festival’s website, and confirmed this to be true (I had to hear it to believe it).\u00a0 Although we would have loved to spend the entire weekend out there, work on Friday made that impossible.\u00a0 As such, we woke up early on Saturday morning and headed to the long-distance bus station with our camping gear, hoping to catch the first bus at 9 a.m.<\/p>\n

Of course, it wouldn’t be a weekend trip in China without some sort of travel trouble.\u00a0 Despite having the name of the bus station written down in characters, as well as the phone number I had called the day before, our cab driver couldn’t find the place for the life of him.\u00a0 We drove around in circles a few times, stopped to ask directions twice, and I even had my friend who was at the bus station put a worker on the phone to direct him.\u00a0 What should have been a simple 10 minute ride ended up taking well over 30.\u00a0 Needless to say, we missed the first bus…<\/p>\n

We got on the next bus, and after every seat was full, we were on our way.<\/p>\n

The bus ride should have been about two hours or so, but the roads were packed with city-dwellers heading out to the countryside<\/strong> (\u90ca\u5916 – ji\u0101o w\u00e0i) and, as such, took six instead.\u00a0 At least it was a scenic ride, and it didn’t involve switching taxis multiple times as our last journey did.<\/p>\n

Located in northern Hebei<\/strong> (\u6cb3\u5317 – H\u00e9 b\u011bi) province close to Inner Mongolia<\/strong> (\u5185\u8499\u53e4 – N\u00e8i m\u00e9ng g\u01d4), the little town of Zhang Bei<\/a> played host for the weekend.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

It was so nice to get out of the city… Not a high rise building in sight!<\/p><\/div>\n

Upon arrival, we easily scored cheap tickets from a scalper<\/strong> (\u7968\u8d29\u5b50 – pi\u00e0o f\u00e0n zi) for 100 RMB per day.\u00a0 At about $17 US for a full day of music and camping, that’s a pretty good deal.\u00a0 Heading in to set up camp, I was immediately happy with our decision.\u00a0 We were greeted with a big, open field <\/strong>(\u7530 – ti\u00e1n) and a bright, blue sky<\/strong> (\u84dd\u5929 – l\u00e1n ti\u0101n).\u00a0 Far out in the countryside, Zhang Bei is more or less free of the air pollution<\/strong> (\u7a7a\u6c14\u6c61\u67d3 – k\u014dng q\u00ec w\u016b r\u01cen) that is such a big problem in Chinese cities.\u00a0 It was a breath of fresh air to be out of the Beijing smog and to have a seemingly endless grassy field to run around in.\u00a0 We set up our campsite and admired the setup of our neighbors, who had lawn chairs, a table, and a cooking stove.\u00a0 Of course, back at home we would normally have all of the above and then some, but riding a public bus to a festival isn’t the best way to transport a luxury campsite.<\/p>\n

Even with our minimalist setup, we were very excited about spending the weekend out of Beijing’s ring roads.\u00a0 Stay tuned for the rest of the story about our adventure out in Zhang Bei.\u00a0 In the meantime, enjoy this short video that I put together that shows some of the highlights of the weekend.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LNWpbnFjAu8<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

After our ridiculously difficult journey to the Yi Xian Festival in May, you’d think we would have been turned off by the prospect of once again heading out into the middle of nowhere China for a music festival.\u00a0 Well, you’d be wrong, because one late July weekend, we decided to do just that.\u00a0 As is…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":2262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[11184,11185,9633,11181,378687,11182,11183],"class_list":["post-2259","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-uncategorized","tag-chinese-music-festivals","tag-chinese-rock-music","tag-concerts","tag-inmusic-festival","tag-travel","tag-zhang-bei-grasslands-music-festival","tag-11183"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2259"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14017,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259\/revisions\/14017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}