dalian's first music festival

a while back i attended dalian's very first outdoor music festival with a wonderful chinese girl from changchun (Dingding!) who couchsurfed with me for a few days. i wouldn't have known about it if she had not stayed with me, so i was very fortunate. we also met up with 2 of her friends from high school who were super sweet and also took us out to lunch.


the festival was very small- probably no more than 200 people (i could easily walk right up to the front of the stage) and they had something for everyone...rock, metal, electronica, techno, rap, emo, punk, folk...etc...haha. they just wanted to put it all out there. most of it was pretty good. for the first music festival ever in dalian, i'd give it a thumbs up. in the picture below is one of the folk singers. apparently he was the most famous person at the festival, and accordingly, his act was at the end. dingding got his autograph, haha. i'm not really sure how he could see his guitar.


i realized that Dingding was the coolest chinese girl that i will ever meet here when i saw her head banging like crazy when the heavy metal came on. she had told me that she liked metal, but wow. she is super sweet and bohemianish so you wouldn't expect it. i really can't handle metal, it's just too much for me. people also started pushing like crazy when it came on and i thought i was going to die, so i moved to the back and waited for the insanity to end. here is one of the earlier metal acts so people weren't too crazy yet. the sound quality is not very good.


the vibe at the festival was a little different than what it would be in america. at one point when i looked behind me during a techno act, there was a huge conga line going. i was like whoa, haha. whatever floats your boat.

my favorite acts were the techno guy and the 'ghetto' rapper guy who was MCing the festival. the rapper guy had the whole rapper schtick down really well. the techno guy just had a cool mustache. the video is the rapper doing his MC thing while the techno guy was playing.



hopefully i can attend another chinese music festival before i leave :)