STAR-STUDDED: Chinese rock star Xu Wei (left) performs his set at the InMusic Festival on August 7. The festival featured super bands and stars like New Pants, Queen Sea Big Shark and several foreign acts (CFP)

Tents pitched, barbeques smoking and small flea markets selling CDs. Shoes scattered here and there, people dancing joyfully and security guards keeping a watchful eye on excited crowds, every so often taking a quick peek at the stage where a rock band jumps around. It's a typical scene for an outdoor music festival in China, but this one was special and rare because it was set against the backdrop of an open grassland.

On August 9, the first InMusic Festival concluded on a prairie in Zhangbei County, Hebei Province. The festival, which was organized by the renowned InMusic magazine, broke Chinese outdoor music festival records for the largest festival site and number of attendees—around 100,000 people gathered on 100 hectares of grassland during the three-day event to listen to 60 Chinese and foreign bands and singers.

Up to 30,000 attendees drove themselves to the Zhangbei festival venue, some 220 km from Beijing.

The InMusic Festival featured super bands and stars like New Pants, Queen Sea Big Shark, Xu Wei, Zhang Xuan and her band Alage. The event's three stages hosted more than 60 bands, including foreign acts like trip-hop innovator Tricky, post-rock superstars Soundtrack of Our Lives and Swedish electro band Little Dragon.

Since this year marked the 40th anniversary of the legendary Woodstock Festival, which took place in New York from August 15 to 18, 1969, many Chinese music fans considered the festival to be a tribute to the original U.S. event.

"China has just had its very first and very own equivalent to Woodstock in the wake of its 40th anniversary," said Yuan Hongjie, an indie music fan from Beijing.

The imperfections

The festival received a few complaints from attendees concerning the management and service. One concert goer posted an article titled Seven Sins of the Zhangbei festival, complaining about transportation, accommodations, delayed performance schedules and unreasonable prices.

"The advertisement said the venue was to be held on the grassland, but actually it was land covered often in dust with little green grass," said the article. And the food there was much more expensive than it should have been. "A bowl of fast noodles cost 10 yuan, four times higher than the price in the supermarket."

The festival was two hours behind schedule from the start and never managed to catch up through myriad technical problems. It was not clear to attendees who the next scheduled act was or when they would be playing.

Many stayed and camped in the venue during the festival, but their preparations proved insufficient. Nighttime on the grassland was cold and there was little provided to help them stay warm. The few public toilets were placed far from the camp.

Li Hongjie, chief editor of InMusic, said preparations and organization could be improved. He said the audience should prepare for camping like music fans do at outdoor festivals in other countries. Zhangbei County, he said, was too small to offer accommodations to tens of thousands of people at the same time.

"Music fans for such large outdoor festivals should be prepared for hard conditions," said Zhang Fan, one of China's veteran outdoor music festival planners and a consultant for the Zhangbei festival. Zhang has been to many foreign festivals and has experienced even harsher conditions such as rain and mud.

Li Xuerong, head of Zhangbei County and a co-organizer of the festival, said that a rare drought caused the dusty, dry conditions on the grassland. He said the county would grow grass to restore the ecological system and prevent desertification. He promised to build more public toilets, as well.

Though there was dissatisfaction, most attendees enjoyed the live music. "What this festival did, and what it should be congratulated for, are it gave another opportunity for local acts to take the big step to perform on a proper stage in front of a larger crowd," wrote a blogger on China Music Radar, a blog about the Chinese music industry run by Shanghai-based promotion company Split Works.

Rock brings change

PRAIRIE ROCK: A foreign festival attendee has a rest on the Zhangbei grassland where the outdoor InMusic Festival, China's largest, is held August 7-9 (CFP)

As many new music festivals have been established in recent years, local governments are also realizing that hosting such events is a good method of self-promotion.

Zhangbei is an economically poor county with a per-capita yearly income just above half of the national average. County leader Li has been looking for ways to alleviate the poverty problem. He and his colleagues have tried to promote the county in various ways, but all ended up producing little effect.

One of Li's friends from Beijing then suggested he hold a music festival and brought him information and posters from foreign rock festivals. Li felt that such an event might work to create a brand out of his county.

Sun Xiaohan, one of Li's colleagues, went to study foreign experiences and found that some of the small towns hosting the events had made a name for themselves through the festivals. He decided music could be the vehicle through which the rest of the world would hear about little-known Zhangbei.

County leader Li was among the audience on the first day of the festival. He swung his body to the heavy beats and rhythms of the music. On May 26 in Beijing, the Zhangbei County Government and InMusic magazine signed a 10-year contract to jointly organize the music festival each of the next 10 years.

Also on the first day, Zhangbei farmers saw so many outsiders flocking to their village and they knew it would be a good opportunity to sell eggs, bottled water, snacks and fast noodles. In a small shop near a hotel where many band members and reporters stayed, the owner said he had kept his business open an unprecedented span through the weekend. His income over the three days was several times higher than what he makes in the average month.

Some local families also turned their homes into temporary hotels, where they treated guests to all they had.

For other residents, it was a rare experience to be exposed to a new kind of music. Local youngsters learned to enjoy music by clashing their bodies against each other to release energy and passion.

"The festival could be the unforgotten scene that is left in their memories forever. It might change the fate of some of the local participants. The local youth shouldn't be marginalized; they deserve the joy," said Zhang Fan, a veteran music event planner.