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.