Hey guys,
My name is Dragriffin and welcome to today’s topic:
Lights on the Wall
Every now and then, you get the chance to experience something amazing. Or least, you are told it’s going to be amazing. Then they change the venue, they move around, they change the rules and say “no refund on the tickets!” Well… I got that beautiful experience. I will really try my best here not to sound like a ranting old man.
Here’s the story. A couple of friends and I decided to go to a techno music festival ON the great wall over the week-end. It’s the section they use for movies and all.
That sounded like a blast so we bought our tickets. Buses we’re leaving Beijing, Wudaokou at around 1PM and come back at 5 AM. You heard right, 5AM. It’s a techno music festival after all. And it’s on the Great Wall of China! You got to do it right? Right. The week goes by and 2 days before the event, we get the first bad news. I can only imagine the organizer having to tell this to everyone. They are required to move the venue somewhere else due to bad weather (it’s a lie, everyone knows it). You can imagine what happened as soon as he sent out the bad news. The flow of bad comments, replies, people trying to sell their tickets before the event. It was unstoppable. One major thing was happening. The organizer was “loosing face”. And if you don’t know what losing face means here in China, it’s basically social suicide.
Moving on. We weren’t really all that excited about the event anymore. But we decided to still make the best of it. We bought snacks, we bought alcohol and we bought light sticks.
Who would go to a techno music festival without light sticks? Turns out that the Chinese do. So we thought them about that. The gin was in the camel pack, the soft drinks became the excuse to a poor “diabetic” that needs he’s watered sugar and before you know it, we smuggled in a party like if it was the prohibition years. Why the hassle? Well, despite all the recent changes, they also sent out the menu and price of drinks the day before the event (I call it the “Second Big Flood” of bad comments). Everything was so expensive, even for North American standards. These guys were merciless. We did the same. (*insert evil laughter here*)
We set up our tents, drank, ate and started to crack those light sticks.
Pretty soon, we were all a bunch walking Christmas trees. And we went on to dance. Because people “forgot” to bring light sticks, we were the light in the night. A lot of people came to take pictures with us, asked for our “WeChat” so we could be friends (China’s number one social platform). They thought we were part of the promoter’s crew. We weren’t. We were just a bunch of awesome people that wanted to dance their night off to great beats.
We did have a backdrop of great wall in the background and the DJ’s were amazing. But everything else was horribly organized and after the event, people were very open about not going to this event in the future. I witnessed how a business fails in China. It’s about reputation, pride and not loosing face.
Here’s a video of a new feature I tried on my phone (Virtual shot). You can see pretty well what surrounds me. Mountains and Great Wall at the top. But not ON the Great Wall like promised. Also, look at this wonderful young man. Isn’t he lovely? Yes, yes he is. Haha! (End of self complimenting.)
[wpvideo 9ZGZTTnk]
A lot of people left by 1 o’clock (those that came by car instead of bus). The rest of the night was made of the campers (us) and the hardcore dancers (still us). To my greatest pleasure, I did get to see that ONE douche and his long-legged girlfriend. I’m being mean here as they we very nice and they also took a picture with us (they didn’t bring light sticks…seriously!), but unfortunately for them, they were the incarnation of the word “douche” aesthetically speaking.
I wasn’t as disappointed as this post might sound like. I had quite a bit of fun dancing and hanging out with new friends. And the music and DJ’s were pretty good.
It’s kind of nice to dance in the middle of the mountains, surrounded by a backdrop of the Great Wall where wars should’ve been fought and where we danced and laughed instead.
Dragriffin out!
Today’s item on the list:
Dance all night long!
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