Little friend in China: Rocking out in Zhenjiang: The Campground

I never would have thought I would attend a three day rock music festival in a random Chinese city. Bit I did. And it was Amazing.

I found out about the festival from a friend who lives in Hangzhou. I love music festivals and I love camping so I called my friend Geoff and two days later, we pulled up in the Zhenjiang train station. Walking into the music festival was a surreal experience. I was all of a sudden welcomed into a China I had never met; a subculture of weed smoking, tattoo wearing, rebellious Chinese rockers. The whole experience of a music festival was so familiar but so different than anything I would experience in Canada. Let's start with the campground.

We arrived at the campsite and because it had rained the entire night before, it was covered in mud. Security guards lined up at the entrance helping people along the way so they wouldn't slip. On top of that, just like any Chinese public space, there was garbage everywhere! In the city I don't mind it. There is just a different philosophy here than there is in the west. Drop your shit on the ground and clean it up later. This philosophy has employed many service people in terms of sweeping up and cleaning up the streets. But it
was so hard to see a campsite like that! The trough was covered in shit.

Then there was the construction. If you wonder why buildings get built so quickly in China, its because these people work non stop. I fall asleep to construction and wake up to it. But I never imagined I would hear it while camping! At 6:30 on Sunday morning I was woken up by construction that sounded like it was coming from right beside our tent...That's because it was. The development in China is crazy. Everywhere you turn there are old buildings coming down and new buildings coming up. (I will definitely write more about this in upcoming entries).

Anyway, I will always be amazed by the blatant contrasts in China. While we were partying and listening to music and hanging out by the tents, workers were watching us trying to figure out what the hell we were doing sleeping in this landfill next to their construction site. A lot of the workers snuck into the festival the last night and danced the night away.

While the campsite was a new and different experience, there were some familiarities. Mainly, the fact that we were camping next to two Winnipegers! What! Ya, they're going to folk fest this summer! It was interesting meeting these people because although we lived basically down the street from each other and all live in China, we had and have such different lives, perspectives and stories about Canada. These people were obsessed with Canada. They carried this huge Canadian flag with them wherever they went and this guy had a tattoo of 加拿大 ('jianada' or Canada) on his leg. Not that I don't love Canada but I just dont really think about it that much. When I asked a Torontonian from their crew why he loved Canada so much, he provided me with the only plausible answer. He had been in the army. The patriotism was insane.

Winnipeg, Manitoba represent!

We camped next to some really cool Chinese guys from Anhui. Two of the guys are doing a bike trip from Sichuan province to Tibet this summer. They added a level of comfort and familiarity when they started singing 'Vincent' on their guitar. This turned into a singalong of a bunch of pretty famous western songs. It was lovely to reminisce and to share an interest in music with these Chinese guys. I usually have very different music tastes from my Chinese friends. After all the reminiscing, they sang us Chinese folk songs as we fell asleep. It was beautiful.