Midi misadventures (and a moral dilemma)

My first attempt to experience some of Beijing's open-air rock extravaganza, the Midi Music Festival, this week was a bit of a disaster.

I had to work all morning and part of the afternoon, so was later than I would have liked to be setting out. My taxi driver didn't know where the place was. Nobody she stopped to ask knew where it was either. (It's one of the many characteristic quirks of Beijing's street nomenclature that things are often not called what they are supposed to be called. Streets change their names quite unnecessarily every few blocks. Often the street will have a commonly used name that is quite different from its official name. Often building addresses will keep the old name of a street that has since been re-named, or will confusingly take the name of another street in the vicinity rather than the one they actually face on to. Although the Festival venue is 'officially' known as Haidian Park, nobody uses that name for it. I haven't worked out what they do call it, but it sure as hell isn't Haidian Park. Still, you'd think, wouldn't you, that a taxi driver would be able to work out that it was a park and that it was in Haidian district? Er, no.....) I showed her on the map, but she wasn't very good with maps.

Traffic in the University district was gridlocked, so we took an impromptu - very pleasant! - detour through the parkland campus of Peking University (curiously, the only institution that still favours the old Wade-Giles romanization). Progress was SLOW, but the weather was dazzling, and I had a couple of tins of cold beer with me.

Eventually we got to the park (having overshot it by a mile or two on our first pass), but I was dropped off at the wrong end. And it is a HUGE park. And I don't recall if they did this in previous years, but this year the rock festival is only in the northern end, and the park has been partitioned by a long wall of metal sheeting. I followed this temporary wall for the best part of a mile, hoping to find the entrance to the festival - and guess what? I had forgotten that the park only has two gates - the one I had entered, and the one being used for the festival. Thus, when I reached the end of the wall, there was no exit from my half of the park, no entry to the festival. I couldn't be bothered to retrace my steps all over again, so climbed over the park fence out on to the main road (a slightly dicey procedure - I'm not as limber as I once was). I probably should have hopped over the wall (slightly higher, but a firmer and easier climb) to get into the festival for free (I used to be quite a seasoned Ball crasher during my Oxford student days) - but I didn't want to be that cheap; I found, when I reflected on it, that I approved of the event and actually wanted to support it financially.

Not that it needs my humble contribution. When I finally got to the main entrance, the queue to get in was snaking around the block for upwards of half a mile - and was moving forward only fitfully. I figured it might take the best part of an hour to get in, maybe longer - and I just couldn't be arsed. Queueing is just about top of the list of things for which I have no tolerance at all.

A combination of better publicity this year, a burgeoning number of foreign students in the capital, and an outstanding weather forecast for the week has pushed attendance through the roof. I hear that the 4-day tickets are all sold out, and that there are only a limited number of single day tickets left. I guess I'd better try and get over there early in the morning if I want to go on Thursday or Friday. That's if I can't scam some kind of 'pass' off one of my connections in the biz.

I gather most of yesterday's bands were pretty sucky (I'm looking for consolations here), but I was still sorry to have missed it.

The thing is, several of my friends were there yesterday. And they all dealt with the problem of the long queue by simply ignoring it, and hustling straight up to the ticket windows. Outrageous! Have they been assimilated into the local 'culture'?! I don't think I could bring myself to do that. Or could I? Well, I hope not. My moral fortitude on this point may be sorely tested if I encounter the same problem again. I must ask myself, "What would Zoltan do?"

Watch this space.

Update: In fact, I only went to one day of the Midi Festival - the best day, Thursday - although I did also catch a number of the after-shows. A brief rundown of my week can be found over on the Barstool here. Attendance, though still robust, was a little less crazy after Mayday itself; and I took the precaution of arriving early - to beat the queues, and to spare myself the moral dilemma of whether to queue-jump (or wall jump!).

I also note in passing that the 'banned' Carsick Cars appeared at the D-22 party last Tuesday (though not at the Festival itself). Or rather, an anonymous 'session band' that just happened to be composed of the same personnel and performing the same music. The mechanics of banning a rock band are complicated! Michael Pettis, the American owner of D-22, tells me that he is confident saner counsels will soon prevail at the Ministry of Culture, but for a while Jeff Zhang & co. may have to resort to such petty subterfuge whenever they want to play.