ORANGE ISLE MUSIC FESTIVAL

This past weekend, the six of interns decided to go to Changsha's annual Orange Isle Music Fest to see what Chinese music fests were all about and compare them to ones back home. The day (abruptly) began at 1pm when I was awoken by Fran who came knocking on my bedroom door saying that we were leaving right that minute for the festival. I still drunkenly stumbled out of my bed threw some clothes on and grabbed my stuff and out the door we went! The fest took place on Changsha's Orange Island which is absolutely gorgeous! We arrived at the festival and mulled around to see what was all there. There were two stages and many food venders (selling Chinese food of course) and a lot of local people that set up shop selling the most random items (so Chinese). We sat on the grass on the side of the main stage and watched a few performers, getting up occasionally to grab some food and water. It also didn't take us long to find the beer gardens..the staff working them loved us and gave us a whole bunch of free Tiger Beer t-shirts and flags (simply because we were foreigners I assume). Towards the end of the night we reverted to hanging out by the beer stand because Tiger beer put out these massive cushions in the sand and it felt amazing to just chill, lay down,  drink beer, and listen to the music with a view of the stage. We were quite the attraction while sitting there and so many Chinese people stopped to take our picture "Oh wow look at the foreigners laying on the pillows, let's take a picture!" The Tiger beer rep even got a few photos of us which I'm sure will be used in a beer advert somewhere here in China. As for the actual music, some artists were pretty horrible and others were pretty good! The only thing is that Chinese people have absolutely no sense of rhythm so their songs were pretty well off beat. Some artists attempted to sing some English songs but for the most part it was all in Chinese which was pretty cool to experience what their music scene is like.  We ran into a few other foreigners at the festival as well which was pretty cool since seeing other foreigners here seems to be quite rare unless you are at Pizza Pizza on the walking street. One of them was actually from Canada as well which was cool because other Canadians are sparse around China, or at least from my own experience. It was so refreshing to talk to him and hear a Canadian accent...I listen to Brits and other Europeans or Chinese speak all the time so it made me feel like I was at home! All in all the Orange Isle fest was a good time..was great to spend the day hanging out on the island with a great view of the city and enjoy some great Chinese musical talent!

One of many Chinese people who stopped to get a picture of us at the festival