A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

I’m always a lit­tle wary when it comes to see­ing a ben­e­fit con­cert. There seems to be a lot of hype around them with­out much sub­stance; the bands brought out are either too small to rec­og­nize or too large to be acces­si­ble for the aver­age punter but this show was dif­fer­ent. An effort by the Chi­nese Red Cross Foun­da­tion, this series of con­certs through­out Bei­jing were staged to raise money and aware­ness for chil­dren with con­gen­i­tal heart dis­ease. There was a show on Thurs­day at Star Live with Ashura and Caffe Latte, and one next Fri­day at Yugong Yis­han with JOMO, Gem­ini, and Gala. The event I chose to attend, how­ever, was the Fri­day night Star Live show with Future Bicy­cle and The Life Journey.

To start off with, the show had a pretty good turn-out. While the crowd wasn’t what you’d describe as “pumped”, they were all watch­ing and enjoy­ing the music in their own quiet way. There were barely any peo­ple drink­ing, hardly any smok­ing, and I’m pretty sure myself and my gig part­ners were the only for­eign­ers there. Whether that’s because I didn’t see this event adver­tised any­where on the reg­u­lar for­eigner chan­nels (except for the Bei­jing Gig Guide, of course), or because for­eign­ers were dis­cour­aged by the con­fus­ing “how much to donate” ques­tion (which was very sim­ple; Y50 was your base dona­tion but if you donated Y100 you got a set of signed post­cards by all the groups), I’m not entirely sure. Either way, it was inter­est­ing to be treated like a VIP, get­ting your photo taken as you came through the door and with your dona­tion card, just because you’re a for­eigner with her ear to the ground.

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