Max Star Festival Highlights a Sharp Cultural Divide

The Max Star Music Festival finally came to a close this past Sunday (Aug 22), wrapping up a week of pop, folk and rock music in Beijing’s Ditan Park. According to a report in today’s Global Times, the festival highlighted a sharp, cultural divide between the celebrating fans and the police working security at the event.

The Global Times report reported this amusing exchange:

“See those guys in front there, what are they doing?” asked a Dongcheng district police sergeant backstage of concert staff, exasperated with the rain-drenched moshpit rattling crowd barriers during Brain Failure's anthem, "Living in the City."
“Dancing,” tentatively replied a stage manager.
“You call that dancing?” the sergeant shot back. “They're going crazy. That's not right.”

Given that the festival’s venue of Ditan Park was offered to the organizers free of charge by Beijing’s government in an attempt to expand the cultural and musical industries within the city, you would think the local boys in blue might have had a better idea of what to expect. It’s not like this is Beijing’s first large scale rock event.

In scenes familiar from earlier rock festivals around Beijing, other officers reportedly spent their time covering their ears against the music or admonishing fans for moshing and crowd surfing. The crowd was decidedly undeterred by the police and responded to pleas to settle down with vocal boos and middle fingers, according to the Global Times.

A quote from young fan Yue Yang seems to sum up the dynamics at work at Beijing’s rock festivals: "Police have no idea what rock is all about. When we're moshing it's not like we're beating each other up."

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sounds like a cub reporter's first trip to a rock show in Beijing

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uhm.. I was there on that rainy saturday and GT is making it sound like there were clashes and what not when in fact, there was a minimal amount of disturbance caused by security.

If anything, I had two security guard standing behind me during Twisted Machine's set singing just about every word to their song...

The only time the security got involved was during brain failure's set when it was heavily raining and they didn't want people on the metal fence stage diving.

There's a difference between stopping people from having fun and stopping them from being stupid.

over sensationalism in headlines is getting old...