I went several times for the activities held by the french culture center, it is very good located, easy to got there from my home, with bus or subway or taxi.
the place is big and not crowded, they got a very nice performance stage, and good facilities. for some music venue, discount is available for advance-booked ticket.

they got the music, got the drink, and got the service, whatelse we could ask.

On one hand, this place tends to bring more of the bigger and well-known bands from abroad, which is always nice. The sound system is pretty solid as well. On the other hand, drinks are expensive and not terribly impressive (25 bones for a Tsingtao? Come on...) and the place gets a bit too packed at times, especially when there's a big band in town (see reviews of the Peaches concert). Nevertheless, not a shabby place to catch some of the bigger concerts that happen to pass through Beijing.

I wouldn't go there unless there r some really good foreign band playing at this place. Drinks r just soso. The place is not that comfortable. If there is no show, this place is empty like a desert.

And as I said before, they need to replace their camera guy. When I went there to watch Peaches' show, that place was OVER-PACKED. Took half an hour to move half meter forward...I'm not kidding. Just one smoke break, and I lost my best spot to watch the show forever. Anyhow, people who couldn't get to the front had to watch the big screen, but when the show was just about to begin, the signal got cut off, which made the whole crowd back there gone mad.

I guess he is some kind of amateur video person who was trying to figure out how to use the camera. Yay, see, I zoomed in, yay, see, I zoomed out. And that disco ball is sooo beautiful, I couldn't take my eyes off it for one second!

Yugong Yishan has always been one of my favorite venues in Beijing, from the old Bus Bar car park location to the current spot. They've always had some of the best events - it's about the only place that can comfortably handle, or seemed interested in having, both punk punk shows and house and techno nights.

They're now consistently bringing international bands and hip-hop DJs to play, but that's where the problems begin. Almost any time you go to see a foreign band there, the place is overcrowded and the venue starts to feel too small for the size of the event. I'm not the kind of person who wants to sit down to watch a concert, so I'm not whining about "oh, it's crowded and people push you" - what I'm talking about is that you can barely even get anywhere near the stage or move without tripping over people. People have to stand or sit down on the stairs, and it all gets a bit hard to enjoy. Last few times I've been to a big event there, I've ended up standing at the bar, where you can't really see anything or hear too much.

I love this venue and hope it continues to be one of Beijing's best places for live music - I just wonder if the present space can sustain Yugong Yishan's ambitions for too much longer. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up moving again at some point in the next couple of years.

Yugong Yishan consistently holds the most interesting live bands in town ... for that reason alone it's worth recommending. Not much of a place to go on nights without the live music though.

I really don't know why I keep giving that place another chance every couple of months although it makes me want to beat the livin' sh*t out of the management everytime I go.

Right, it's because I liked the old YGYS. Good old days, long gone. The new one seems to pretend the Olympics are still going to come up.

Taking the full cover charge even if the main acts have long gone home? Great, go ahead! I go somewhere else. Unless I'm too drunk and tired to do so because the place is located in the middle of nowhere.

Rock music and beer go hand-in-hand. And I can drink loads of beer. Well, I would, if it wasn't so ridiculously overpriced. One could get a keg of beer in Beijing for what they charge for a kid's Tsingtao (300ml) in there.

The alternative is mixed drinks, which aren't that madly priced, I have to admit, even if they serve those in the smallest glasses available on the market. However, they managed to train their staff severely to steal those drinks from people having fun on the dancefloor. Kudos to the management, we all know it's hard to train Chinese waiters. But in this case they've done it really well.

The first drink disappeared. Fine, no problem, get another one. It took a bit the fun out of dancing to be forced to watch the second drink sitting there, but well, live is compromise. And after all YGYS has 3 staff mambers being solely responsible for stealing the drinks of people dancing on the dabcefloor, so you have to be alert at all times. But they're professionals. So, they managed to do so again.

3rd drink. I don't dance anymore. Just humping up and down, concentrating on my drink, which I placed on the stage, beneath the DJ desk, almost impossible to see. Concentrating, concentrating... Someone wants to get a light, fine... just takes a second... f***!

f***! f***! f***!

I can still see the waitress running off with it.

But I don't bother anymore.

I won't come back to YGYS anyway.