What a difference a year makes, as world’s first city to go into lockdown stages weekend music festival
Thousands of people attended China’s Wuhan Strawberry Music Festival at the weekend.
In warm conditions at the start of a five-day May Day national holiday, festival-goers danced, bounced and screamed with delight as some of their favourite acts took to the stage.
Last year’s festival was online only, because of Covid-19 restrictions.
A representative for the organisers told Reuters that numbers were restricted this year and about 11,000 people attended the first day of the event on Saturday.
Barriers were set up in front of each stage and security staff restricted numbers in those areas.
Some spectators wore masks, but many did not.
People in Wuhan, where Covid-19 first emerged, lived through more than two months of stringent restrictions after the world’s first coronavirus lockdown started at the end of January last year.
Since then, the city has been almost completely virus-free, according to official data. That and the general trend in recent months in the country, which has only reported a few sporadic outbreaks, has greatly eased fears in China about the virus.
“Last year, we suffered from the coronavirus,” said Gao Yuchen, a 23-year-old student.
“It has not been easy to get to where we are today. People here have put in huge efforts and paid a big price [for being hit with the virus]. So I feel very excited to be here.”
The two-day event brought together famous and not-sowell-known domestic singers and bands across three stages in Wuhan’s Garden Expo park.
Sister “Strawberry Music Festival” events were held in other cities, including Beijing, during the national holiday.
Music lovers came to Wuhan from all over the country. Among them was Zhang Hongkai, 29, from Shijiazhuang in Hebei province.
“This is my first time at an event like this held outdoors,” Mr Zhang said. “I really like the atmosphere.”
Mainland China reported 16 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, the latest available figures, up from 13 a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said.
All the new cases were infections that originated overseas, the National Health Commission said.
The confirmed Covid-19 cases in mainland China now stand at 90,671, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,636, many of whom were Wuhan residents.
China vaccinated about 11.6 million people against Covid-19 on Friday, bringing the number of those inoculated to more than 265 million, according to the National Health Commission data released on Saturday.