My name is Elsa Ximena Navarro. I am from a small town in Mexico and I was in and around China for more than two years, traveling and loving life.

It was May, and the 10 of us were about to take the train to Beijing to one of the coolest experiences in China, a music festival ON the Great Wall!!

It took us 10 hours to get to Beijing, but we took the sleeper train so it wasn’t that bad. We got to Beijing at 7:45 in the morning, we had some breakfast and then took a minivan to the Great Wall. Its a long trip from Beijing Railway Station to HuangYaGuan (the part of the wall where the festival takes place) , so it took us another 2 hours and It was raining!!! but it worth it

When we got there we realized we didn’t have a place to stay, we told to ourselves that we were gonna stay up all day and night, mistake. For our good luck, there were a few left rooms in one of the hostels down the wall, and also they weren’t expensive, it was 100 RMB per person and we had a 2 bed room!

The festival starts at 6 am but we got there at 1:00 pm. The ticket you must get it online with a few months in advance. http://yinyangmusicfestival.com

You can get a 1 day ticket or the 3 day ticket, depending on the days you want to be there. You can also take your tent and camp there. There are different options according to what you want, and the kind of experience you want to live. We took the fancy one, hotel, which actually I think was the best because it was raining.


When you get there, and you start looking at all the foreigners, you get in another mood, a different one, like yeah, this is gonna be a good one. There are Mexicans, Americans, South Americans, Spaniards, Chinese, Japanese, English people and a lot more from different nationalities, but we are all with the same idea, getting out of the routine and have a nice experience.

There are 3 stages, the one on the Great Wall, the main stage and the night stage.
The one on the top of the Great Wall starts early morning around 6 am and finishes at 6pm , for me, this is the best stage, even if it’s a narrow space, the environment gets better when everyone is closer.

The best part about leaving that stage was the food! The food is right in front of the main stage, they have burgers, tacos, burritos, beer, and different drinks. The food there is cheap, compared to some western food restaurants, but you can also bring yours. For me that was a “thumbs up” for the festival staff.

The main stage for me, had the best music, “The Shanghai restoration project SRP” was the one I liked the most, their music was some kind of jazz, hip hop, electronic music mixed with synthesizers, the group is based in Brooklyn, NY so they brought to China some of that American jazz flavor.

The last one was the night stage, and it lasts all night. Its a small one, cause not a lot of people stay all night. They also had some good groups there.

Last day at the festival was good, but some uf us were tired from being up all night, some of us went to sleep at 2, so we can watch the sunrise from the Great Wall. The stage on the wall, was the last one to perform from 6 am to 12 pm.

It was a really nice experience to meet new people, dancing at the sound of the music on the Great Wall, listening to different kinds of music and being with our friends.

I extremely recommend this experience if you’re in China, its a one time experience, even if you don’t like electronic music, the environment makes you like it