"The first step in realizing your dream is to not be afraid of any challenge," Liu Wa from Bejing Chaoyang Kaiwen Academy said.
This July, when Liu was informed that the music festival her band was attending had some trouble and was about to be cancelled, she decided to take over the job of hosting it. "I thought to myself, how hard could hosting be?" What's more, she turned this festival into a charity event by raising money for a stray dog rescue station in Anhui province.
Liu became a volunteer for the station by coincidence two years ago. "I realized how much money it could take to save those dogs. This music festival is exactly the opportunity I need to raise people's awareness of protecting stray dogs and donate money for them," Liu said.
Liu and her two friends, who are also members of the band needed to find sponsorships, set up the venue and contact bands of high schools in Beijing to perform within two weeks. "Negotiating with sponsors was tricky sometimes as we needed to figure out what they wanted and trade with resources we had," Liu recalled. They managed to cooperate with companies such as a study abroad agency to cover the expense as much as possible. Many parents also "sponsored" them with their homemade food.
The weather forecast had said that the day of the music festival, Aug 6, was going to be rainy. "We were so worried at first. But then a miracle happened: It only rained a little toward the end, helping us to sell the umbrellas we had prepared," Liu said.
Audiences were mainly friends, parents and students. "Because of the pandemic, the audiences were limited to no more than 200 people, which also pushed us to come up with ways of earning money other than tickets," Liu explained. Eventually, they managed to raise 50,000 yuan from rain gear, food, and accessories they had designed.
Having been looked down upon many times by professional bands in Beijing, Liu also sees this festival as a way of telling the world that high school bands are just as good. "I want to run our own music channel on Bilibili. Our love for music will never stop," Liu said.
