The MIDI Music Festival – one of China’s top music events – continued its long running reputation for awareness raising by allowing Animals Asia to host an information booth at the event.

A stellar line-up, including the UK’s Suede attracted a bumper crowd with 30,000 revellers braving wind and rain to make it to the three-day event’s opening day.

An estimated 80,000 people are believed to have visited the site from 1 May to 3 May.

Animals Asia staff report that thousands of people visited their booth with 490 youngsters interested enough to sign up for Animals Asia updates.

Despite poor 3G access on site still more supporters began following Animals Asia on WeChat – China’s Facebook equivalent.

The stall was given a boost by the presence of performance artist Han Bing – famous for her “Walking the Cabbage” series – who volunteered to don a bear suit and play Moonie for us.

Sascha Su, Animals Asia’s External Affairs Officer who spent the holiday weekend managing the booth said:

“The amount of people who came to our stall was overwhelming and their comments entirely positive and supportive. We received many offers from potential volunteers including a vet. The weather wasn’t great with torrential rain in the late afternoon of the first day and winds that almost blew our booth down on the third, but our team of volunteers held the fort.” 

Animals Asia founder and CEO, Jill Robinson MBE said:

“MIDI Music Festival is huge in Beijing and the level of exposure we received by being on site is unprecedented. I’d like to thank the organisers for giving us the opportunity to spread our message and especially to the team who gave up their entire holiday weekend to spread awareness about our work – they got to see some great music and the bears now have many new fans too!”