Chaoyang Park in Beijing attracts thousands of families and couples every day, with its gardens, amusement-park attractions, boating lake and fountains.
It's not an exaggeration to say this huge park in the eastern part of the capital has a little something for everyone. That will be especially true this weekend, when it hosts the Beijing Pop Festival, with 25,000 people expected to gather for a two-day music marathon featuring local and international acts, including Supergrass and Placebo.
Joining the Brit-rockers will be 12 other acts, including former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach, Karin Park from Sweden and Don Juan Dracula from Norway, plus Chinese rockers Muma, the Face and XTX.
It's rare to see the words 'music festival' and 'China' appear in the same sentence. But after 10,000 people turned out for last year's debut Beijing Pop Festival, dancing to the sounds of former Stone Roses singer Ian Brown and a range of local acts, the organisers realised that they were onto a good thing.
'Historically, there have been no rock music festivals in China,' says founder Jason Magnus. 'This is an opportunity to do something culturally unique.'
Muma - whose real name is Xie Qiang - was the first performer to take the stage at last year's festival and the experience had a great impact on him. 'The sun was hot, but it felt good to have people shouting my name and enjoying my music in a relaxing environment,' he says. 'The festival also provides a good platform for fans to understand our music and for musicians to exchange ideas.'
But introducing a new concept is never easy, particularly on the mainland. Magnus and his team have encountered many difficulties in organising the festival, mainly due to government red tape. 'We had to explain to them the concept of a music festival, as they were only used to concerts where the audience sits down,' he says. 'Sometimes we just couldn't disagree with them because we wanted to make this happen. For example, they required that we have 1,000 security staff for 10,000 people last year.'