Photos: Intro's New Factory Digs

Intro, China's largest electronic music festival, surprised us this morning with the news that they're changing this year's festival location to Shougang, or Capital Steel Factory, out in Shijingshan District. This is by far the coolest location I've ever heard of for a music event in this city. Earlier this year, Robert Foyle Hunwick wrote about the abandoned factory, its history and the people who worked there on Danwei.com. Here's an excerpt:

Travel to the farthest station on Line 1 of the Beijing subway, Pingguoyuan, in Shijingshan District, and step out onto a busy Beijing boulevard of flatbed trucks, lorries and cars. Nothing to see here but a desolate suburb with little of remark, except a hulking ghost from the industrial past looming on the westernmost stretch of Chang’an Boulevard, the axis that separates Tiananmen Square from the Forbidden City.

The factory shut down production and was moved to Hebei a decade ago during the campaign to improve the city's air quality for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics. Since then, it has sat in the west of the city as an unused wasteland.

Intro is hoping this location will help revive the good vibes that made the festival famous when it was in D Park in 798, before they were forced to move to the unsatisfactory Crab Island venue last year. The organizers are posting photos of the festival's new venue on Sina Weibo. Here's a selection. Looks like an awesome place for a party.

Photos: Danwei.com, @INTRO电子音乐节 on Sina Weibo