For many, attending a concert is a cultural experience of sharing musical memories with a crowd in a stadium. But for singer-songwriter Hua Chenyu's fans, it goes beyond that.
During his recently concluded Mars Concert 1.0 tour, Hua reimagined the concert experience as an immersive amusement park. Attendees rode attractions, played games inspired by his songs, sampled themed foods, discovered Mars-themed gifts on their seats, and even joined their idol's onstage performance.
The experience reached a poetic extreme at the tour's coastal stop in Yantai, Shandong province: tens of thousands gathered for a concert that began at 3 am.
As dawn approached, Hua stood on a stage erected near the shoreline, dressed in a white shirt with flowing, intricately cut sleeves, as the tangerine sun rose on the distant horizon.
Facing sunrise and ocean breeze, he sang his single Growing Towards the Sun (15-minute live sunrise show) in unison with tens of thousands of fans. It was a collective, almost sacred greeting to the dawn.
Hua frames this world in intimate terms. At each venue, he greets fans with "Welcome home".
He explains, "I want to create a utopian space where everyone feels as relaxed as they do at home."
In their shared language, fans are "Martians", and the concert is their "planet", a temporary escape from everyone's earthly identities, a zone of pure, unrestrained joy. This sense of liberation resonates across ages and borders.
