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Fans at the Strawberry Music Festival in Wuhan on Saturday
Photo: TINGSHU WANG / REUTERS
Thousands of people celebrate a rock concert close together.
No distance, hardly a mask, pure joy.
The pictures are from the Strawberry Music Festival in Wuhan, which took place over the weekend.
After a strict lockdown, the Chinese city is now almost corona-free - and is now giving people back freedom of movement.
The rock festival last year only took place online because of the corona pandemic.
Now fans and bands were allowed to celebrate live together again.
Although the number of visitors was limited this time compared to previous festivals, 11,000 people were allowed to visit the site on Saturday.
Some of them still wore masks, many didn't.
In Wuhan, where Covid-19 first broke out, there was a tough lockdown during the first corona wave.
For two months, the people lived with extreme restrictions, for example they were not even allowed to leave their homes to go shopping.
According to Chinese authorities, the city is now almost virus-free.
"Last year we [in Wuhan] suffered a lot from the coronavirus," 23-year-old student Gao Yuchen told Reuters.
“It wasn't easy to get to where we are today.
The people here paid an enormous price for it.
So I'm very happy to be here [at the festival]. "
Well-known bands and newcomers performed on three stages at the two-day event in Wuhan's Garden Expo Park.
Sister festivals took place in several other cities, including Beijing.
China has only recorded sporadic outbreaks across the country.
The Chinese authorities reported only 16 new corona cases on Friday.
All of them were due to returnees from other countries.
In total, there have been officially 90,671 corona cases with 4636 deaths in China since the pandemic began - most of them in Wuhan.
Around 265 million vaccinations had been carried out in China as of Saturday, according to the National Health Commission.
zob / Reuters
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