[Will & Kate] (0:13 - 0:31)

Burners of New Zealand, Australia and Asia, Radically making magic on the paddock around the fire, B-O-N-Z-A-A-R, Bonzaar Podcast.

[Stevan] (0:31 - 1:33)

Welcome to everyone and anyone out there listening. I'm Stevan Lay or Silent Disco on Paddock and you've just tuned in to the Burners of New Zealand and Australia, an Asian regional podcast, a conversation audio pod about burner culture and its Asia Pacific communities. In this episode, we venture to the far east of Asia to the world's second most populous country and profile Dragon Burn, Burning Man's official regional status burn.

And we'll talk about that distinction later. We're excited to have this chat with you both. And when you Dragon Burners had presented, including Eric's talk at the 2025 Bonza Summit, we knew that we had to get you guys all on and bottle these stories and insights as it was so inspirational and filled with bizarre and unpredictable weirdness that had us all in the audience, laughing out loud, clapping, fist pumping, crying, whipping our tears from laughter and in disbelief on occasions.

We love the retelling so much that the zebra became the Bonza Summit mascot this year. So welcome to the Bonzaar podcast, Elaine and Francesca.

[Koi] (1:34 - 1:34)

Thank you.

[Sassy Panda] (1:35 - 1:35)

Thank you.

[Stevan] (1:36 - 1:37)

How are we going there?

[Koi] (1:37 - 1:37)

It's good.

[Sassy Panda] (1:38 - 1:39)

Doing great. Very nice.

[Koi] (1:39 - 1:40)

Yes.

[Stevan] (1:40 - 1:42)

So you guys are calling us from Shanghai.

[Koi] (1:43 - 1:43)

Yes.

[Stevan] (1:43 - 1:43)

China.

[Koi] (1:44 - 1:44)

Yes.

[Stevan] (1:44 - 1:46)

How's the weather these days?

[Koi] (1:46 - 1:57)

It's fantastic, which is very rare, but we are blessed. Yes. Great.

It's windy and not too hot. Pleasant. It's kind of an eternal spring.

[Stevan] (1:58 - 2:06)

Cool. So let's get some quick intros. So the roles and contributions to the Burner Community or the Dragon Burn Community.

So let's start with you, Sassy Panda.

[Sassy Panda] (2:06 - 2:56)

Yeah. So my name is Sassy Panda. So I've been involved with Dragon Burn since 2013, I believe.

Since then, I've been closely working with all the fellow organizers and planners and key contributors to keep Dragon Burn going and evolving. So it's been a little bit over a decade so far. We had our lows, we had our highs.

It's been a bumpy road in the past 10 or 11 or 12 years. I'm still feeling blessed to be in this community and to be able to help or support as much as I can. Even though I had the hesitations in between here and there, but still, we continue the road.

[Stevan] (2:56 - 2:58)

You're also an RC for China?

[Sassy Panda] (2:58 - 3:18)

Yes. I became to the RC since 2015, took over the position from Sven, who was the former RC of Dragon Burn in China. I don't really talk about this position that much. I try to label myself as just a supporter of the burn.

[Stevan] (3:19 - 3:21)

Cool. And what about yourself, Francesca?

[Koi] (3:21 - 5:39)

So, well, I'm one of the foreigner voice. So I think that China has some regional has the same situation where the community is a mix of local and migrants. For me, it's an important role because I've been a part of Dragon Burn since the very beginning, together with Elaine and maybe two or three other people so far.

And so it's kind of like an international voice, but also I'm very situated in the local context. So for me, I feel like a local, even by nationality and culture, I am not. But this is something that influence and I think that the Dragon Burn community at large is representative of this encounter.

And it was quite interesting the way that I end up doing Dragon Burn because I knew about the existence of Burning Man since when I was a teenager and we were doing political and cultural collectives back in Europe. And we were looking at the community form of organizing and doing arts and most of the case with the anarchist spirit that I think was very obvious in the early stage. So I remember in the middle of the 90s, we were looking at Burning Man as one.

Oh, it would be really nice to go there and bring our mutant vehicle or bring our things there and participate. And then by chance, I was in a little tech, kind of like an underground tech event. And there was a panel that was saying Burning Man in China, China to Burning Man, question mark.

And I was like, oh, that's interesting. So I went to listen and there was Sven making a presentation. So I sign up in a newsletter.

And then the following meetup where I try to organize a screening, like a movie screening or like conversation about the principle or maybe a decompression. And so I get involved into the making, like how can you make an event? So I would scout the venue and all of the logistic part.

And I stay engaged since then because that's something that for me was a kind of familiar from the past and then finally got rooted into my life in China at that time.

[Sassy Panda] (5:40 - 7:31)

Speaking of how you get into this community, I just remember how I discovered Burning Man and also Dragon Bird in China, because I remember back in 2012 or 2013, I was reading the magazine at work. There was one piece, it's about the interview of Sven talking about the Burning Man culture and also how they are trying to organize some events in China. So in the very first place, I only heard about Burning Man, like all the other Chinese people who just search a little bit online.

Oh, I saw some cool photos. That's all my understanding about the world. So my impression was, oh, Burning Man is a very cool event.

It would be good if I have a chance to see it in the future. So when I saw this interview on the magazine, I was like, oh, maybe I can reach out. So I sent an email to Sven and said, you know, I'm quite interested in this project.

If you need any help, I'm available. I want to get involved more. And then he actually came out to meet me, sort of like an interview, to see if I'm really interested or I'm just making fun of this interview thing.

So I went through this talk with Sven and then later on, he brought me into the group of people who's trying to organize the movie screening of Small Guys and Women. So that's how I started. But also, I think I learned more of the Burner culture through Dragon Burn events in the first few years because we did a satellite burn in 2014.

So I went to that one first and then I went to Burning Man for the first time in 2015. So my personal experience is Regional Burn first and then Burning Man the second.

[Stevan] (7:31 - 7:39)

And since then, you have been going back to Burning Man regularly and other regionals too.

[Sassy Panda] (7:39 - 7:58)

Yes. Yeah. I went back to the Big Burn like three times in total so far.

And I also went to Burning Seed in 2019. So the next step, I think, maybe I will spend more time on Regionals because I found the Regionals are quite interesting and also more fun.

[Stevan] (7:59 - 8:06)

Would you agree with that, Koi? You also love the international burns. You've been to the ones in Taiwan, is it?

Or the one in Japan?

[Koi] (8:07 - 8:41)

Yeah, I was in Taiwan, in Japan, in Nowhere, and two KiwiBurns. And yes, there is a few burns that I want to check out. Not necessarily all of them, I have to say, but quite a few that I think would be interesting.

Maybe because there's something special about the community or maybe there's something special about the place, that could also be the case. But yeah, I think Regionals are interesting and quite an amazing experience, yeah.

[Stevan] (8:41 - 8:45)

I think it's the future of burns, I think. How did you find Kiwi Burn?

[Koi] (8:46 - 10:51)

Kiwi Burn? Well, so it is an interesting story, like personally, because I had a ticket to Kiwi Burn in 2020 and we were supposed to be, there was a group from Dragonburn. We were maybe like 15 or maybe even 20 of us that wanted to go to Kiwi Burn.

And I didn't go finally because COVID happened. And I had the sense, even at the time, it was like middle of January. It was not really clear that was COVID and what was COVID and all of this thing.

But I had a kind of like a very visceral sense that it would have been better to just stay home and understand what was going on before going somewhere else. And so I sold my ticket to a friend. I mean, I gave my ticket to a friend of mine and say, OK, if you want to go, just go.

And the results of that situation is that he was stranded outside of the country for two years and he couldn't come back. And he actually had to relocate somewhere else on the planet. And I stay here and I kept my life kind of safe and I could continue to do the things that I was doing.

And so when I went back to Kiwi Burn finally in 2025 was a kind of like really a long period of reconciliation of a lot of things. And there was also a lot of stories of these people that came from China to Kiwi Burn in this middle of January. What was the situation was like a little bit confused.

So for me, it was a special place to finally make it. And my experience was amazing. Until then, I always said, oh, my favorite burn is Nowhere in Spain.

And after that, I said, oh, I kind of don't know anymore, which is my favorite burn. And I went back again this year. And of course, I'm thinking to go back.

Maybe not. But it's just like I was really, really in love. I think it was very beautiful.

[Stevan] (10:51 - 10:55)

Well, that's an amazing story. So it's like a sliding doors moment for you, Koi.

[Koi] (10:56 - 11:05)

Yeah, it was a little bit of a sliding doors. It's kind of like one of the things like what would have happened to my life if I was going to Kiwi Burn.

[Stevan] (11:05 - 11:08)

You would have had to have a Kiwi citizenship then.

[Koi] (11:09 - 11:19)

Maybe. Well, the funny thing is that the person that I gave my ticket to is actually now having a New Zealand citizenship. Or in the process, too.

[Stevan] (11:20 - 11:25)

Awesome. So Sassy Panda, tell us about your experience with Burning Seed in 2019.

[Sassy Panda] (11:25 - 13:26)

Yeah. So the reason I decided to go to Burning Seed was because I went to the big burn from 2015. And then I went back on 2017. So my plan at that time was one year on, one year off.

And then I was trying to keep on that pattern. But then by 2019, I was thinking, oh, maybe I can try a different regional burn. I met this camp leader, Peter, from one of his visits to Shanghai.

So that's how I got in touch with him. And he's the only one I knew from Burning Seed. I didn't know anyone at that time.

So at 2019, I remember, I think he sent me a message talking about the preparation for Burning Seed. And he was asking me if possible I can bring some camp decoration stuff or anything for their camp. And I was like, yeah, maybe I can try that one.

And then I started to do a little bit of research. But I was still a little bit hesitant to go because I was alone by myself. And no one was going to go with me together to Australia.

So I was helping him to prepare for the stuff for the camp. And I got to know a little bit of people from that camp as well. Our camp was not very big, but it was quite comfortable.

And it's all local people. So it was very easy to blend in and also to get to know all the stories and history about the Burning Seed event. So that year, I just decided to go to Burning Seed.

And it was actually really nice. It was 6,000 people, I believe. That year was really big.

And also, I met a couple other friends there, other friends. The overall experience was really nice. And I signed up for a couple of volunteer shifts as well.

Trying to get to know the whole organization, etc. So yeah, my impression of Burning Seed was absolutely amazing.

[Stevan] (13:26 - 13:28)

What was the theme camp that you entered through?

[Sassy Panda] (13:30 - 13:40)

Piranha. I never really figured out how to pronounce that name. Piranha?

Something like that. Piranha.

[Koi] (13:40 - 13:41)

Possible like the fish?

[Stevan] (13:42 - 13:42)

Pirainia.

[Koi] (13:43 - 13:43)

Piranha, right?

[Sassy Panda] (13:45 - 13:48)

Pirainia. They are a bit of psytrance already.

[Koi] (13:48 - 14:13)

So I want to make a point about this because she went to Burning Seed.

And I organized also another underground community festival in Shanghai that is a psytrance festival. And she always despised me about psytrance music. And she came back from Burning Seed saying, I'm a psytrance person now.

[Stevan] (14:16 - 14:20)

So that's good on Peter for that. Shout out to Peter.

[Koi] (14:21 - 14:22)

Exactly. Shout out to Peter.

[Stevan] (14:22 - 14:23)

He was at the Bonza last year, yeah?

[Koi] (14:24 - 14:24)

Yes, yes.

[Stevan] (14:26 - 14:27)

Awesome job, Peter.

[Sassy Panda] (14:28 - 14:35)

That camp was really interesting. Very fun. The overall was very fun.

[Stevan] (14:35 - 14:49)

Okay, let's get into the Dragon Burn story now.

The background, the history, the formation. What was the first six years and the last six years like and so on? So you guys had a camp out in 2013.

And that wasn't like an official Dragon Burn yet.

[Koi] (14:49 - 14:51)

That was 2014.

[Stevan] (14:51 - 14:54)

Yeah, 2014. That's when you started, 2014, yeah.

[Koi] (14:54 - 15:00)

So it was 2014. Yeah, the first, like the island.

[Sassy Panda] (15:00 - 15:00)

Yeah.

[Koi] (15:01 - 17:14)

It wasn't that small. I mean, it was still like, kind of like maybe 150, 180 people. And it was, I mean, from what I remember from there and also my kind of like attitude of like, oh, it's the first time I'm doing something like a Burn-like thing.

So it's different than doing it. It's different than what I've been done in the past. It was really kind of like a gathering of different crowds and small community that were doing artistic stuff.

And some of them would have been audiovisual maybe, some kind of like projection, a little bit of music related. There was like some people doing like some theater things. I remember there was like a very beautiful theater, like dance theater performance that lasted for every night.

There was like a, just made some basic bamboo structure with some low lighting. And then there was this like magical dancing, like kind of like where people was circling and having this emotional interaction with what was going on. And then there was like more of a kind of like a dance stage like a thing.

And the venue was phenomenal. It had like a cliff, like basically it was like a long stretch of a grassy beach around the lake with this very high, like maybe, I don't know, 15-story building high cliff of rocks, like few rocks, which came out to be the perfect setting for anything that was like laser or projection of any lighting thing. So it was kind of like, turns out to be very magical without even much of a decision making of what was supposed to look like.

The first, the logistic was really like mainly where we do allow people to camp, how people would get water, which is something I actually have no memory about. I think we just probably carry our water ourselves. I have no memories about the toilet.

So I assume there were toilets, otherwise I would have memory about how the toilets were working if I have to do something special about it. But I was on a rehab for an injury. So I was on crutches.

[Stevan] (17:15 - 17:16)

Yeah, you broke your leg that year.

[Koi] (17:16 - 17:38)

I break my leg the year. And so that was my rehab. So I arrived with crutches and I left without crutches, which is kind of like a miracle in a way.

And then Sven gift me, I still have it. Like, how do you call it in English? No, a stick.

Like that is a proper name. Anyway, like kind of like a wooden thing for walking, like those that are used by a crane.

[Stevan] (17:38 - 17:38)

A walking stick.

[Koi] (17:39 - 19:42)

A crane (cane), maybe. And it's a crane (cane) from, that you can break in two parts. And he has the sign, he has like a metal sign.

It was a crane (cane) that belonged to someone that was in the British army in the expedition in India at the end of the 19th century. So it's kind of like a piece of archaeology that was gifted to me to be able to get out of the burn. And so we did this thing and people show up and the camping was like just a camping area.

And then there was this couple of areas where a situation of art was happening very spontaneously and very like on the moment. And then someone was, and then at the entrance you were given a piece of wood that you could write something on and then you could put it at the effigy and this would have been burned. So it was kind of like someone just took care of sort of having a moment of connection with the fire, like in a very deep way.

And the effigy was not very big, but it was nice. It was like this is a dragon head sculpture made with like the Japanese technique of not having nails for putting it together. So everything was on the base.

It was like stitched, like snitched to each other, all the pieces. And it was quite nice, I have to say. It was like very intimate and very high emotionally, I think, for participating to a new thing.

And that probably gave the energy for the future to say, okay, we're doing something and we can continue. And someone said from the very beginning, the point is not to do one event, it's like try to think how the event can happen through the years. And so that's where kind of like a little bit the peculiar story of Dragon Burn where it's like every year we sort of have to reinvent what are the conditions that we can use to make it happen.

But it was very nice, very, very nice.

[Sassy Panda] (19:43 - 21:13)

Yeah, I remember because for me, like local Chinese in 2014, that was my first time to do camping event. Believe it or not, but Chinese people don't really do camping that much, especially like 14 years ago, 12 years ago. But for me, the first camping experience was really nice.

And for most of the local people, like because now after COVID, like all of a sudden, like camping and also glamping, it came to a big thing in China. But 12 years ago, it was not really very common. So for me, the bar was raised very high from the very beginning.

It was like from 1 to 100 all of a sudden. So the whole beginning for me is like everything was so interesting and so fun. Everything was like first-time experience.

And also like throughout the whole event, all the art activities, all the performance, it was very touched. And to the end of the effigy burn, I still remember so clear, like when the other organizer was there in the very first place, she handed me this fireball thing, light up the effigy. I was really honored.

And it was a very emotional moment as well. And I think that really kept me motivated to go with them, explore the journey even longer.

[Stevan] (21:14 - 21:19)

It sounds like a passing of the torch moment too. You kept it alive.

[Koi] (21:19 - 21:54)

Yes, that's definitely. I think, I mean, now that you make me think, it's kind of like very interesting to look back. I just had a memory.

At the time, none of us has any idea about departments or organization of the crews or what you are supposed to have in place to make a burn functioning. And I remember that I was at the gate, which was not a gate. It was like literally a table with people checking on your name if it was on the list.

[Stevan] (21:54 - 21:57)

You sound like a bouncer. Security.

[Koi] (21:57 - 23:38)

Yeah. It was kind of like, it was just like, and I was there.

I was in my limited mobility. And then now that I'm thinking back, there was this situation where there were the villagers, of course. In China, there are villagers.

In a country, there is people living nearby. And I remember that people were coming and trying to get in because they were curious about what was going on. And somehow, I have this memory of myself, the kind of reaction that they try to sneak in and they run in.

And I run after them, like on one leg. So there is this moment where I run for like 20 meters on one of my legs to try to get speed and to catch them and to stop them, you know. And it's so interesting to see, okay, well, it's like maybe I behaved as a bouncer even without wanting to be a bouncer and in a situation where maybe we were like protecting what was going on, but without actually an idea about how to do that.

So now if I think about that scene, it sounds like something that you can laugh about me and it's okay. I take it. And then now with also the work that I'm doing now with Gates, it's kind of like it's a completely different thing.

So this idea of the culture is really something that, I mean, it really comes from experience. I didn't feel good about doing that, but it's the only thing that I knew at the time, like if you have a trespasser, you try to stop it. And now I have like much more ways in which I could engage with that situation, you know.

And that's kind of like that's interesting to have this come back to the mind and say, okay, well, the story really is kind of like really evolving a lot. That's like really beautiful.

[Sassy Panda] (23:39 - 23:41)

I've learned a lot along the way.

[Stevan] (23:41 - 23:45)

I love how you guys started with like the grassroots levels, right?

[Koi] (23:45 - 23:45)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (23:45 - 24:03)

Very basic. Even your org structures and stuff like that. So what, 200 people sounds like a perfect kind of, you know, inception burn.

And what was the follow-up? What was the next like six years like you guys are just growing and gaining momentum?

[Koi] (24:03 - 26:35)

Well, then the second year we said, okay, we can do it again. Let's go back and check the site because it's really beautiful. And then we arrived for the site check and then there is a construction site of a 10-story five-star hotel exactly where was the campground.

And as we said, okay, like, you know, that's maybe we have an issue with the land ownership or we kind of need to have a different. And I have a memory. I don't know if it's a real memory or not, but I have a memory that the discussion that we were having with Nick and Diana, with everybody was kind of like the landlord or whoever we were talking with said, yeah, you can just still do it.

You know, it's like, dude, there is a construction site of a hotel. You know, it's not exactly. I mean, it's just like, no, we cannot do it here.

You know, and that was the first moment where we kind of have to bounce against the idea that we like that. Okay, we need to find a new place. And then we found a new place that was quite amazing to the friend of a friend of the landlord.

That's when we get in touch with the town. It's like a countryside, 45 years old man that somehow he knows everybody. And he tells us, oh, you can come and visit this and that.

Found this venue spectacular. Very, very nice. Also a venue.

And then that year, for some reason, we changed the date from May to October for I don't remember which reason. And then the venue has the it's kind of like half of the venue is flooded by the water reservoir level. So in that year, the space was very limited.

And so it was kind of like, but it was still working. I was I wasn't there because it was moved the dates. And the last minute I have to go somewhere else.

But I did the first artist and I left the lane to build it. So that was also an interesting experiment. And then we said, oh, this venue is amazing.

We love it. And then the third year, something happened three days before the burn. The venue blown away, like kind of like we got a phone call.

We cannot do the event anymore. And then in three days we found another venue. So there's this kind of habit of uncertainty, kind of like uncertainty and creativity.

That's what in the Bonza last year presentation we were trying to explain as like the emergent and the emergency. It is kind of like not very clear if it's emergent or is it just an emergency. But that's how it works.

[Stevan] (26:35 - 26:45)

Yeah, that's fascinating. Yes. So prospecting for site, you guys had some really spectacular and majestic landscapes in the past.

[Koi] (26:45 - 26:45)

Yes.

[Stevan] (26:45 - 26:52)

Can you talk to us about some of the sites that you were using and some of the background backdrops, stuff like that, community, towns?

[Koi] (26:52 - 31:28)

Yes. So it was like first an island. So cliff and the rough kind of like grass area between the lake.

It is like this is like a wetland, kind of like all the Shanghai surrounding for at least 300 kilometers is the estuary of a 3,000 if not, like 2,000 kilometer if not longer river, which I think is like one of the three or five longest river on the planet. This is the estuary. So there is like a huge wetland area with like rivers and canals and lakes all over.

So that was the first thing. Then the second year was the same area but a little bit more inland, on a lake, like a water reservoir, which are very common because in the estuary there is a lot of reservoir that comes out of the river with more of a – it's a bamboo forest, like typical for bamboo forest area. So it's kind of like fast-growing roots.

So it's not old wood kind of scenario. It's not forest like in the North American sense. It's just like trees that go very fast for timber and then bamboo.

Then when we cancelled that year, then we end up totally random on another island, and we went back there. So 2016 we were cancelled. We went, we found at last minute in 24 hours kind of another venue that was on an island and still in the same kind of area.

We're talking about the range of maybe 100 kilometers, like all of these places. So it's more or less the same landscape. So when we were moved, we found a place on an island that was basically grass and a little bit of bamboo forest, very simple location.

But the funny thing was that the boats that can go to this island are kind of like – I don't know how you call them in English, but they're wooden boats where you can carry – you have like 20 seats maybe on the side and a cabin inside for maybe like, I don't know, like four or five square meters of a cabin. So we have to load all the gears of the festival on these boats and going to multiple shipping, round of shipping of all the things, and also organize how you get the people 20 by 20, you know. So that was like a kind of interesting greeter experience.

Then we went back to the previous place that we really loved. And then we said, OK, we're back here. But it was the right season, so the reservoir was low.

So we had a much larger area that was perfect for first time having an effigy and the temple because otherwise we were basically burning in the boots. This was like 2017. Then 2018 we said, OK, amazing, now we have a venue.

We can just make a burn and we can grow. And then we went for a site check, and it turns out that the landlord sold the venue back to the government, and the venue does not exist anymore as a venue. So back on track again.

Our connection somehow gave us the contact with another place to visit. We went to visit this place, and that's where we are still since 2018. And that's a much, much, much larger site that is mainly two parts.

One is a forest, like fast-growing trees, forest, and bamboo forest for local harvesting of timber and bamboo. And then a big area with something that was a flower farm, so like hills, like kind of like a platform on different heights that was originally a flower farm where we're doing wedding shooting for a beautiful picture. And that's why the venue is also scattered by this decadent, I mean, there is a love sign.

I don't know if you, like you or like someone of the audience remember Burning Man has this like big letter in the middle of the deep playa that say love. We have the same. Small scale, we have it at Dragon Burn.

It's just like decadent, and then creeping it out, and there is like a portal, there is a giraffe, there is two concrete-shaped balloon, like a hot air balloon. So you go there, you take these photos, there is the flowers, you are on your wedding thing. That was the original purpose of this area.

And now it's kind of like a mix of agricultural land and timber making and sort of thing, and we've been there since then.

[Sassy Panda] (31:29 - 32:44)

Yeah, but 2018 when we arrived to this new site, we remember the forest site was completely abandoned. There was no infrastructure at all. It's just purely just wood, that's it, and large space, that's it.

And the landlord at that time didn't really have any activities going on in the forest. So his idea was, okay, if you want to do an event, use it. This whole forest is yours.

You can do whatever you want. But he had no idea what kind of event we were doing. We basically built up the whole site, the forest site, by ourselves, pulling out the cables and brought the porta potty, fixing the water supply and everything, but very basic infrastructures because we didn't want to have too much development in the forest.

Still want to keep it real. So after, I think, 2018, the first year we hosted the event, the landlord sort of understood a little bit what we were doing and inspired very much since then. And he loved Dragonburn from the first year.

[Stevan] (32:44 - 32:45)

And did I participate?

[Koi] (32:45 - 37:21)

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

So this is, I mean, maybe we can have a little digression here because it was kind of interesting. The forest was really like, imagine like a piece of land that is very long and it's maybe like 2.5 kilometers long, so a couple of miles, and it's like maybe half mile large and is at the edge of a water reservoir. So you have two ways to cross the forest.

One is to go along the water reservoir on a kind of like a country road, like kind of a gravel, and then you have a path in the woods that goes up down the hill for these two miles. That's the only thing. So we could stretch deep on two miles, but the space was not very wide and there was nothing, like absolutely nothing.

There were like two or three water points with a hose, like hooked with a zip tie on top of a tea stake. That's it. So what we did in 2018 was to transform the hose into, like put them in some kind of like handmade sink or to having something that you're not actually just using the hose on the ground, but you're sort of have a little bit of structuring.

And then there was no electricity at all. So we pulled like almost four kilometers of cable. There is a main source of electricity.

And then we made an electric system that is actually documented. And it was like that's how I get into DPW kind of thing because I had to make the thing and it was amazing. So we made this thing.

And then after that, when we dismantled the thing, we said, okay, we asked the lender what we want to keep. And so some of the cable stayed there and they became the main line of the forest and some of the hose, they stayed there and they became an actual sewage system with the septic tanks and actual toilet and shower and so on. The interesting, I mean, I think this process was interesting because we didn't, like it was kind of like, oh, we have to do this thing.

So we're going to do this thing. And we were going around with like this rolling meter to measure how much cable we need to buy and what was all of the latency and all of this thing. And it worked out very well.

And I think that, and we did everything like kind of like by ourself, which to me is kind of like, I think it was interesting in China because like culturally you arrive to a place and you are expecting a certain amount of service. It may be minimum, but if you're talking with a lender, there are services that are considered basics. So the fact that we didn't ask anything, we just like start to measure, buy cables, plug the things and all of this.

And we were asking confirmation about we want to do this. Is that okay with you? That's, I think it sort of created, I mean, I like to think that this sort of created the good conversational grounds where it was part of the process from the beginning without having to be bothered by the process from the beginning.

And so he has this time to look from distance and to feel like no pressure. Then, I don't know, I like to think that it was cool in that sense, but it really jumped into the thing. And there is, well, the Bones of France knows a little bit of the story, but there has been this rename of the, this was like during COVID for a variety of reasons, but he renamed the name, like when you enter in the venue now, there is this like big sign that says we come from the land of struggle and we arrive to the land of freedom.

And then now, at the gate, when you pay the ticket for the camping fee, there is a series of what you are, how you are supposed to behave so you don't have to fish in the reservoir, you're not supposed to bathe in the reservoir, don't keep open fire, blah, blah, blah. And then the last few things they say, be kind and gentle with everybody, everybody's part of the same community or something like that. It's kind of like a phrasing that is absolutely not standard.

I wouldn't say in China, but in general. But it's really, you can really see that it's been mutuated by the relationship and the presence that we had. So in that sense, I think what's happening is quite special.

[Stevan] (37:21 - 37:28)

Yeah, it sounds amazing. So it seems like he's been touched by not angels, but burners. He's kept that kind of ethos with him.

[Koi] (37:28 - 37:31)

I mean, yes, burners are real.

[Stevan] (37:34 - 37:40)

Yeah, that's an amazing story. So it's not about the destination, it's about the whole journey.

[Koi] (37:40 - 37:46)

Yeah, I mean, in China, the destination is like, of course, it's a journey.

[Stevan] (37:47 - 38:00)

Yeah, so the first six years, some amazing stories there, some struggles there. And what about the last kind of six years as well? Some reflections, some thoughts about that?

It's been a struggle too, but a different struggle, yeah?

[Sassy Panda] (38:01 - 39:47)

Yeah, very different struggles. I think the last six years, of course, like all the first six years, every year was unique and different. But I would say in general, 2019 was more like a peak point where things shifted rapidly and we were facing lots of challenges that's never really handled by ourselves before.

Lots of key organizers or contributors also left the community. We were struggling with limited hands and also in a more restricted environment to do events and gatherings. So that's why after 2019, we had a few unofficial burns, unofficial gatherings, and until 2025, we were able to pull out this first official burn after COVID.

The two unofficial gatherings were a little bit in the memory of mine because I think after COVID, there was tough times for everyone in that couple of years. So it's a bit of hope, I would say, in that difficult times. But we still pushed through.

And until 2025, I think we were sort of ready to reignite the fire a little bit, even though without knowing what our community was really there at that moment. So it was a bit scary for me personally in 2025.

[Koi] (39:48 - 43:56)

I think it's worth mentioning. So in 2024, we actually organized an official burn. Everything was kind of settled.

And then we received a phone call or a communication where the burn was cancelled. It could not happen. This was also maybe a week or even less before that we had to open the gate.

The burn could not have happened. And the reason why it could not have happened, quite bizarre. And I believe that it's very hard to understand.

This is maybe a little bit of the disbelief that you mentioned originally, which I think is a crucial word. But basically, we were informed that the fact that the jurisdiction on the forest part of the land belonged to a special kind of department of the government that is affiliated with the Ministry of Justice because there is a prison nearby, which is not the case for the terrace part of the land. Somehow, from somewhere, arrived the thing that no events can be allowed in such a jurisdiction.

So we were ready with art grants and projects and things and stuff, and we had to cancel the event. And the landlord, actually, he was really almost pushy on the idea and said, no, guys, you just move. Just move to the terrace.

And what we decided to do in that situation is that he would say, it's fine. You don't do it in the forest. You just do it in the terrace.

It's going to be okay. And that's where I think I want to resonate with the sentiment of fear that Elaine was mentioning. And I think also because we can say this was a decision that basically it was taken by the two of us, kind of like we were at the venue and we said, okay, this is a decision that was here.

It's taking the decision. We took the decision. It was very unclear like what was the dynamic that made this phone call or this stream of communication manifest.

And so for the landlord, it was okay to move on the terrace because he said, okay, you are outside of this problem, so everything is going to be fine. But for us, it was like, okay, what if someone will eventually show up and what if their request is to cancel the event, and then we are the only people because there is thousands of campers in this venue during the time where we do the burn. But what if we are the only kind of like stupid few hundreds that are just like on the terrace where there is no single point of shade, where there is no infrastructure whatsoever.

We felt like kind of like holding the attention on ourselves and so kind of like we were not sure about how much we could stretch on these things. And so we said, no, we just cancel it. We just say that it's canceled and we don't say anything else.

And if people still want to come and camp, they will come and camp in the forest and we'll see what happens. And then what happened is that like a couple of hundred people, if not more, they actually show up, you know, and some of them were saying, oh, I brought an art piece. Do you think I can build it?

And we said, yeah, speak with the landlord, you know, and then blah, blah, blah. But yes, very accommodating. Someone said, what is my cable?

And he's like, there's no cable. The event is canceled, you know, and then somehow we, but it was the only time that we didn't burn anything. It was kind of like we canceled the event.

So there was a sort of like we wanted to be responsible in that sense. And then the year after, then we said, okay, now we move to the terraces. Okay, now we can do an event on the terraces.

Let's do an event on the terraces, which means also restart from zero because there's no toilet, there's no water, there's no electricity, there's no infrastructure. It's kind of like 300 meters walk, but everything is, there's no shade. Everything is different.

So it was like, okay, let's do it. Let's see what happens.

[Stevan] (43:56 - 44:09)

Yeah, so most of the site, you're looking for something that is a complete blank canvas, right? What about operating in spaces where there are some limited facilities and amenities? Is that possible in China?

[Koi] (44:09 - 46:26)

You mean as a choice, like to go to search for, I mean, yes, of course it would be possible. But there is this thing, me and Elaine, we went for like a 15 site check.

What was that, like 2020? I think between after we got canceled, like 2024, we went to like 15 site check. The thing is like for 2019, nobody in China was going camping.

Camping was not a thing. Like you have a house, you go to a hotel, you can find everywhere you go in China, you can find a three-star hotel that costs like less than $20 a night. There is absolutely no reason why you would go camping.

Then the country is locked down. I mean, not locked down, but like border closed for a few years. People cannot go travel around.

They get bored of the three-star hotel, $20. They want to have something different. They want to have something more interesting to talk to their families and friends.

Glamping came. So like I think we did also with our fellow in France that organized other events. There was a company that bought the 90% of the camping ground in the 500 kilometers range from Shanghai to make glamping operation.

And when I say glamping operation, I mean that we went to visit venue where you pay $150 to be on a glass house, domed shape, with air conditioning indoor, private toilet, private fire pit. And if you are lucky, for maybe $200, you can get a private pool of one square meter. That's what the people want to spend money for because they are saving money from international travel.

They want to go to be cool and chill and enjoy the nature with a friend. So venues were really, really not accessible anymore. We found a quarry that was amazing, like a proper quarry, so completely brutal black stone landscape.

Yes, possible. We could discuss, you know, it's kind of like a...

[Sassy Panda] (46:27 - 46:31)

But that place is also belong to one of the glamping company, I believe.

[Koi] (46:31 - 48:06)

So the rent was extremely high because then the glamping bought the land and so they sublet it to... It's kind of like strange that even the land that we are, that we have been working since such a long time, they had some of their area in the forest that were subletted to this glamping company. They maybe had, I don't know, team building retreats for the companies, like this kind of thing.

So they were getting some money out of there. And then there was a moment when the landlord, that was like the end of 2023 or something, said, I don't like these people. These people don't come here because of the forest.

They just come here and they leave piles of trash. They want us to put the lights up for them to pitch their tent. They want the tents always bigger.

They wonder why the toilet is like 100 meters far away instead of behind the tent and so on. So they just closed the contract. They probably also lost a little bit of money, but they just went back to be a kind of like a roots camping ground where you bring your thing.

The most of the things that they did was to kind of allow RV charging electricity point somehow in the venue because the people that didn't want to spend money on glamping tents, they spent money buying expensive RVs. But at least kind of like they're more autonomous or self-sufficient or maybe someone would say self-reliant.

[Sassy Panda] (48:08 - 48:57)

Because I remember very clearly in the first couple of years, I always told my parents, my family members saying, oh, May holiday, I'm not available. I need to do this camping event I'm working on. My mom always asked me the same question.

Even after years, I've been doing Dragon Bird. She always asked me, why do you want to go camping? Why do you want to live in the small tent?

There's no hotel nearby where you can stay in. And until glamping business went viral in China, one day he came to me like, you know, I saw some of the camping events on TikTok. They look very nice.

So maybe next time I can go with you to try that. I was telling my mom, that's not a camping event I'm doing. How far from that?

[Stevan] (48:58 - 49:08)

Yeah, the culture is so different. How far wouldn't you go or would you go for looking at sites? It's three hours away from Shanghai.

[Koi] (49:08 - 51:50)

Yeah, it's kind of like three hours away. That's a very interesting question. Of course, Sven is still dreaming of having a burn in the desert.

I mean, I think, I mean, think about Australia, right? Which is a fairly big country. And then you have, I lost the count of how many burns and communities and things that you have there.

So it's like, I think, it's like local communities could emerge that are closer to area that would make sense to engage with an environment. If you want to go to the desert, possibly logistically do it. Because China logistic is very, very easy and fairly cheap.

And I'm fascinated of the idea of the desert. But at the same time, I don't think that that's a precondition. Like for me, I mean, personally, the relationship with the environment is a much more interesting terrain of challenge.

Even though, I mean, nowhere is in a desert that is much worse than Black Rock City. Like you think of Black Rock City, you go to nowhere and you really suffer. It's really like a desert that can kill you.

Then you go to New Zealand, and if you have like a good Kiwiburn weather event, then everything is majestic. But if you have a flooding system, then people are still talking about the flooding of like a few years ago, where everybody was like, you know. And this year was a little bit tough weather-wise.

So we had flooding. And so I think that the engagement with the environment is somehow a backbone of, like, is a backbone of the 10 principles because it's not that we are just like, it's not that we are humans in an isolated system. We are like going into an environment, and we are demanding something to the environment, and then we're relating with this environment.

So why I have to put my energy into logistic effort, as easy as they can be or as cheap as they can be, to go four times? Because we're talking about 3,000 kilometers away. So if it's two hours, three hours, four hours, five hours, okay, whatever.

But if you really have to go beyond a limit where you're changing your setting, I think, I mean, I would like to have a reason for that. And the reason cannot just be like seeking a desert landscape because then also, I would say, if you tap into the desert landscape in China, and you're going into land of minorities, you really want to rebuild a completely different relationship with the local culture. It's much of a bigger project, you know.

And I don't want to be colonial again. I mean, I'm trying to clean. Sorry.

[Stevan] (51:51 - 52:01)

I'm fascinated by the name Dragon used for the burn. Were there other titles or other ideas that you guys had in mind before you guys named it Dragon Burn?

[Koi] (52:02 - 52:05)

I have no memories of that. I don't know.

[Stevan] (52:06 - 52:07)

So Dragon was just the obvious one.

[Koi] (52:08 - 53:20)

I mean, I don't know. It's China. It's Dragon.

It sounds like realistic. And I don't know. I honestly have no memories of if there was a big debate or not.

But what is interesting to say is that our first effigy was a dragon egg. And we always had the – I mean, also this is a conversation we had this year in quite a few situations about, like, we burned something that looked like a dragon only once, and it was controversial. Kind of the idea of like – I mean, Dragon Burn is because dragon is representative of China.

There are many things representative of China, and that was something that also is an animal that deal with fire in some of its ancestral manifestation. But I don't know. Maybe it could be nice that we can have a call, like a touch base with the others that now left and say, hey, what was exactly the discussion?

Like, how long was the discussion? What was the thing about the dragon? I don't know.

[Stevan] (53:20 - 53:20)

I love it.

[Koi] (53:21 - 53:22)

It's nice. Yeah.

[Stevan] (53:23 - 53:26)

I love it because I was born on the year of the dragon.

[Koi] (53:26 - 53:29)

Yeah. Okay. Sure.

[Stevan] (53:29 - 53:53)

Perfect. So I'm curious. The Burning Man culture in China, what's the exposure like, the knowledge of the people, the perception of the people, and the reputation?

We always start, I think, from – How's the exposure, though? It's more known now, I guess, since after the pandemic.

[Sassy Panda] (53:54 - 54:23)

Yeah, for sure. It's more known now. I mean, 10 years ago, I would say it's still a very small part of community who knows about Burning Man.

Maybe people just like me who heard about Burning Man or saw some pictures of Burning Man. But I wouldn't say it's a trend nowadays. I think especially after COVID or maybe even a year or two before COVID started.

[Stevan] (54:24 - 54:30)

Is this because there was an art installation from China on the player? It was before that.

[Koi] (54:31 - 54:33)

You like tricky questions, huh? Okay.

[Sassy Panda] (54:35 - 56:20)

More or less during those times. I think the art piece maybe brought even more attention because the artist and also the people behind it, I think they knew a bit of marketing or sort of promoting skills about their business. So they blasted out on social media for sure about their art piece.

But I think from maybe 2018 or 2019, it already appeared in most of the Chinese social medias, but not as popular as now. I think after COVID, it's becoming even more crazy, especially we have this new platform called Red Note that's even more popular. And on this social media, most of the exposure of Burning Man is only about the cool photos, nice dressed-ups, costumes, taking good photos.

That's the exposure or image of Burning Man on Chinese social media. Of course, there's also a small group of people, they probably know a bit more about the burn culture, and also they personally actually went to the burn. But how much they actually experienced or interacted with the burn, I'm not very sure.

But I would say 80% of the burn exposure in China is still about glamorous parts of the burn. You rarely see someone posting how much they sweat on fire to pitch the tent or the heavy work they did, mostly just dress up in front of the unicorn, take a good photo.

[Stevan] (56:20 - 56:36)

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? It's sex sells, right? The sex appeal, the optics, the illusion of glamour, of beauty and stuff like that.

So it's like the low-hanging fruit. It's easy to pick. It's easy to show.

Yeah.

[Sassy Panda] (56:36 - 56:37)

Yeah, yeah.

[Stevan] (56:37 - 56:37)

Interesting.

[Sassy Panda] (56:38 - 57:02)

Yeah, maybe not only in China. I guess all over Instagram, it's also the same. Surely, in the Western context, lots of people, they are also focusing on this part.

But I'm just saying maybe there's still a good portion of people, they are focusing on the burn culture. But here, unfortunately, I think most of the people are paying attention to the glamour part.

[Stevan] (57:02 - 57:05)

And what about the knowledge as well?

[Koi] (57:05 - 1:03:51)

I think this is really a complex question because it could probably branch out in different kind of conversations. So one of the ways that we like to present Dragon Burn is also we want to help Chinese people get in touch with the principal culture, with the burner community at large. And through the years, it's been quite interesting to see that it's kind of like a – I don't know, it feels like abroad, I would say.

You have like a middle area where you have people from one extreme that kind of converge to the middle. Like the middle area is very crowded. So you have people from all sorts of venues, but then they concentrate in the middle and they kind of like, oh, do we like it?

Do we don't like it? Are we doing things in a different way? And so on.

And in China, it's kind of like more the extremes are very populated. So there are people that are art or potentially art, or maybe they don't know that they are a member already, a Dragon Burn community in a sense, and they leave and they do their things by the principal. And maybe they don't know what the principal are, but just because it didn't happen yet.

And then you have the other extreme where you have the people that are – that they know Burning Man throughout the mainstream media, and they have no idea of anything else that goes outside of the week in the desert. And there is really, really very, very thin middle point. And this is kind of interesting.

It's like because myself and I think some of us, we actually would like to kind of like have more of encounter because this encounter could actually potentially create amazing things in the middle from China, like from this local perspective. The big art piece in the desert was also – some of the people behind that art piece were also connected to some events that happened in those years around 2017, 18, I don't remember, in China that were kind of like large-scale commercial in the sense that they were like trying to make a deal with the land in the desert, so in a very remote area involving a sort of like a management and government layers. And they wanted – like the first thing was like doing an event that was like on the range of like 20,000 people, I don't know, something like massive based on nothing, like based on a sort of like – based on an idea of copycat, which in China, copycat is a positive word, not a negative word.

But at the same time, if you take it from the culture perspective, it's of course a negative word because that includes commodification, includes the fact that people want to be serviced, and so on. Ian has done extensive research about it and writing, and he has like a much better understanding. But we had some interface, some interaction with these people, and it was like it was not possible to communicate because the way that we were treated was like we were never being legitimated, even though we were official regional event endorsed by the org.

We were absolutely no legitimacy whatsoever because we didn't have 10-story big art pieces. We were not moving Instagram, I don't know, famous influencer. We were not moving volume of money between one thing and the other thing.

We were just not legitimating what we were doing. And so there was no reason why to talk to each other, and none of them – and so it didn't end up in anything. And then there was – I think like 2016, maybe, since 17 is when camps of Chinese started to be on Playa, and more and more of them, and some of them also connected to some more kind of like service agency of like we get you RVs, you get your things organized, you sign up, you come, you enjoy, you take your photo, you go away.

So we had also interaction with different departments in the burn, with the regional network, with placement, to try to get to know these people. And it was quite interesting that some of them are just like really coming with an idea of like – which is still the case. Like yesterday, we were checking on – we were talking with – we were in another meeting with a few other earners, and we were checking on Xia Hongshu, and there is a package on sale.

It is like a tourist agency that is sponsoring on Xia Hongshu, like the Instagram of China, a tourist trip to Burning Man with all the service listed and blah, blah, blah, for, I don't know, 7,000 US dollar, you know, an enormous amount of money. And it's a tourist agent advertisement. That's what it is.

It's like it's this design like in that way. And we are connected to some of these people that went to this like expensive camp and whatever. And there is, I think, a little bit of a diminishing – like it's kind of like if the experience is too small, it doesn't get to a critical mass to become interesting, which is kind of an interesting controversy on what is a culture or where the culture stands, you know, in the framework of conversation.

But this is like it's not surprising because also the communication of Burning Man has been through different channels, some of them more underground and radical and singular, and some of them very mainstream. So you can't really – it's not that they are doing anything wrong. They're just like tapping into the network that they belong to, you know.

And so it's kind of like how can you move through this network or what can actually move through this network that is – we have experience like with the people that for them radical self-reliance is like going to the most expensive camping shop that you can afford and buy everything that you need. And then you need like an RV to carry, of course. Is there radical self-reliance?

Yeah, in a way, yes. In other ways, it could be improved. Like how can we find a practice way of this conversation?

That is a very, very open question.

[Sassy Panda] (1:03:52 - 1:05:51)

I remember this – people behind this art piece they brought to the Big Burn in the 17 or 18, I can't remember. So this person who had interaction with Ian and all of us as well. And later on, I remember one of the ladies who had been to Dragon Burn before and then later on also joined this company who was doing this copycat event.

She actually came to me in private. Now I think about it, maybe she was trying to be a spy to ask for some information, but I didn't realize at that time. So she came to me in private and we had a long chat at my place.

And she was trying to say the thing like, since you are recognized by Burning Man, why don't you make a burn sort event in China? Just belong to us, belong to ourselves. It's a Chinese thing.

And then I look at her, I was like, I'm not interested to do a Chinese Burning Man thing. It's not my goal. I have no interest in that.

Dragon Burn just happened to be in China. And in my personal opinion, I never thought about doing something, a Chinese-styled Burning Man event. I'm not trying to do a copycat event.

I'm just trying to do the burn where international burners can gather here. So it's not a Chinese Burning Man event. It's just a burner gathering communities which happens to be in China, in Shanghai, where everyone can be here.

It doesn't have to be a Chinese Burning Man event, which for that person, that's their idea because ultimately that's the copycat concept. You copy the idea and then you make it your own thing, your own country, your own area.

[Koi] (1:05:52 - 1:09:07)

It's kind of like, I think it was like maybe something more about copy the idea of the org, not the org as the organization, but the org as like Burning Man as something that is recognized internationally with a value. So you're not affiliated to something that is somewhere else, but you are becoming authoritative in a sense, if that makes sense, on something and then can include a variety of possible different traction. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it's still like very fascinating. And all of this happened before 2019 where everything, I think that the line between like the underground or not even the underground, but let's say the independent movement of things, maybe underground is too, I guess, too strong connotation, but like an independent movement of things and like self-organizing movement of things against the mainstream where you are recognized and acknowledged was sharper than now. And now it's kind of like we like on social media the same things, but without much distinction. But then I think it's more interesting too, because this also brings back to me a more interesting conversation and is like, how do you deal with the culture locally?

So what do people, what are expectations of people? What are the people that come to your event looks like or look for? So the example, when last year we did the event and we put the ticket sale and then in 12 hours, we had two hours, in two hours from the ticket sale, we were supposedly doing an event of like 500 people, more or less the same sort of like same scale.

And in two hours, there are 400 tickets sold. And out of this 400 tickets sold, there are 85% of persons that had never been to a Burner event before. And none of the people of Team Camp Art and even product, we didn't buy the ticket because we didn't know that they could sold out in two hours.

And then we were like, okay, what is this thing? Let's stop the ticket sale, which creates a lot of confusion because of course, people that were expecting to buy a ticket in the next few days is like, how is possible that it's like sold out? It doesn't mean, who's the fucking going to this event?

It was like a little bit an emergency kind of like we didn't know what to do. We absolutely had no idea what to do. And it was funny because we have also the questionnaire, you buy the ticket, you have your question, like every Burn has his own way of, do you know the principle of blah, blah, blah.

You tick all the boxes. And one question was like, have you been to other Burner events before? And most of the answers were like, yes.

If yes, which one is the event? And then the events were like random names of random festivals, including extremely commercial festivals in China, outside of China, everywhere. We didn't see any Glastonbury, unfortunately.

And we didn't see any Tomorrowland, unfortunately, but anything.

[Stevan] (1:09:07 - 1:09:08)

Fyre Festival.

[Koi] (1:09:08 - 1:09:24)

Fyre Festival, it was there, but I think it was one of us.

I admit it probably was like one of us. Like Coachella, you know, like kind of like, wow, this is like such a good ethnographic, you know, potentiality, but this is not our job.

[Stevan] (1:09:25 - 1:09:27)

It's good to see that there's still some snark in Dragon Burn.

[Koi] (1:09:28 - 1:09:43)

Exactly, totally. Maybe we should rename ourselves like the Snark Dragon or something. The magazine that Sven did was called the Snark Dragon.

So we have a newspaper that is called the Snark Dragon.

[Stevan] (1:09:43 - 1:10:20)

Now, Dragon Burn has been scrutinized and studied, right? So what's the perception? Because I'm interested, I'm fascinated by how Burning Man is perceived as an elite entrepreneurial playground.

Is that also the same perception for Chinese people with Burning Man? Because, you know, in the last, say, 20 years, it's been like a tech playground, right? Like Elon Musk and all the other tech millionaires, the Google boys were there, you know.

So it's got a reputation and a perception. So is Burning Man seen in that light as well?

[Koi] (1:10:20 - 1:12:05)

I love your questions because they are like, so Dragon Burn? No, definitely no. Dragon Burn, like entrepreneurship playground?

No. I mean, if you want to fail a business, possibly yes. Like, you know, if you have a kink, you know, like maybe in that sense, it could be.

No, it's interesting. So we had like in general for Burning Man, I would imagine, yes, a little bit where the entrepreneurship background or like playground kind of like spill over into a kind of like a media, like influencer. There's a word in English, not only the mainstream, but it's like, what is the, there is a word in English, kind of like something that is sort of like healing.

You don't have to be the best of the rock star, but you are like, kind of like you're visible, you know, like you're kind of like you can say this. Oh, you know, Burning Man. Cool, cool.

I think there is a little bit of, there is a word that the, like for like the celebrity is kind of like a celebrity, but not to be like a big celebrity, kind of like the star system kind of thing, which is like the star is big. So like a star system, you have like very bright star and you also have surrounding constellation star, but it's like you're recognized into a star system sort of thing. It could be because of the tech, could be because of other possibilities.

It could be because maybe you are coming from a background or you are dealing with people that I've sort of, like this kind of idea of like being influencing or influential in certain contexts. And that can be, you know.

[Stevan] (1:12:05 - 1:12:06)

So sort of like media sphere.

[Koi] (1:12:07 - 1:15:20)

Media sphere, yeah. Maybe media sphere could be like a good word. And now it makes sense, media sphere, like maybe a few years ago, the media were not so central, but now definitely they are.

So there was a, so there is this very interesting, there has been like recently a very interesting activity, like event organized by some people that got in touch with us in a variety of ways. And they did like a creative artist tech residency, blah, blah, blah for a month in Shanghai, where you could be selected as an international emergent creative talent, or you could apply for being one of them. And then you would receiving, you would stay in Shanghai for a month and living in this co-housing, co-working, co-creative space, doing amazing stuff.

The program was fantastic. Everything was great. And this is connected to other activity happening in Brazil, in California, in India, and so on.

And this was pitched to the local government as the Burning Man pack of China. And with this pitch, they managed to have services provided by the authorities. And the conversation with us was like remarkable because we were like, we are canceled by the authority the day before starting an event that we planned for months, you know.

And we are still having, like, I remember a discussion with the local authorities where their concern was that Burning Man is, looks sound to them as an American thing. And in that sense, they didn't kind of like, like it very much. And I made a joke, of course, because around the barrel, you make jokes.

And it's like, oh, well, McDonald's is also an American thing. And KFC is also an American thing, you know. And Tesla is also an American thing.

Why you don't create trouble about all of this American thing, but you create trouble around Burning Man? But at the same time, some other pitch can actually get through precisely because they pitch it in that way. So it's interesting, you know.

And that's not the community that we are engaged with. But I think that there are like, it's kind of like the communication and the narrative is like really entangled. So it would be interesting to work on this more and to see what actually can be done.

Because I believe that something I said also, I think at Bonza, but I think that the 10 principles are the ultimate socialist chart that we have in this moment, you know. And so it shouldn't be particularly difficult. Like, it's not subversive at all.

And so it's kind of like why these words cannot talk or interact or find a way to do something different. That's very interesting. But for some Chinese, I do believe that this media sphere kind of like a goal or fascination is still very strong.

And so if you're doing a little thing with 500 people, that's not a media sphere thing, because anything in China is 500 people, you know. 500 people is nothing.

[Stevan] (1:15:21 - 1:15:23)

Yeah, it doesn't reach a critical mass for them.

[Koi] (1:15:23 - 1:15:27)

There is absolutely no critical mass whatsoever. Absolutely.

[Sassy Panda] (1:15:27 - 1:16:27)

I think it does bring a little bit more understanding to us. Like when on one side, Burning Man attack could happen with the support from the authorities. And on the other side, what we are doing is actually going against the authorities' expectation and being challenged even by why you guys are doing this kind of thing.

So Burning Man as this cultural concept from America, is it really listed on the blacklist in China or is it a green light for the audience here? I'm really confused now because either Francesca or me, we're both being challenged by the authorities with similar questions. Although from different cities, probably different departments.

But yeah, that's the conflicts I can see from the authorities.

[Stevan] (1:16:27 - 1:17:05)

Yeah, the expectations and the perception really fascinates me, especially amongst the younger generations. Because they're talking about how the way they perceive Burning Man these days is, you know, it's for the rich elites, you know, it's for the tech entrepreneurs or the innovators and stuff like that and artistic people. Yeah, so the shift in that kind of thinking and also, I guess, not much talked about in terms of the language there is probably the transformational part of things of the Burning Man's culture.

How personally, individually, also communal and, you know, a global impact.

[Koi] (1:17:05 - 1:20:34)

Yeah, I mean, yes, this is like interesting. And this is also transformation, like the other podcasts, it's like, why you go back to Burning Man, you know, it's kind of like the transformation thing. I think the story that we're sharing are also very, they have like a retrospective quality.

But it's not that you are understanding everything in the moment what is happening, but you kind of like you go through things, and then you understand that this thing has, I mean, you can have like a transformation come back from an event, you're like very enthusiastic or very moved or whatever it is. And then you still have like an integration moment where this thing has to go back to like your reality and place together with the rest. There is also a different way to look at transformation that is like that you kind of like you access.

So if you have the right to access to something that we consider transformational, because that thing is different enough from anything else that makes you different, even though the experience hasn't been not only reflected upon, but not even experienced that much. So it's kind of like the bucket list. Okay, so I've been, okay, so what, you know, what can you say about it?

So I think it's kind of like a little bit the contradiction between these two things, which is interesting as a, I think as a general, I mean, I think at the Black Rock City level, this conversation has been going on for a few years of what is the power of transformative that is being offered. But also what is the power of transformation that is being, that's being offered by the event and everything that makes it possible, but also by the participant with everything that they carry with themselves. Like this is kind of like always like a sort of a dialogue.

It's also something I would say that is happening a little bit more on a wider range on a lot of communities, raves, festivals thing where, I mean, going to a festival 20 years ago was, you were part of a very clear kind of like not social status, but a kind of society layer. And now this is much more blurred because of a variety of reasons. And so in all of the festivals, you have people that haven't never been to a festival and they just like go there because they just want to go to a festival in the same way that I want to go to, I don't know, like a Michelin restaurant, you know, not that I go every time.

I just go because I want to try the taste, you know, it's kind of the same experience are more permeable and people does that. And then on a global scale, on a media sphere scale, when everything seems to be popped into your eyes so easily, it's kind of like, it's also very easy to kind of click and buy and try is the legacy that it's a different kind of conversation. So you can try millions of things, but then some of them will stay with you in a certain way.

And that's, I think is a little bit the challenge that's going on now of like what stays with you and why we go back or what you bring back in a transformation, like in the sense of a transformation.

[Stevan] (1:20:34 - 1:20:49)

Do you think also the challenge is the sense of play? It's not interpreted as well. I guess the translation is lost or there is no sense of play in the Chinese culture, I guess, like the Western culture with self-expression and, you know.

[Koi] (1:20:49 - 1:21:53)

Yeah, I don't know if like there is a sense of play also in the Chinese culture. I think that play is kind of like for me personally, but I'm also like a little bit of like an old school radical European. I think that what makes a difference in the sense of play is you play or you're showing to others that you play.

Like that's kind of like a key thing, you know, like the fact that a lot of play is attached like by default with the fact that you are showing it to others in one way or the other. I think that's what is changing the sense of play more than whatever sense, because the sense of play is like it exists in all the culture, maybe with different format and protocols and ways, but it's never been attached. The fact that you need to is endorsed by how you showcases is actually very intimate.

So I think that's what is really changing the sense of play in a wider range.

[Sassy Panda] (1:21:54 - 1:22:39)

Yeah, I think especially for local Chinese people, the sense or the concept of play nowadays is probably more of showing to others I'm playing instead of purely enjoying the pleasure of play, at least on the mainstream social medias that I received. But who knows, maybe that's their understanding of play. I mean, we can't really judge if this person's play is, you know, up to our standards or not.

I mean, everyone has their own sense of understanding. And for them, maybe show-off play is their way of participating.

[Stevan] (1:22:39 - 1:22:45)

And what about the ten principles of Burning Man, the translation into Mandarin? Is that a challenge?

[Koi] (1:22:45 - 1:22:56)

It was like a multi-people, multi-brainstorming. It was like a splash. We thought about that we should revise it eventually, but you know better than me.

[Sassy Panda] (1:22:56 - 1:23:40)

Yeah, I think the translation, like word-to-word translation is there, but how much understanding you actually perceive from this translation is really up to individuals' understanding. Surely there's room to improve both this translation. I mean, we can maybe make a more modern way to the young kids how to understand some principles, but how much more you can work on the wordings instead of actually doing things or contributing things in reality or in practical ways of making people to understand.

[Koi] (1:23:40 - 1:26:18)

There was a discussion, I remember, between an original translation made by some other Taiwanese originally that was adjusted and a conversation. We haven't revised it for a while. That could be like an interesting project, which is kind of like not different than regionals that are adding the 11 principles or the 12 principles or that are kind of having their interpretation of a certain thing.

I think this would be actually, that's one of the reasons why I was suggesting that I think other Asian or Pacific communities would benefit to interact with Bonza because that's a very perfect terrain to kind of have a conversation about how you translate the thing. Not only translate, but how you localize value regardless of the wording. I think Australia and New Zealand are both a great example of you are also going through the daily experimentation of inclusivity and coexistence and participation and integration and whatever, however you call it, which is something that we don't really have in Western kind of like North American and European countries very much.

I mean, we don't have it by experience. We may have it intellectually, but we don't have it by experience. So this cultural translation beyond the wording where the value really becomes the core of what are you trying to express and also how many references.

I think that's also important. I mean, the principle doesn't come, I mean, they don't come from the sky. They come from grounded and embodied experiences of community that we're trying to say something for the society that we're living with, you know.

So same process could happen. And I think with this cast folding of the 10 principles, like what is the best way to name things in a cultural context, this is like a super interesting way. For me, like I always, like the leave no trace is what I like to struggle the most kind of thing because it's like culturally very, very dense, very good.

[Stevan] (1:26:18 - 1:26:23)

How different is that leave no trace principle in China and in other Western worlds?

[Koi] (1:26:23 - 1:30:23)

Well, it's kind of like, I mean, for me, it's kind of like, which I also have like a bigger environmentalist lens. It's kind of like, it's only in Black, also in Black Rock City and in general. Like, how can you tune into the leave no trace, not as a problem related to the trash that you're taking, like a trash management problem, which I would eat with a very simple, very easy to solve.

Like, since we are like civilized cultures, but like something else. So what is the relationship that you are creating with the environment? Also with the fact of like, not create, like the leave no trace is not that you take your trash away, but it's like you're not leaving trace in a relational, like a relational context with the environment, with the people.

So there was a, there is a discussion going on that emerged at this last unburn, like the last event that is like a, no, an unburn is not a burn, it's a deburn or something that was like, what about the emotional traces? What if the leave no trace kind of like spill over to talk about the emotional traces? What they are?

How can you recognize them? How can you prevent them? What are the strategies to organize yourself so that you have a leave no trace in an emotional sense with your community?

I think this is super interesting. Then if you are in Black Rock City, then there is the people on the trash on the highway, but it's also how can you go with Burning Man with not like without the idea that you need to spend at least a certain amount of money, but you actually can go to Burning Man from overseas with $1,200, which is still a big amount of money for some, but it's not crazy amount of money, you know, it's like, you can just do it easily.

And there are ways or how you can get organize your comfort in a way that is not like, oh, I need this, but I'm doing this. So then I can better for this thing. So kind of like the entitlement with the risk, like between services, resources and benefit, kind of like reworking and disarrangement.

So it's really not about the trash. Trash is the core and we have an issue with that in general. But then for us, the example was like, we had two amazing stories.

Like one was that when we realized that taking away trash was actually confusing the local people that are used to collect the trash was for them is a source of money. And so the challenge is like, how can we organize a recycling system that is not harming the idea that you collect your things and you take them home, but that doesn't take labor and value and resources away from the local community. So when they see that there is 600 people staying for five days, they will have a direct benefit of our presence because they expect that to be in their normal life.

This was like one of the thing. And then the second was like a great experiments that we did in 2019, which is unfortunately not very much documented. But we created kind of like 10 square meter, gray water pond with a filtering system made by plants.

And we got a local permit for digging something in the agricultural land. And we had these things that function for almost like half a year where we actually collected all of the gray water from all the kitchen and all the shower of that burn. And that it was released to the, this was given back to the land.

And this is something that we didn't document it because we are stupid, you know, or something. But it was an enormous collective effort of trying to do something that would have given logistic, but on a higher level, back to the land. And that could be interesting to continue to work on because that was like really something that was like putting all of the effort together on a future-oriented project.

[Stevan] (1:30:24 - 1:30:37)

Yeah, that's fascinating. Sassy Panda, was there any other principles that is hard for the Chinese community, Chinese people to grasp about Burning Man? Like the gifting, yeah, the self-expression.

[Sassy Panda] (1:30:37 - 1:32:52)

Yeah, maybe self-expression because gifting I think is easy for, even for local culture, they have this tradition of gifting stuff to each other in any occasions. But self-expression is a very extreme experiment, I would say, especially in Dragon Burn in 2018. I think for the first year we came to this land with this supportive landlord, it was probably also a shock to him to see how the participants expressed themselves.

So, I remember he was, one of the days, he was on the esplanade, he was seeing us doing some activities at the dome, and he was shocked by a few Burners who were wearing very little fabric and was taking photos at that moment. He didn't know much about the Burner cultures and also some principles, etc. He was taking photos, and later on he was shared, he also shared those photos on his social media channel, which I reminded him later, don't do that.

I said, don't do that, take them down. But it was definitely a shock for him, even though him being very open-minded, but he was still surprised to see that. And for Chinese culture, it's still sort of a conservative culture in a way, when you express your bodies or the way how you express yourself.

So now I think it's getting a little bit better, but certainly we have a different way of expressing ourselves than the Western society. That's why lots of images you see on Chinese social media, they are also trying, like for Chinese people who want to break up a Burning Man, they're also trying to capture the photos where you can create the most argument or fuss online with people wearing less fabric or clothes. I think it's still a bit different.

[Koi] (1:32:53 - 1:38:28)

Yeah, no, of course. But I want to give a couple of hints in this direction.

I believe that radical self-expression is something that goes way beyond and way deeper than the way that you dress up and how crazy it costs you. And I say this because I'm a person that in any situation from work to pyjama to the burn, I wear black t-shirt and black pants and I'm fine with that. So it's like and I don't see that I don't feel myself as not expressing my radical self-expression because of that.

So speaking from like an anti-costume kind of perspective, I do understand that that's a fascination and there are different levels. One that is these things with the nudity or with panning. That's also interesting because I'm from Europe.

And if you go around in any place of China from the big city, the small village, you would meet cosplay, very crazy cosplay on Tuesday, 10.30 in the morning on the underground or on the bus. You would meet like young or not that young ladies with short pants. You cannot walk around the city in Europe with short pants.

It's impossible, I tell you. But in China, it's totally normal. You would have normally like men undressed like without t-shirt because it's hot.

And so they just go on the metro without the upper clothes, you know. So it's not that, I mean, there is an issue with nudity, which is a thing, but they express like the clothes, like the clothing part, I would say, from my perspective, is actually extremely extravagant in this country. So there is another layer, which is like the costume as a meaning, as an identity forming, as a kind of like an alternative character.

So I think it's more identity related than not costume, like not aesthetic or costume related, which is a very interesting thing to kind of like dig out. Like eventually, that's kind of like a very, very, very deep thing, because then people come to me and say, oh, you're still working, you have to change your clothes. It's like, I'm never changing my clothes.

I don't need that. That medium is not for me. But I do understand that maybe like this identity picking or this play with the identity.

I mean, maybe there is, maybe there's something about playing with the identity. And maybe there's something about a society where you're supposed to be a good, a good children for the family, a good student for the teacher in the school, a good worker for the boss. Like, I don't know, maybe there's something about going out of the things that you are supposed to do that go through the physical expression.

But then I would like to mention, if you allow, that this art piece that we did in 2015, that came was probably like the first time that Elaine came with the say, I want to do, I want to do something about it, but I have no idea how to do it. And I said, okay, I'll help you to do it. So the concept was like a very small room.

I think that there was a discussion about the nudity and the fact that you don't like, because you don't really have a private space when you grow up, you like, you run common rooms and you share your room with someone else. So it's very hard to have like a private space. Houses in China are usually small, tiny.

So you grow up without seeing your body very much. Okay. And then it's like, wow, this is like, so why we don't build a space that could offer the possibility to people stay with their body.

So we built like eight walls room that was inspired by the Paguala, the Taoist symbol of the eight basic elements. And all of the walls were mirrored, completely mirrored. So you enter, you have a little corridor, you take, you are invited, you don't have to, but you are invited to take off your clothes completely.

You enter in this private space by yourself, maybe like two square meters, three square meters. You have eight mirror walls around you. Each of them has a different color.

And each of them has the mirrors are cut in a different shape. So you have something that is rounded and very gentle and floral, something that is very spiky and sharp, something that is more like puzzling. And then there is one wall that is like normal mirror, no color, just yourself, full on, like full size.

And the idea was that, and then there was like smaller mirror. The idea was that you could just like be with yourself in that moment of exploration, which I thought that that was an art piece in honor of radical self-expression, even though the radical self-expression was to yourself. Not really to an external audience, because that was built then, it was like absolutely a private space.

Like no, no question about that. So that was, there's a lot.

[Stevan] (1:38:28 - 1:38:55)

That's a good lesson in body positivity. It reminds me of going to the circus and you have this fun house full of mirrors, right? They call it fun mirrors or something.

Like you said, with different optics and you can see yourself being larger or skinnier or smaller. So yeah, it shows you, it teaches you the lesson of accepting your body in, people's bodies in all shapes and sizes. Yeah.

[Koi] (1:38:55 - 1:39:43)

And then you can also, it's kind of like, there is also a very big element of immediacy because you are exploring your body through the way that you see it in that specific intention that you're putting in that moment, you know? So it's not through the construction and the sort of frame that somehow you have to play in the society, but it just comes from your being there and deciding where do you want to go? How do you want to see?

How do you want to laugh? How do you want to, you know, be disappointed by yourself? And all of this thing.

So it was not designed to be like necessarily an easy experience. It's kind of like you're going into and then you can just run out or you can just stay there and whatever.

[Sassy Panda] (1:39:43 - 1:41:24)

I think for the nudity part, I remember after 2019 or the UnBurn event, the landlord came to me one time and he brought up this topic, which I found it very interesting. He told me that, can I ask you a favour? Can you go around to tell the ladies to be more mindful about their dressing?

And I was like, so are you expecting me to go to the event to tell hundreds of people don't just wear a bra or bikini? How am I supposed to do that? How can I control if these people are going to put the shirt on or not?

So later on, I thought about this question. I think from his perspective, as a normal Chinese local people, maybe the nudity or self-expression is not really a big problem if you are an individual. But if you are coming in a big group of people, he's concerned.

So you can see lots of ladies on the streets in China wear short skirts, like really exposed clothes. But when it comes to a large group of people, if they're all wearing the similar clothing, dress up, then it's a little bit challenging and people will start to talk a little bit. The impact will escalate to a certain level where it's out of control eventually.

[Koi] (1:41:24 - 1:44:00)

Yeah, because we are becoming visible as a community and that becomes an identity that is not yours. I mean, nudity is one thing because nudity is not legal in China, it's not legal in Japan, it's not legal in Thailand, in the Philippines. And so like in many, many Asian countries, you cannot go without a bra to the beach just because you are on the beach.

And this is something that Italian tourists have to face on their shame for a very long time. But that's a fact. So it's not necessarily our specificity, but then there is also something that is a deeper reflection.

There will always be a moment where you're still seen as a group, like an organism, and then this can create discomfort. And so I believe that also the lender asks you, because he wouldn't know himself, he wanted to go to people and say, but he doesn't know how to approach this organism and say to this organism, hey, you know, can you dress up more? You know, like, it's like, it doesn't make sense.

But then, but then there is this like mismatching between, it's like, this just doesn't work out for the communication. So, which is, I have to say, it's not, I mean, we have the story of the shower power. That is a fantastic art piece at the Bern, where, okay, we have this thing with the nudity, it's not possible, but we still want to try to have an opportunity for people to explore things.

So, and we don't have shower on site. So we can build the 10 showers scattered throughout the forest, or we can be one shower, and the shower was perfectly designed. So you have this very traditional queuing system separated of men and women, and you're going into two different chambers.

And then eventually the two different chambers will become one chamber. And so you have three stages of decision making of what you want to do with your shower experience. And if you arrive to the last one, you will be doing like a whoozing shower next to each other, like very, you know, playful, like super basic.

But that was, for a lot of people, the first time to be exposed, not only to others' nudity, but also themselves' public nudity. And this is, I would say, a potentially transformative experience for many.

[Sassy Panda] (1:44:00 - 1:44:48)

Especially in mixed gender, because that shower power was male, female enter in the different entrance, but they emerged in one area after they go inside. Because for most of the Chinese people, like female or male, at least from my childhood, out to the sauna, like very often, it's a common thing, like for same gender, go to a sauna place. We are fine with, of course, showing our nudity to others, but when mixed gender together, that's a big difference.

So that's why the next year, the landlord was very concerned and asked us, can you add a curtain in the middle to separate male and female?

[Koi] (1:44:48 - 1:44:56)

And then we said yes. And then the curtain was a transparent curtain. And so that's fine.

Done. We have the curtain.

[Stevan] (1:44:57 - 1:44:58)

It's still a curtain.

[Koi] (1:44:58 - 1:44:59)

It's still a curtain.

[Stevan] (1:45:01 - 1:46:45)

You make a good point about individual versus group, I think, because it is confronting. If you see a group of people, they look different. And for Chinese people, they still understand what a cult is.

Religious groups and sects and all that, it's not really, I guess, a common thing. It's not really accepted. Yeah.

That's kind of interesting. I want to make the distinction between China Burn and Dragon Burn. Now there's an interesting documentary on YouTube, which details what this copycat was.

So I guess it's China, it's known for... China imitates, not innovates. So this is what happened in 2019 when they had a Burning Man type event and they called it Gobi Heaven. So this is what you mentioned earlier, Koi.

So this event was quite fascinating because for me, it seemed like it was overly produced. It was highly manufactured. And if you're going there to experience Burning Man in China, it doesn't seem authentic as well.

So I just want to make that distinction between Dragon Burn and China Burn. Yeah, we're going to put a link in the show notes for this documentary. It's a great insight into what they built in 2019.

And the dates that they chose was between August the 7th and August the 11th. So it was like a four-day, five-day kind of event, camping event. And they promoted it pretty heavily.

It was in the Yinshan Desert Tourist Resort.

[Koi] (1:46:45 - 1:46:45)

Yes.

[Stevan] (1:46:46 - 1:46:47)

So it was in Mongolia.

[Sassy Panda] (1:46:47 - 1:47:02)

Yes.

[Stevan] (1:47:02 - 1:47:29)

So it was about creative camping, outdoor living challenges, desert art exhibitions, and there was a music festival in between as well. There was sandbox socials, they called it, desert tourism, art installations.

They had 24 big art installations, over 100 artists from around the world, they said. So this was a festival that the Chinese copied to replicate the Burning Man experience.

[Koi] (1:47:29 - 1:48:06)

Yes. Well, so many good memories. So fancy.

Yes. We wanted to go, and we couldn't go because we couldn't pay 600 Australian dollars to go to the desert, plus the flight tickets and all of the logistics. And also because we were not, like, I don't remember, we had this like five free tickets.

And I don't remember if it happens at the end or not. I'm blurred because there was another one the year after, similar thing. So we didn't show up.

And then it was like maybe, I don't know, a few thousand people actually going there or something.

[Stevan] (1:48:07 - 1:48:15)

So you were contacted to participate, to bring something like an art or a volunteering or something? What was the pitch?

[Koi] (1:48:15 - 1:48:32)

Well, I think in my memory was that we were contacted by someone that said, we're doing China Burning Man. And then we must have said something like, well, we are an official regional of Shanghai China Burning Man.

[Sassy Panda] (1:48:33 - 1:48:34)

What do you mean?

[Koi] (1:48:34 - 1:50:57)

I mean, do you want us to do something together? Are you a new regional?

Like, no, we are China Burning Man. And it's like, this makes no sense. Like, it's just like, what does it mean?

You know, and then there's a trademark and it's like, you cannot be, you cannot do Burning Man in China. You can do China, blah, blah, blah, event in the desert, shenanigans, whatever, but not like this kind of like, and then we were trying to understand what was the thing. And then we got offered these five tickets to go for free and bring our art and our things.

And you're welcome, you and your community. And it's like, yeah, but we're not going to Burning Man. It's like, it's the Gobi Desert.

No, no, this is like China Burning Man. It's like, it was a little bit confusing, like the approach that seems to be very settled and institutionalized in a way. And we didn't, we had some using, quoting you disbelief on their intention.

And maybe we treat them with a little bit of too much snark. So we were finally, we didn't go, I think. And then it turns out to be, I don't know, like something in a desert.

But yeah, it was like, it was a commercial. I mean, if you want like the desert, not only the Gobi Desert, but several areas, they have been going through different kind of experiment of ecotourism, cultural tourism, bringing people there, revitalizing local communities. There is all of a bunch of social technical complexity that is, it seems to be like one experiment in that framework that was obvious and clear.

And in that sense, not that interesting, because for us was exploiting on something that at the time we were cherishing a lot. And the thing is, like, Dragon Burn is the Shanghai official regional event, the way that we phrase it, because we always say, we are really entangled with this community. And we would love to see regional events coming out from other communities that we really want to interact with.

And we don't want to be the China, like kind of catering everybody. We want that, maybe people come to the event, but then they will build their own thing. But this was clearly like a very top down.

[Stevan] (1:50:58 - 1:51:00)

It was a commercial venture.

[Koi] (1:51:00 - 1:51:01)

It was a commercial venture.

[Stevan] (1:51:02 - 1:51:02)

Backed up by the government.

[Koi] (1:51:03 - 1:51:15)

Backed up by the government with like economical stakes and all of the thing. And all of these people has continued to do that kind of work and that kind of job in different forms and ways throughout the years. So it's fine.

[Sassy Panda] (1:51:15 - 1:52:34)

Yeah, I think the lady who came to me in private, she mentioned something like, they did pull off the event, but then nothing really happened afterwards. I think she was also facing some challenges from the investors who was expecting some return. And obviously, it didn't really work out the way they expected.

So somehow, I guess investors all pulled out. And that's why I said, because the lady, she was very curious, like, you have this recognition from VMorg, so why don't you make it a big empire for yourself or for China? And you just take this advantage and then build something more glamorous or more powerful.

But that's why I said, our interest is not to build China Burning Man. We are just a place where we gather all the burners and express themselves. And it just happened to happen in China, in Shanghai, in this area.

That's it. We have no interest of building our Dragon Ball empire in China.

[Stevan] (1:52:57 - 1:54:17)

Burning Man 40 years ago, their initial first burn, from where they are now, they were saying that their first attempt at this was far more, I guess, organized than Burning Man was. So they're thinking maybe in 40 years, they'll be more impactful. And the other interesting thing was that they followed a local Shanghai burner that's been a Burning Man, and he came to the Gobi Heaven to install an art project, which was quite interesting because the context of that, if you didn't see it right, some people saw it like a religious context.

So that kind of confused things. But some of the things that he actually had to explain to the locals was quite interesting, such as the volunteering and then you got to rely on yourself, self-reliance, you got to cook for yourself, stuff like that. And people say, well, what are you going to do that?

We get our food delivered. People didn't really grasp the concept and the idea of the struggles and stuff like that, the transformation that you go through, through the whole week when you're going out there camping. So, yeah.

And at the end of it, the whole, I guess, summation was that it was a great event, great experiment. It was an award-winning kind of tourism kind of event, and it worked for them.

[Koi] (1:54:17 - 1:56:22)

Yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree that it was successful for them. And I think that they probably have been smart in using it as a success to continue their thing. But kind of like the results of it was independent from the rate of success was independent from the engagement of the community.

Which I think is a kind of contradiction to Burning Man itself. Yeah, I mean, you can claim success. I mean, in China, it would be like you never publish anything public that says that you failed.

That's like not an option. So, of course, you're publishing a success and you're phrasing around that. But you're phrasing that success, and then you are evolving based on that success to your next endeavor.

But the next endeavor has nothing to do with what you did, and it has no legacy. So, I think that the concept of legacy is what made the difference between the effort of building a community through success and struggle and challenges and failure through the concept of having a goal that is also very legitimate cultural practice. It just doesn't share the boundaries with the 10 principles or with any other kind of system of value.

That's the case because it's goal-oriented and it's not process-oriented. And so, we say that we learn next time, do better mistakes. There are plenty of snarks and phrases that I use in the Burner community to say it doesn't matter.

Everything that we do is based on a volunteer participation. There's no pressure. There's no duties.

I mean, if you don't show up at your ship, you're a little bit of a, okay, but that's how far it gets. You're not illegitimate from the community because you don't show up at your ship. Never happened.

[Stevan] (1:56:23 - 1:56:25)

It's funny how they gave themselves an award.

[Koi] (1:56:25 - 2:00:37)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you can get your award because you are projected to move forward, and that's right. But that's kind of like, I think it declares an intrinsic difference of the planning and the intention and also why this community will never really be able to interact to each other.

And also why it's so kind of like fascinating and complicated to kind of like, I mean, our camp at Black Rock City has been running an event for the past 16 years, I think, that is a gathering of the Chinese-speaking people on Playa, where the point, like every Chinese-related language or dialect or whatever. And the idea is really like to just have a convergence point for people that has a legacy with that heritage. And we met amazing people in this, like, encounter.

And we also had, we met people in other situations that were absolutely not aware of this meeting, of course, because who reads the guide anyway. But then we met, I remember, I don't know if you were there, but we were doing like a fire barrel chat in the camp, like a super chill evening. And then these two people show up and we are talking, we're saying something in, I think we're saying some like some bad words in Chinese loud.

I don't know. Anyway, they approach us and they say, are you Chinese? Of course, welcome, welcome.

Like we are like this, these people and these people and blah, blah, blah. And here, some of us are from China, some are not, blah, blah, blah. The story.

And this is like a crazy story of like, it was a mom and a son. And the son is studying in some university in the United States. So he's away from home for a very long time.

And they decide to be together for two months and to do a road trip. So the mom fly from China to the United States. They buy a car somewhere in the West Coast.

They start to travel all around for two months. And on the way, they meet someone that tells them that there's something that is called Black Rock City. They have no idea whatsoever about Burning Man at all.

And they say, oh, that looks interesting. They like to camp. They have this, they bought this van.

So they're around and say, oh, let's go to Black Rock City. So somehow they managed to arrive to Black Rock City and they were in the free camping area, the two of them, with just a van, no shade, a very simple kitchen. And they were just like, what the hell is going on around?

They were really sort of like confused, but mesmerized at the same time. This kind of like gray zone where everything was okay, because it was so weird, but still okay. You know, nothing not okay happened.

So we were the cherry on the cake, because you find people that can tell you a story. And they were the most radical self-reliant and more radical self-expressing people that we ever met in the Chinese sphere. Because you have a mom and a son that hasn't been together for a long time.

They go on a road trip, they end up at Burning Man, and they show up at our camp and whatever, which is very different than the 7,000 US dollar communities, you know, that are like maybe, I don't know, the next two crossroads at Black Rock City. And they couldn't believe that. We met these other guys, they came a couple, they just went to travel to the United States, they want to do a vlog.

And they said, you want to do the vlog in the most remote place of the United States? And they somehow end up in Black Rock City as well, completely alone by themselves, but completely also disconnecting from any support, cultural network, you know, for me, it's like, I can find any departments or many collectives or communities that resonate with my own cultural legacy. Oh, these people are cool.

Let me talk, let me go to talk to them. And I find my crew. But for them, it's always like, just like blasting in the void, until maybe something happened, and someone will speak your language, you know, super interesting.

[Sassy Panda] (2:00:37 - 2:00:40)

I remember the mother and son.

[Koi] (2:00:40 - 2:01:53)

Yeah, you were, yeah. Wow, like, super interesting.

And then it's like, I don't think we are able to call, like, to fill this gap. And I think that that's the right thing to do. But it's interesting to, I think it's great that we have the possibility to share the stories, because also, there's, I mean, there's also like a lot of kind of, oh, you know, the Chinese are like this, you know, like, no, the Chinese are like complexity of people that they find their own way, no matter what.

And so these encounters were spectacular, because they were absolutely authentic, like absolutely authentic. And the fact that we cannot, we cannot make them part of our community of practice, it doesn't matter. We can learn from that existence to kind of consider what we're talking to in a different way, in the same way that we can be pissed off by this tech or copycat guys or whatever, you know, like, there is this kind of like, give back to the balance of the richness that we can tap into.

And so it's kind of like, it's supposedly, hopefully become like a motivation to try harder and try better on what we do.

[Stevan] (2:01:54 - 2:02:16)

Yeah, it's great. It's inspiring that we have Chinese people going to Burning Man, and then coming back to their home country and wanting to, you know, replicate that kind of culture and experience for other people. But I think in this instance, it just felt empty to me. But it was a fascinating experience anyway.

Yeah, it's a fascinating experiment anyway.

[Koi] (2:02:16 - 2:02:17)

Yeah, absolutely.

[Stevan] (2:02:18 - 2:02:19)

And so you're gonna say?

[Koi] (2:02:19 - 2:02:51)

No, absolutely.

And the fact that we're still talking about this experiment, even if it's sort of like not really related to us, it means that it's part of the legacy in general. So maybe they were right saying that in 40 years, you will see, you know, 40 years, there would be something happening or someone coming and being able to make like, a big sense of all of this. But no, yeah, that's, of course, very interesting.

[Stevan] (2:02:52 - 2:02:56)

Yeah, these are just a humble, but inexpensive beginning to them.

[Koi] (2:02:56 - 2:08:22)

Yeah, but but you know, it's like, I don't think this is very dissimilar. Like, like, even if I if I look at, I don't know, my experience kind of like a radical very position sort of thing early years, Elaine, cultural curiosity exposed to an international kind of setting. Okay, some of our participants or even best of our volunteers or the team camp, like radically self motivated, like there is such a big spectrum in a country that is intrinsically is like, is so wide.

Or what is the rate? I mean, it's like, the diversity of the people, it's, it's a fact, you know, and then there is the social atmosphere and the social protocol. But this does, this can manipulate and shape a little bit, but not everything.

So, if I look at myself, like, very colic sort of heritage, blah, blah, blah, I have nothing to do with that thing. But actually, maybe I'm because I'm what I am, because I come from that kind of journey, you know, so it's like, I think that's, that's kind of like a sort of interesting to give the possibility of the individual to do the experience that they want and to treat the experience that they are doing in the way that they in the way that they want. That's probably the best that a Burner community can do.

That's like the true transformation, which is not like to adapt everyone to halt, but it's sort of like to give everybody the possibility to have deeper reflection on whatever makes sense. It was amazing. This is something that we share with the Bonza friend, a long time, but the very first in camp application that we had from Chinese, like exclusively Chinese community, it was BDSM camp.

And at the time, there was a camp that was doing, I don't know, painting on something. It was like everything seems to be very OK. You know, we're sharing our time together.

We're doing bizarre thing. We have Hammockville. We have the disco and the freak people.

We have these and that. And then we got this in camp application, like a BDSM with a very detailed explanation in Chinese of what is bondage and what is like Southern Mazake's culture, what are the practices that they want to bring, which included like Shibari performances and age performances and this and that and suspension and thing. And I think that was a click because also it's like like this was like all of us.

We became all of a sudden very vanilla kind of people, no matter of the costume level, you know, and then and then we have to we didn't have a vocabulary. We're not. We never thought of this interaction before.

It just happened. And so we had to talk to them and say, what exactly do you mean? Of course, you're welcome.

Yes, sure. We're doing this thing. And then we accommodate a lot of logistics for them to exist and to thrive.

And now they spin off. They have their own festival. They have their own bar.

They have all their own story in the underground and not underground. It's amazing. Like it's an amazing story of determination because you feel that there is a space where you can go and bring your thing.

That was fantastic. But I have to say there was this woman and she spent an entire burn in a cage and she was carried out on a leash from time to time to go on around on a strolling around the burn, like walking on four feet on a leash a few times during the burn. And then when I was in was like I think it was like 2017 at the burn that there was this big art piece where two artists were inside of this cube.

They lived inside of the cube for the entire Black Rock City time and they were painting inside with people the story of the people that they were hearing through the wall of this cube. And I was trying to scale the experience in my mind of like, OK, Black Rock City, you live in a cube, you have a toilet inside, you're doing is uncomfortable, I believe, an artistic expression. And then you are at Dragon Burn, you live on a cage for five days, you walk out on a leash.

It's there's no difference for me on the value of this artist expression. If you're looking like deeply enough, you know, that was like so strong, like so strong. And I'm so glad that they felt safe to bring this art with us.

And then we felt safe to receive and interact with this art. I mean, it's a beautiful story.

[Sassy Panda] (2:08:22 - 2:09:55)

I think that, yeah, I think that came to the idea that if you compare to China Burn, the other copycat events to Dragon Burn, I think we are more focused on community driven, how you build the community, how you accept varieties of people. And you build this trust, you build this relationship with each other, and you feel safe, and you call each other close friends, you trust each other, versus the copycat events, they are goal driven. Their expectation is to pull out event first without building the base, the community base.

That's very different way of approaching to the burn. Because in our community, we also have people from the South cities, they also try to sort of establish a new burn activities. So they came to us to ask for some advice, because they are living far away.

So our idea was, our recommendation was, try to build small events, build this relationship first, and forget about, I'm going to host a big gathering as a goal. But conduct some small events, gatherings, try to build the relationship first, build the community first. And then later on, the burn is only the outcome.

It's not really the goal that you should think about in the first place.

[Stevan] (2:09:55 - 2:10:38)

I usually think about Burning Man as not a place like Black Rock City, or, you know, for Burning Seed, Matong or somewhere. It's more to me like a state of mind. So the documentary is called His Utopia.

That was the title of the documentary. So what I guess, I had a cringe moment watching it when one of the investors said that he wants to build like a heaven on earth, because everybody has their own vision of heaven. And it's all great, right?

So he wants to build that on earth. And that's what, you know, the whole project, the whole experiment was about. I thought, well, you know, it's not a place.

Yeah, so that was kind of interesting.

[Koi] (2:10:38 - 2:10:41)

Yes, I mean, it's like, you don't really...

[Stevan] (2:10:42 - 2:10:43)

I don't think I want to go to Utopia.

[Koi] (2:10:45 - 2:11:59)

Exactly. No, I mean, I think the concept of Utopia has been dismantled in all of the past 50 years. Yeah, I mean, you can have a sense of it.

It's always cool. But then you need to kind of go back to something that makes you feel engaged. Utopia, by definition, doesn't make you feel engaged.

It's like, it's kind of like where all the engagements are gone, because there is no need to be engaged anymore, because everything is like the way that you think it and is manifest. Like, I don't know. It's interesting.

Yeah, that's maybe that's why we didn't want to go. Because it was like, where are the challenges? Where is the...

I don't know. But yeah, that's a good point. And that's also like, in all of the absurdity and people say like, it's interesting.

It's like, this is always like, oh, it's like, people have this very sharp idea of like, China is a very sort of like, limited. Somehow it's like, it must be a limited experience. Because there are so many things that are different for what we can conceive, you know?

And yeah, please, no, no, go.

[Stevan] (2:11:59 - 2:12:16)

No, I was gonna say that I can understand the appeal and attraction of going to a place like heaven, you know, like on earth. But yeah, it just no matter how much money you throw on this experiment, you just can't replicate heaven on earth. That's the bottom line.

[Koi] (2:12:16 - 2:14:53)

No, no, for sure. For sure. And in that sense, it's like, this is really a place where, like, the sense of reality is ultimately the drive of everything.

It's kind of like, we have to say, like, me and Delane, we have quite a few moments of laughing at the Australian and New Zealand community for the beautiful and extremely sophisticated organizational complexity that you're able to create with the departments and the thing and the structuring and everything is in place, everything is declared, everything is clean. And we have a little bit of laughing in the sense of like, it's so interesting to see like, like, I was just like, wow, you know, it works for them. That's amazing.

And it's like, it's really difficult for us to imagine that there is anything that will determine how the next thing can actually go. Not because we are a burn, but because we are burners here. Because that's the same that happens in your daily life.

You have, of course, major constraints and conditions, but everything is subject to a reality check all the time. Which is entertaining, I would say. Like, it's interesting, challenging, but I wouldn't be so, I wouldn't get so far.

It's like, it's, yeah, I don't know. It's like, this is really a condition that I think, I think over the years, we felt that it was more interesting to express. Like to try to express and to say, hey, that is really, because it's really in contradiction with the idea that in the country, everything is still determined by some sort of a top down energy or will, but it's actually not the case.

And it's still the case, but to a certain extent, it's kind of like always a very slight negotiation into the thing, which is a space, you can focus on how much you are reducing, or you can focus on how much you are taking every time, you know, that's what makes really the shift. So it's kind of like, oh, you're crazy. Yeah, but we're good crazy.

[Stevan] (2:14:54 - 2:15:29)

Yeah. So you spoke about legacy earlier. I've actually made up a Dragon Burn quiz.

So let's quickly go through that and we'll have a, see if we can get some fun stories out of this. So I did a bit of research, I did a bit of digging, and I got some, I got eight questions. So lucky number eight here.

So the first one, first question of the Dragon Burn quiz is, in which year was there a dragonfly effigy?

[Sassy Panda] (2:15:29 - 2:15:36)

No. 2015. No, wait. Dragonfly. 2015.

[Koi] (2:15:37 - 2:15:39)

Yeah, 2015.

The one that didn't burn. No.

[Sassy Panda] (2:15:40 - 2:15:43)

The one that we burned in the forest.

[Koi] (2:15:43 - 2:15:45)

Yes, the one that we burned in the forest.

[Sassy Panda] (2:15:45 - 2:15:50)

Which was huge. Yeah, 2015.

I remember.

[Stevan] (2:15:51 - 2:15:53)

What memories do you have from that one?

[Koi] (2:15:53 - 2:16:10)

Well, it's then when I left the reserve to build our piece without a schema how to build it. And then I came back and said, how do you build a dragonfly in the forest? You're burning all the forest.

So I have no memories because I wasn't there. But maybe you can say something about it.

[Sassy Panda] (2:16:10 - 2:16:59)

Yeah, that year, I have no memory why we placed the effigy in the forest. It was the only place. I think, yeah, maybe the reservoir area didn't really have enough space.

So we didn't really have an area for the effigy. And all the grassland area was full of people camping and also other art pieces. So there was only small, empty land right in the middle of the forest, where we just placed it.

And luckily that year, I think the effigy wasn't too tall. So the burn wasn't really that scary and didn't really cause that much damage to the trees. But lesson learned.

[Koi] (2:16:59 - 2:17:02)

And after that, we built like a fire department.

[Stevan] (2:17:03 - 2:17:09)

Okay. In which year was the Great Offline the theme for Dragon Burn? The Great Offline.

[Koi] (2:17:10 - 2:17:12)

2019. The Great Offline was 2019.

[Stevan] (2:17:13 - 2:17:17)

Correct. Yeah, that's a great theme. I love that.

[Koi] (2:17:17 - 2:17:49)

Yeah, that was, I mean, of course, like the Great Offline, like, fuck your phone. And that was like where the social media were bumping up. And it was, I mean, it was just like, I mean, we're actually not really good on themes, or like, we never really pay much attention to those.

But that year was like, we kind of got motivated on that. And we made everything based on that. And yeah, that was good.

Yeah, 2019. Indeed.

[Stevan] (2:17:49 - 2:17:50)

Yeah, peak Dragon Burn.

[Koi] (2:17:51 - 2:17:52)

Peak Dragon Burn.

[Stevan] (2:17:53 - 2:17:54)

And what was the effigy that year?

[Koi] (2:17:54 - 2:18:27)

That year was, well, that's a debate about it. That depends on what are your sources. It's supposed to be.

Supposedly, because the year before, we had this debate where we don't burn the dragon. But then the person that designed the effigy said, no, but this is a dragon. And we said, no, we don't burn dragons.

But this is a dragon. No, no, no, this is not a dragon. So it was kind of like a phoenix, which was not really a phoenix, but it was something with big wings.

And yes, 2019.

[Sassy Panda] (2:18:28 - 2:18:34)

And it's more legitimate to burn the phoenix instead of dragons.

[Koi] (2:18:34 - 2:18:34)

Yes.

[Sassy Panda] (2:18:35 - 2:18:36)

Phoenix reborn.

[Koi] (2:18:36 - 2:20:18)

So it was kind of like we were trying to get back to our sort of universal good energy with that.

It was also interesting because that effigy, which was massive. You have seen also photos of it. It didn't have any.

We like to burn effigy without a design plan. And that one was like absolutely done on site. It's like, where are the materials?

Oh, we go to the woods and get the material. It's like, what? Yeah, sure.

So people were just going foraging like leftover branches and things. And then we decided that making wings was a good idea. We didn't have equipments and things to put the things up.

The head falls down a couple of times. It was like really kind of a nightmare. But 2019.

That was the first year we actually hired a crane to put the phoenix head on. Well, after the head falls down twice during the build week, we decided that maybe we could have spent some money for a crane to put the heads up and not having people pulling down. That was also the year where we bought last minute like a safety helmet for construction site.

Something was like kind of like, okay, now you're doing these things. Okay, let's try to back you up. It's something volunteer like grabbed by the effigy.

I have to climb like 10 meters. It was a little bit crazy. And also not advisable to have a surface burn where you have, I don't know, five meters high and 15 meters wide burn.

Not advisable for any burn crew.

[Stevan] (2:20:20 - 2:20:32)

All right. 2017 featured a unique effigy of three Chinese characters, meaning human, dragon and fire respectively. What was the theme for dragon burn that year?

2017?

[Koi] (2:20:32 - 2:20:34)

I don't think there was a theme, but I don't know.

[Stevan] (2:20:42 - 2:20:44)

Jungle magic.

Does that bring any memories?

[Sassy Panda] (2:20:44 - 2:20:47)

Oh my God.

[Koi] (2:20:47 - 2:20:54)

It was like a theme like jungle magic. Yeah, sure.

For sure. For the records. Yes.

For the archive. Yeah, true.

[Stevan] (2:20:55 - 2:21:02)

What was the idea behind that? Because the effigy was quite interesting, right?

The three characters, which was unique.

[Sassy Panda] (2:21:02 - 2:21:06)

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. I think that that's the first year that artist...

[Koi] (2:21:06 - 2:21:44)

You can pick it. Do you see the block?

I can show you. Yeah, that one. So this is the thing.

This is the artist. See the block? This is the same concept with different characters.

And you have I, like love, and then you have... What is the thing? Like, I love you, something like that.

So like the artist was like stripping with this idea of like the match, the match character thing. And the jungle magic, why we choose that?

[Sassy Panda] (2:21:44 - 2:21:47)

Maybe because the year before it almost burned down the forest.

[Koi] (2:21:48 - 2:21:48)

Maybe.

[Stevan] (2:21:51 - 2:21:54)

What was the temple design that year, 2017?

[Koi] (2:21:55 - 2:22:03)

Oh, that was interesting story. Like so much like a little bit of drama, dragon burn. That was the first temple.

[Stevan] (2:22:04 - 2:22:05)

Yeah, that was the first temple?

[Koi] (2:22:05 - 2:23:30)

That was a lotus flower. A lotus flower, a petal lotus thing.

It was a sort of a very spontaneous idea by someone that was very driven about the idea of doing a temple and said, OK, we support the idea of doing a temple. There was also like a very demanding and it was not really organized. And so it was really a very last minute action thing on site.

Also, the petal of the lotus were made by rice paper, which is an amazing material to use if you want to do anything that involves lights and shadow. But if you want to burn them, they create embers forever. And the funny thing of that year that we planned because it was the first temple.

So we said, OK, we're doing the temple, the burn of the effigy at the sunset. We're doing the temple at the sunrise of the day after, I don't remember. And then we got a phone call from the landlord that someone saw a big fire through the satellite images.

So we got a call from the local municipality saying that no fires were allowed in the area and we should have put off the fire of the effigy, which we didn't do. And then the idea that we got, and I remember because we were on the fire team, both of us.

[Sassy Panda] (2:23:30 - 2:24:00)

I told the landlord, no, I told Xiaotang, just burn the other one.

[Koi] (2:24:00 - 2:25:02)

And we burned the effigy in the temple. So there was a double fire going on for a certain moment, like kind of like completely crazy. And then we have this amazing embers that came out from the rice paper, which we couldn't envision because we never did it before.

And then there is a phenomenal photo of the landlord arriving with a fire extinguisher on this massive fire ember. And what the fire extinguisher is doing is making the ember flame out more beautifully. It's like completely zero effect.

It's the best shot that we have. And then we were just like, okay, what the fuck kind of thing, but it did happen. We just burn it right away.

And we just move with the cart and the fuel on the shoulder and just like, oh, let's burn it. Let's just fuel it, fuel it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just burn it.

That was the first temple. Not really, I would say, commemorative moment.

[Sassy Panda] (2:25:03 - 2:25:19)

I think this might be a really crazy thing for burners in Australia or New Zealand to imagine in that moment. Just spontaneously, let's burn all of them right away.

[Stevan] (2:25:20 - 2:25:25)

You really answered this one. So 2014 was the first year of Dragon Burn. What was the effigy?

[Koi] (2:25:25 - 2:25:27)

The effigy was a dragon egg.

[Stevan] (2:25:27 - 2:25:35)

Yeah, I love that dragon egg. Was it an easy, difficult build, the effigy?

[Koi] (2:25:35 - 2:26:22)

It was actually, it was okay. We had two people that were doing the design and it was basically a series of kind of like a horizontal and vertical, very small planks of wood that you just stuck to each other on a cut. So it was easy to produce and just like built.

And then the shape was a little bit like, I mean, nobody knows what dragon egg looks like because I believe nobody actually see a dragon egg. So the shape was a little bit twisted, like a little bit spiral because the idea is that you could actually walk inside of the dragon egg so you could follow the edge. And yeah, no, it wasn't too crazy.

[Sassy Panda] (2:26:23 - 2:26:27)

Compared to the future effigies, it was, yeah.

[Stevan] (2:26:27 - 2:26:33)

Okay. Glow was the 2018 theme for Dragon Burn. What was the effigy that year?

[Koi] (2:26:33 - 2:26:35)

The dragon, the spiral dragon.

[Stevan] (2:26:37 - 2:26:38)

The light dragon?

[Koi] (2:26:39 - 2:26:42)

Oh, the light, that was our, yeah, the light dragon.

[Stevan] (2:26:42 - 2:26:44)

2016 was the coiled dragon.

[Sassy Panda] (2:26:45 - 2:26:59)

Yeah, 2018 was a much bigger scale of the spiral dragon. And there was also a photo really nice captured where this cloud was shaped a little bit like a dragon head.

[Koi] (2:26:59 - 2:29:05)

So yeah, the spiral dragon, it was like a spiral of branches going up with the head. 2016, it's interesting because the effigy was dragon shape, kind of like a sort of like a more paper cut, like the traditional kind of paper cut shape of a flat dragon with the tail and the head.

But then because that was the year when we got moved to the island and the effigy was very small, and I remember that we did a test building, you remember, at the Nathan workshop. So the effigy was very small. And for some reason, the material that we choose was a little bit not the right material.

But for the five days, it soaked water completely, so that the effigy could actually not really burn when we were trying to burn the effigy. And someone, a very dear friend of us, because it was the island and in the island, they were a lot of, they found the island was like some camping thing. So they found a lot of barbecue sticks abandoned, like kind of in the trash.

So they built another dragon shaped looking thing with the barbecue sticks in an afternoon. And finally, we end up to move the burn from the effigy, the dragon stick effigy, which is the ultimate tribute to immediacy when your effigy is backed up by another thing that you burn it out. And I remember that was like really where the party kind of like went on, because these things like burn so easily.

You have like the fat of the lamb and the easy food and all the things and it's like flame out beautifully. And we were still trying to beat up the effigy by that time.

[Stevan] (2:29:06 - 2:29:10)

Okay, last question. Question eight. What was the theme for Dragon Burn in 2025?

[Koi] (2:29:11 - 2:29:12)

Arousal.

[Stevan] (2:29:13 - 2:29:15)

Yeah, how did you get that name?

[Koi] (2:29:15 - 2:30:45)

Big debate, you know.

So, you know, like you have animals that in winter go to sleep. Then after the winter, when they feel the kick, they wake up and they restart their life. It was kind of like the idea of the arousal.

It was also a little bit of when are you aroused, like you're kind of like, you know, interested and you're like chasing something. So it was something about this idea. We haven't been done an official burn for so long.

We are arousing out of, I think it was also the person that had the idea. It was also a little bit of a kind of like a cherishing or there was something about the English language. Well, if you think about being aroused, it could be like more energy or like sexual oriented.

But this was really like you're coming out of your winter stagnation and we're coming out of this like five years of naughtiness and everything that we are arousing back into this official regional network participation effort kind of thing. It was very strong for the planners team, not very well understood by the community. But I think it was a little bit, it's kind of like Shakespeare, you know, you think you understand the meaning, but you don't really get it.

[Stevan] (2:30:48 - 2:31:17)

This is a good segue to talk about Dragon Burn 2025 and the zebra story. So this is a good segue into Dragon Burn 2025, the arousal burn. So as promised earlier, we need to get the zebra story bottled up for future generations and listeners to also understand the craziness that goes down at Burns, particularly Dragon Burn.

[Koi] (2:31:18 - 2:31:28)

Well, this could be a spider for the future generation also because It's a good case study. If they go to the trash cans looking for zebra, they may be disappointed.

[Stevan] (2:31:29 - 2:31:59)

So this year's bonza, we had a few new delegates, right? And they were so confused. So we're trying to explain, we're trying to retell your story, Koi.

And it's like Chinese whispers. A lot of information gets misplaced or added or morphed or kind of, you know, but the essence is still there. The zebra remains.

But yeah, you go for it. You tell us what happened.

[Koi] (2:32:00 - 2:34:58)

So what happened, you know, it's a burn. You have an art department or like you do art application. You have a call and then we have art collective.

Anyway, we received, we had to do the, like we were doing the burn. So we received the art application and then we were doing the review of the art application. And then the person that's taking care of the art application sent a message and said, there is an application that seems to be a bit confusing.

I need some help. Okay, let's look into the application together. And the application was about bringing zebra to the burn for, with a very, actually, precise form filled with all of the information.

Some of the application was like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this was like extremely detailed and very well curated. And it was about bringing a zebra to the burn.

And it was elaborating on the interactivity part on the fact that you can use the zebra for taking photos. And you can use the zebra for walking around as like a mean of transportation of the burn. And you can use the zebra to carry stuff as a mule.

And things elaborated. So the art application has a few parts. What is the content of your application?

What is the interactivity? Why do you think this thing is meaningful? And there was this like triplet of taking photo, taking a walk, moving stuff, organized and repetitive, like repeated into the application in all the parts.

You know, like a zebra, you know, I mean, a zebra is, I mean, this is China, you know, panda, okay, black and white, the horses in Mongolia, Gobi Desert, copycat burns. Okay, we've seen that. It's kind of like, what is, what is that thing?

You know, and then, and then there was two pictures attached to the application. And one was a picture of a horse, a pony, yeah, like a pony horse. And the other one was a picture of a zebra doll, like the thing that you when you are a toddler in the 80s, you put money inside and you can ride the zebra for a little bit outside of a AFC, something.

And then we said, okay, the guy wants to bring a coin thing. So we need to talk with the person that there is no coin at the burn. So he must have...

[Sassy Panda] (2:34:58 - 2:35:34)

I think there was a little bit debate before we even reached to that point, because we were discussing, is this person bringing a real zebra or it's just a toy zebra? So we were discussing that, because at that time, we still couldn't believe the idea of bringing a real zebra. So we were arguing like, no, this can't be a real zebra.

I mean, it must be the toy where you can ride on. I thought it was a real zebra somehow. And then we reached out to that guy.

[Koi] (2:35:34 - 2:36:46)

Yeah. So it was like, because I was optimistic. So I said, no, there's a photo of the toy.

So it's like, I ride the zebra when I was young, like many times. So it must be one of those. We need to talk to him about, there is no coin at the burn.

So you cannot use money. They use zebra. So either you have an Arduino thing that you hack your system.

You need to understand how this is going to work, you know. And they were like, kind of like, no, maybe it's a real zebra. Okay, let's connect with the guy.

So we kind of add the guy on WhatsApp or WeChat or something and start to talk with the guy. And we had some vocal messages. And the way that he was talking was even more confusing.

The question was like, are you bringing a real zebra? And it's like, no, of course I'm not bringing a real zebra. Okay, so your zebra is which material?

Is it plastic or metal? How does it weigh? And the answer was something like, I don't know.

Oh, it weighs like a normal zebra. Assuming that it is something they're supposed to know. And it's like, where are the coins?

Like, no, no, it's like, it's a zebra. You just like ride the zebra and you go around. It's like, no way.

[Sassy Panda] (2:36:47 - 2:36:51)

What does that mean? It's a horse.

[Koi] (2:36:52 - 2:36:55)

And he's like, it's a horse. No, no, it's not a real zebra.

It's a horse.

[Stevan] (2:36:56 - 2:36:57)

It's a pony.

[Sassy Panda] (2:36:57 - 2:36:58)

I'm confused.

[Koi] (2:36:58 - 2:42:22)

And he's like, okay, what about the picture that you sent us? Is that a horse? No, no, no, it's not that horse.

It's just a horse. Okay. But it's like, and so we arrived to the point of this conversation with the person that we like asking questions like, is there a real animal that breathes and shits?

Like, we need to kind of know if it needs air to survive any shit. It's like, of course, it's a horse. Of course it breathes and shits.

And he's like, so what about the zebra with the coin? No, that's just an example. An example of what?

Well, an example of a horse that is like a zebra. And he's like, what do you mean? It's a horse about a zebra.

But anyway, we finally arrived to understand that the art submission, the art grant, was to bring a pony that was hair dressed and colored as a zebra. Because it's not so easy to access the zebra, even in the paradise of logistic that is China. And so it was like a small zebra, which was a pony, dressed up like a zebra that he wanted to bring, taking photos with, taking a ride around because the land is big and you are tired to walk.

And you can also use it as a mule to carry your stuff. So it was a contribution to the department, interacting with the people, and a radical self-expression because it was a pony that's dressed up like a zebra. So it's like coming out, like it's a portal coming out, you know?

That was the thing. Then we had to answer to this. Which was, I think we lost all the words.

Yeah, it was the same around this table with also the art department, the Ministry of Art. We were laughing and shocking. It's like, well, wait a second.

Okay, so someone is applying to bring in a live animal to be used as a photo shooting booth, as a talent king for carrying around people. And as a mule for DPW. It kind of looks like scoring three departments in one, but at the same time, it doesn't seem to be a good idea.

So we started to say, it's going to be shitting all over. And it's like, yes, of course, it's a zebra. Well, it's a pony.

It doesn't matter. It's like, how do you think that? Oh, that's fine.

It's like a natural thing. It's going to be dry out and just be like, sure. Okay.

And then we were trying to say, hey, like, taking a photo with an animal that is dressed up like it's not an animal. It seems like a little bit invasive, if not abusive, you know? And it's like, no, we do it here all the time.

And this is like, you know, you don't understand. I have like many horses. I come from Inner Mongolia.

I'm a friend for all of the horses. They call my name, you know, they come to me, they lick my face. It's great.

I mean, it's like, yeah, it's not the point. I mean, we appreciate your love for horses and their love for you. But it's like, this is something that, you know, is a live animal, which is ideally not welcome at the burn for a variety of reasons.

And, you know, there is loud music, there is stinging, and also this idea that you're using the animal for your own pleasure and purpose. Like, you need to transfer things from one side to the other. I know that it's very hard.

And then you always carry things with a pull, like a pull truck, you know? And this is like, so stupid. With a zebra, you just put it on, and it's going to be there in a minute.

Like, we understand that. But it's like, you know, we would, it's complicated. And it's like the thing.

So it's, do you confirm that you want to bring a real animal of a pony species? And just like, how do you, what do you want to do? Like, what's a zebra?

Oh, just cut the hair and paint them with some paint, like, you know, white and black and made a stripe. Then it's gonna look like a zebra. And I admire the creativity, but...

And yeah, we were like, a little bit, like, in short of, how do you call them? Like, the standard operation protocol, like the SOP, the S-O-P. Like, we were a little bit in short of S-O-P to how to answer to this call, like, kindly say, you know, we appreciate your effort.

You're welcome to bring a toy zebra that is not alive, doesn't breathe, doesn't shit around. We can build an Arduino for you, you know. Play whatever, but a real animal, we are respecting the animal.

Like, it's just like, it's, I'm sorry, we cannot allow horses on our land. We cannot allow a zebra on our land either. And we cannot allow any transformation of a real animal into any other real animal by no means in our land.

[Stevan] (2:42:22 - 2:42:25)

Was this person surprised that you were surprised?

[Koi] (2:42:25 - 2:42:26)

Uh, yes.

[Stevan] (2:42:26 - 2:42:31)

Because I thought, you guys are burners. You should be accepting all this, all this craziness.

[Koi] (2:42:31 - 2:43:32)

Yeah, very much. Yeah, I think, not bad surprise, not kind of like angry surprise, but kind of like, I don't understand what's the point. And it's like, well, it's like, we don't actually know how to start.

That's why you don't understand. Because then, then there was like, the three of us were really like, I was from like, you know, I don't know, animal abuse, and it's kind of like this thing and any like, discomfort in many different ways that I could articulate. And someone else was like, safety, you know, what if the zebra just like knock on the face of someone or just run away and like, and someone was like, it's gonna be shit everywhere.

And it's like, oh, we can, like, it was like, so hard, bizarre to kind of like, find an entry point of the conversation. And, and we said, you're welcome to come, we can see if a zebra made of wood. What about wood as a material, you know, we can paint it.

[Stevan] (2:43:32 - 2:43:33)

And burn it later.

[Koi] (2:43:35 - 2:44:16)

What about if it's a wood zebra, we can burn it. I don't want to burn my animal, I just want to bring my animal, you know, it was a, yeah, it was, it was really, that's like, weird cultural encounter on universes.

It's, it's quite interesting. But we have to go through this phone call. And the phone call was surreal, because it was, it was, it was like on a, on like a loudspeaker.

So we all the three of us could hear. And then it was really like people with like pillows on their face. So the laughing of the answers, you know, like, let me try this way.

No, man. It was like, it was really fascinating. Really, really fascinating.

[Sassy Panda] (2:44:17 - 2:44:19)

We spent the whole night.

[Koi] (2:44:19 - 2:44:21)

We spent like hours, hours, hours.

[Stevan] (2:44:22 - 2:44:27)

And eventually, the zebra made an appearance at Dragon Burn?

[Koi] (2:44:27 - 2:47:15)

No, no, unfortunately, I mean, it's like, it's still like latent, you know, it's like, that's why it's in a box at this moment. No, but it's something that has to happen. There was last year, there was a, I find out that one of the, one of the best artists that we ever had at the Burn - Lorraine, which brought some amazing, brilliant art over the years.

He had an art piece, maybe 25 years ago, like in this very early career stage, that was a horse in somewhere in Paris, I think that was like painted with like psychedelic kind of patterns. And it was like a series of spirals. And at the center of the spirals, you would touch it, and it would play a different sound.

It does a lot of this like sound interactive thing. So if you, different people would touch the center of different spirals, it would create kind of a harmony and a composition. And I found it like a few months later, and I said, man, you don't know, I mean, this is like, we have to do this again, like 25 years later, but there has to be a zebra.

And then you thought about the spiral, like, doesn't matter the psychedelic thing, just follow the white line of the zebra, you know? So we caressed the zebra, and I pitched the idea. I was very happy to try to do it, blah, blah, blah.

But then we didn't do the Berne. So we didn't do the thing. There are many, many ideas.

I mean, there is a shop like 100 meters from my house that has a zebra in the window, and they sell like black and white clothes. So it's kind of like, it feels like a little bit of a curse. But we have to do something.

And it was so surprising to see how, I mean, it was a very big moment of laughing. In the Bonza community. And also this came into the narrative of what we were telling the story.

So it was like one of the oddities. But it's kind of like interesting to imagine that, like, you just like sometimes you're not ready, like your skill and your assets and your vocabulary is just limited, you know? And so you just don't know how to interact, which is an art piece itself, I think, which you can take as how can we make our call for art more clear?

Or maybe it should be like, how can we actually incorporate this kind of artistic expression in a way that doesn't sound compromising for anybody, you know?

[Stevan] (2:47:15 - 2:47:21)

I think the key to this story is probably next time, ask the pony how they feel, if they want to come to the show.

[Koi] (2:47:22 - 2:49:08)

Yes, yes, yes. But then you kind of like, then you need to get to take a trip to Inner Mongolia, in order to do that, you know, so that's, that's possible, you know, it's kind of like a little bit more of a logistic. I mean, the guy seems to be like, actually really sweet, and really kind of like, intrinsically, and like motivated and genuinely motivated that this is the thing that he wanted to do, because this is part of his life and this love and affection for the horses was like, absolutely, like, undeniable.

And the fact that he would have been going through the artistic process of transforming the horse into a zebra for this communal engagement, I mean, I wonder, you know, like, now that a little bit of time has passed, I actually wonder that this could actually have potentially be an extremely interesting form of art, you know, and a form of expression. But that's, that then also made me think, okay, I'm not supposed to be evaluating art, and as well, Elaine is not supposed to be evaluating art. And that was like such a bizarre thing that I believe that even, like, people in the highest organization, they have trouble and concern to how to answer to this, because you can either answer very formally saying, I'm sorry, we don't accept a live animal at our event.

Okay. But this is not interactive. And then we were kind of curious, and also delighted a little bit of this, like, humane, kind of like, so bizarre, like, what exactly is going on here?

[Sassy Panda] (2:49:08 - 2:49:09)

Because he's so genuine.

[Koi] (2:49:10 - 2:49:11)

So genuine.

[Sassy Panda] (2:49:11 - 2:49:13)

About bringing this art piece.

[Koi] (2:49:13 - 2:51:11)

So maybe we should have done in our being organized, link, disorganized, maybe we could have done some effort to actually imagine, okay, what if there is a living animal at the birth? What would that mean? What would have changed?

Who do we have to ask permission to? What can we say to the lender? What is the negotiation protocol or interaction that we start with this person?

And so on. But that's a layer of complexity that is very hard to kind of like, have in a moment where you have schedule and you are supposed to get decision and also you don't really understand what's going on. And you don't have the time of reflection.

And you haven't been through sharing this to a community of peers, like the Bones are friends, where their reaction and their enthusiasm has kind of like give us different way to look in the thing, you know? Because we actually created, even though some of the people that this year that was like confused, you know? Well, art creates confusion a lot of time, you know, but we're actually making a sort of an interactive moment throughout the community in a scattered way, because of the effort of this person, which is completely, we don't, I don't remember his name, you know, which is a problem, you know, we should at least, you know, it's kind of like, I don't know.

It's like, it's really, it could look like silly, but in some aspect, it could also drive to a more interesting reflection of being together, doing together and what are the inspiration. But it was really, really amazing. Really amazing.

[Stevan] (2:51:12 - 2:51:20)

It was also amazing that Dragon Burn that year received like almost 80% of the attendees were new Burners.

[Sassy Panda] (2:51:20 - 2:53:09)

Yeah, that was a big surprise to all of us, I believe. Maybe after COVID, we didn't do official events for four years or five years almost. And then all of a sudden, when we announced this news, I think the first batch of people who bought the tickets, they might be the people who was drawn to the events that happened in 2019, where lots of people shared photos or pictures on social media.

Well, that's my only explanation I can find it reasonable. Otherwise, I don't know why that all of a sudden can draw such attention. So after 2019, because that was also the highest population that year.

So a big amount of photos and stories shared from friends and friends' friends. So lots of people, they were actually waiting for the next year because they didn't know this before. So they wanted to come back next year.

But then COVID happened, and then year after year, we couldn't really do the event. So people might be waiting this whole time. Until 2025, they saw the news.

They were like, I can't miss this one anymore. So I'm just going to buy my tickets right away. So that's what caused the issue, like 85% more as all first-timers, which is very scary for us.

Especially for the planning team, we are facing lots of challenges of people and also missed experiences after COVID. Just short of hands and missed experience. So facing that amount of people, that population, it was a big challenge.

[Stevan] (2:53:09 - 2:53:45)

Yeah, the psychosocial implications of COVID was a massive shift. Most people, from what I heard is that, from what I think you guys told me in person, that people were looking for connection. People were looking for, well, people were isolated.

So the isolation and the loneliness really impacted them. And they kind of felt directionless or empty in life, I guess, as well. So they needed that connection.

That stood out to me when you guys told me these kind of little stories like that, when you actually surveyed some of the attendants, right?

[Koi] (2:53:45 - 2:56:39)

This is one thing. I think another aspect is not only one thing that happened, because the interesting thing with COVID, which we don't really have to spend much time on that. So 2020, when all the things popped up, we had maybe three months, six months.

I mean, except Wuhan, that was a dramatic situation for a longer time. But Shanghai and many other places, after three or four months, the situation kind of stabilized. So from the second half of 2020 until the end of 2021, the thing was like the borders of the countries were closed.

So you couldn't get in and out most of the time, not with very severe, like with very high level of quarantine and things and protocols and so on. But the life inside of the country was absolutely normal. And it was COVID-free in a way.

But there was at the same time this kind of like very extreme, like the point was not to have people sick. So everything that was gathering, it was potentially a risk situation. And this kind of like what stayed after.

So after the big lockdown in Shanghai in 2022, like the thing is like all of the gatherings were highly regulated. So I think it was not only the loneliness itself, but it was because it was not really experienced that much. But it was the fact that you could have a gathering without protocol.

Like it was you would have. That's why in 2021, we couldn't do an official burn because having a gathering of people. And so we did the unburn, which was basically a burn without being a burn.

But the idea was like, let's go in there. We're doing our thing. We cannot do it officially because the liability for everybody involved is too high if something happened in a gathering.

So everything was heavily protocol. And so I think that was the first time where finally, after the 2024 last minute cancellation and all this thing, it's like it was the first things where, oh, the protocol are gone, you know. So it was not only the isolation, but it was also these difficulties or like hyper mechanism of gathering that it was more important.

Because people has never really be isolated very much. You know, I wouldn't see that. It's just the fact that you can go in a place without check-in kind of thing.

And you don't care if the people that come to this place has been checked in. You actually don't want them to be checked in. That, I think, was also like a big figure.

[Sassy Panda] (2:56:40 - 2:57:31)

But also that when we thought the gathering protocol was gone, but then afterwards we realized it's not really gone. It's actually still there. I think that's after the 2025 burn, we discovered further about the political environment or whatsoever.

We don't want to go too deep on that part. But anyway, the gathering protocol, it's a little bit different. It's not like because of the COVID impact anymore, but it's because of that other X, Y, Z reason.

But the protocol is actually still there. So big gathering still can draw lots of attention. That's probably why we're also reviewing our possibilities, how we can run our events in the future.

[Koi] (2:57:32 - 2:59:09)

Yeah, well, it's like a different idea of growth and what does it mean. Like, for example, this is also going back to what we were saying earlier. It's like the way that you guys are organized and all of this thing.

And it's like, for us, it's always impossible. We cannot really do a no-profit organization. This is extremely difficult and extremely counterproductive.

So we were thinking about, OK, can we speak with EMR and try to say, OK, we're doing a company. It's not a company for profit. It's just like a company as a way to be able to legitimate our existence to the people that you are talking with.

Because we cannot have a Melburners. We cannot have that kind of thing. We cannot have all of these committees and organizations that take care of all of these aspects of the logistics because this doesn't work here.

But if we are not an entity of any sort, then the communication is extremely difficult. If we are a company, then we are legitimate to ask for insurances or we want to speak with the firemen department or we want to speak with this and that. And we have a legitimacy of doing that.

So we're kind of thinking about how to address this thing, which is definitely not because of any commercial intention whatsoever. Because the ticket will always be cheap, $30USD.

[Stevan] (2:59:11 - 2:59:20)

That's like five bubble teas. That's so cheap for a transformational experience. Five bubble teas worth.

[Koi] (2:59:20 - 2:59:21)

So cheap.

[Stevan] (2:59:21 - 2:59:35)

That's like... Rather than $600, $30. That means it's for the people.

You're putting up an event, an experience, a space for the people.

[Sassy Panda] (2:59:36 - 3:00:00)

Even compared to other small music festivals or commercial events, I think our price is never really that high. It's always quite affordable because our goal is never really about to make how much profit, just make it more accessible to the community.

[Stevan] (3:00:00 - 3:00:17)

Yeah. So let's talk about how you guys sorely missed at Bonza this year. And I was really excited to listen to your talk, Elaine, about what's the future of burner culture in highly regulated societies.

This is a really fascinating topic.

[Sassy Panda] (3:00:17 - 3:02:10)

Yeah. That's why after last year's events, we sort of had this internal discussions about where our futures can be. Some of the ways it might have worked in the past before we draw enough attention.

And now it might not work anymore. So we need to think about how we want to make this sustainable in the future compared to, I don't know, kiwiburn or burning seed or burning Japan. I think here we have specific challenges and also environment where lots of possibilities are not really working here.

How we can adapt into the local environment and local policy and procedures to make this burn happen. And also like what Jarred said, is this the burn event really have to be the same standard as what BM work always lay out all the rules or we can improvise according to our local environment or rules? So that's why we had this discussion about, you know, maybe it's time to think about forming a legitimate company, maybe a solution.

But I also can foresee some challenges or questions might come along afterwards. People might start to question your authenticity or this is possible because we can claim ourselves the nonprofit. But as far as your company, I believe this might be one of the concerns from the BM work.

How are you going to regulate yourselves? It's worth to discuss and explore further on this part.

[Stevan] (3:02:11 - 3:02:50)

The abstract of your discussion was places such as Asia, Russia and other parts of the Middle East present very different realities for community driven cultural movements. And you're asking, the question is no longer about how do we grow? Because you gave some examples about some of the communities, the Bonza communities in Australia, the burning seed and in Kiwiburn community.

It's these communities, although they have been, you know, the legacy, it's got a long history. It's no longer about thriving. It's about surviving now.

[Sassy Panda] (3:02:51 - 3:04:10)

Similar to us, we also are facing land issue to be particular. In the first six years, we were constantly hunting on different sites. And even now, we still have different opinions about keeping this current venue or explore more other possibilities.

So, of course, the land usage has always been one of our challenges. And the regulations, of course, and also the gatherings, definitely we are under more restrictions than before. I think Dragon Burn, this name already brought quite a lot of attention from different authorities.

So this is probably the next step we need to think about if we change our name or we have other ways to keep this going. Because that's the information we got from the landlord, which he got through other authorities or his connections. The Dragon Burn name itself is kind of sensitive at this moment.

So we are not trying to host any official events because we don't want to draw any attention from the government.

[Koi] (3:04:10 - 3:04:24)

Without feeling comfortable to be able to reply and to address his attention in the way that we want. That, I think, is kind of the key thing.

[Sassy Panda] (3:04:25 - 3:05:17)

And also for us, it's kind of difficult to communicate with the authorities. Because when they have this conversation with us, the first question they will ask is always, Who are you? Who is Dragon Burn?

Are you a company? Are you an organization? Who are you?

Why are you organizing an event with hundreds of people, but without any official approved paperwork or sort of regulations in place? So we were also thinking about this question. It's really hard for us to answer this question.

We can only answer as an individual. But as an individual, if you have the power to organize hundreds of people's events, that's a big red flag to the authorities.

[Stevan] (3:05:20 - 3:05:34)

I love your solutions that you had written down. Three possibilities of directions you talked about. One of them is large events may not be the future.

Why do you think that is? Because it draws too much attention?

[Sassy Panda] (3:05:35 - 3:06:39)

I think from two parts. Attention is one part. Of course, that's from the regulation, from the authorities part.

That's not deniable. But also from the other part, personally, I also felt like our community is not as strong as before. And we can't always think about 2019 was our peak moment.

We can still do it. And no matter what, we just try harder and sell more tickets. And eventually we're going to go back to where we were before.

But the reality is that current community is kind of weak. Not only the participants, but also the key organizers and contributors, people with experience, it's all way much less than before. So from these two parts, I felt like smaller events might be more accessible to us and also more comfortable, at least to me.

[Koi] (3:06:39 - 3:09:51)

There's a challenge here that personally I've been trying to reflect. It's really a very rough sort of ideas. But I wonder if the scale or to which extent the scale, it's kind of like some of the communities, some of the burners communities or some of the other communities in general, they may seem to be functioning because they are not uniform, but kind of like verging.

So I wonder, like, maybe there's something interesting to reflect about diversity. As OK, we like to radically express ourselves and we are radically inclusive. But there is a very big terrain of friction in all of this conversation.

And I think that Black Rock City is going through a massive contradiction in this sense, like expanding, doing like movies on the premium paid series on the TV shows, you know, and kind of like opening up like blah, blah, blah. And then people that say we should just scale down and have a little bit more of care to each other. And then we kind of like it's kind of like it's interesting because, of course, I don't want to be uniform and that's not the tension.

But what is the maybe there's a little bit more of reflection that needs to be done on how can you be? And it's different if you are an established, like a long term cultural endeavours that has been going on for many years, but also Burning Man has been transforming itself quite a lot of the history. Or if you are sort of like a brand new kind of like a cultural and social expression of China is very new in this moment, you know, like like it's kind of like that.

There is all of like the China maxxing, as they call it on Instagram, like three years ago, there was no China maxxing. Now is that like it's kind of like so this is like a lot of divergent things coming together into something that is very fragile because it hasn't been built. It just like happened.

See, you know, it's kind of interesting. It's like, how can you open up like how can you grow without the roots and where are the roots or how do you decide that certain things are the root enough for you to grow? And this may be conditioned so you can argument like kind of like more technical things that you can figure it out.

Some of them are more qualitative and like values based. And this requires like different level of sensitivity that is hard to do. Like it's really like it's really challenging.

[Sassy Panda] (3:09:52 - 3:10:14)

They grow too fast in the past 20 years or 30 years in China. Everything was evolving like rapidly and people don't really or maybe some are but I think majority are not really ready for this speed. And it's just overwhelming.

[Stevan] (3:10:15 - 3:10:55)

Well, China in the last 20 years has seen so much transformation for a country that is, but the other possibilities of reality that you pointed out was that communities may need to stay small to be, I guess, and that's my same the same kind of argument that you had for the first solution was that large events may not be the future. But I think to stay culturally viable, you may need to go that direction, that communities might have to stay small, but also agile to also, you know, to move, maneuver, if it does grow quickly.

[Sassy Panda] (3:10:55 - 3:11:58)

I think still I go back to the attention part, like some of the small communities in China, because they are small, invisible, somehow they can grow more steadily, because they can be more focused on what they are trying to do, instead of worrying or answering the authorities or different perspectives about their challenges or questions. So they are more focused on what they are trying to do. And for us, it's the same.

If I'm spending all my time answering to the authorities, I won't have time to think about the arts, community, what are the people are thinking, how can we improve our operation, etc. Just don't have the energy for this part. So for small communities, they don't need to worry about that part. They are invisible, but they are there.

[Stevan] (3:11:59 - 3:12:09)

Yeah, it seems like a double edged sword. You know, people are addicted to growth. They just get fixated with it and just want to get bigger.

But bigger is not always better, as we know.

[Koi] (3:12:09 - 3:15:03)

Well, it's kind of interesting that in the world that we're living in now, even in the most radical cultural expression, the growth seems to be kind of like an intrinsic goal. And it could be a growth of visibility, or a growth of energy, or audience, or resources, or impact, or whatever, you know. And you can be a global movement in universal terms, because you're recognized universally.

Or you can be a global movement in a decentralized way, where things are different, but unified by principle. And it's like, I mean, it doesn't have to get too philosophical. But I think bigger events and smaller events are all sort of facing the idea of being able to exist after themselves, even though the challenges may look like opposites.

You know, kind of like, how can you be surviving with little means? Or how can you be surviving with bigger means? Like, where are the resources coming from?

And that's interesting. And it's a tough moment. So I believe that this conversation is actually interesting for everybody, because even the bigger events, I mean, I don't know much about, I don't know, AfrikaBurn is big, and MidBurn was also very big.

But if I think nowhere was also very big, but they kind of went into producing, kind of like scaling down and making sure and they have having for the past three, four years, severe call for if we don't get enough amount of volunteering, don't run the event. Which is interesting, in a way, because you're basically doing kind of like a little bit corporate, or if there is not this amount of resources, we don't pull out the event, whatever it is. So it's kind of like still a matching of resources and output, which is not what a community does.

It's like, okay, what we have, we have three things. Okay, what can we do with these three things? So everybody's trying to find mechanism of survival to a status.

And I don't know, it's like, it would be, there are efforts to try to raise it, but everybody's still struggling a little bit with their own survival.

[Stevan] (3:15:03 - 3:15:11)

The third solution that you had, Elaine, was cultural migration. Can you expand a little bit on that?

[Sassy Panda] (3:15:11 - 3:17:18)

It's a nice way to put it, cultural migration. But it's more about, I wouldn't say it's a runway, but it's more like we are seeking possibilities where we can still experience the burn, even without the possibility to do it in our own land. But we can go to other regionals, like Burning Seed to do a burn, Japan burn, Nowhere, Afrikaburn, just to go out to see and to experience. And there's no purpose attached.

I don't have to achieve to anything. I don't have to carry this sense of responsibility of promoting our own burn or learn a certain amount of knowledge or skills from other regionals and bring back to our regional burn, see how I can work on development. But it's more about where you want to continue to experience the burn culture, but also to be able to bring this fantasy, not, I wouldn't say fantasy, but your ideas to where possible to explore.

You can't do it here, but you might be able to do it there. And if you can't change things here, but then you try other possibilities. And who knows, maybe a couple of years later, you come back here, something can work again.

But the most important thing is that you don't stop, because we do have people who stop. They see things doesn't work here. And that's not what in my understanding, I just don't feel like that's the right way.

Well, of course, people have their own choices, and they can reason themselves. But for me, I just felt like it doesn't work, then we try other ways. And then come back, maybe the solution will be in front of you.

[Koi] (3:17:19 - 3:20:09)

Well, I think this is something that hasn't been explored. There's several projects in the org, trying to imagine not only the future of the regional network, but also how events can support each other. And like, what if a regional burn is actually a group of people that is like a community that is on the move?

That is like, maybe we can learn from the zebra, you know, that they move from time to time from one step to the other, you know, and they do their season and they come back. And they, I don't know, it's like that you don't have your event, but your community is thriving, because it's around. And it's doing things and it's contributing to whatever level or layer.

And you have competencies of the individual, but you also have the knowledge and the wisdom of the collective. And the event itself, like, so it's not centralized, but it's more like a nomadic, like, what if, I don't know, like, it's kind of like a little bit like it's very different than all of the discussion that is happening in many regionals about buying the land. So it's definitely the opposite of being nomadic, but maybe that's kind of like where the match, the Lego match can happen, where there are people that are buying the land, staying there and stable.

That's a perfect place where you can image nomadic, because you're like, it's like you're there and you're contributing in that setting and then you move somewhere else. And what if this potentially new essence of a community of being in this movement, and this is something I never really thought before. But like, dragons come and they do their thing and they participate and they're part of many different events in different way and they don't have an event themselves.

But does it really matter? Or does it still then qualify to be a community of contributors? I don't know, maybe that's a good question to leave there for nomadic burn, like a burn detached by the idea of a country, like a no border, I can use a little bit of a political expression, but a no border burn community.

[Stevan] (3:20:09 - 3:20:22)

Yeah, I like that thought. We usually like to end the episode with some shout outs and gratitude. So I understand that this is kind of like the unofficial 11th principle of dragon burn is gratitude.

[Koi] (3:20:22 - 3:20:24)

Yeah, yeah, yes.

[Stevan] (3:20:25 - 3:20:31)

So let's do some, let's do some shout outs and gratitude. So who wants to go first?

Sassy Panda, you want to go first? Who would you like to thank?

[Sassy Panda] (3:20:31 - 3:20:44)

I think the first one pop up in my mind is at least Sven. Sven, despite we had disagreements.

[Koi] (3:20:45 - 3:20:47)

Very confrontational moments.

[Sassy Panda] (3:20:48 - 3:21:06)

But I still want to thank him, because he's the first one to take me in. And then I just be on this road until now. It gives me the possibility to join this journey. Yeah.

[Koi] (3:21:07 - 3:23:11)

Well, in this moment, I think that I spent a lot of time recently to, like, I think the regional network as an operation. So everybody that had this idea and is devoting their work on supporting opportunity of encounter from the very center, from the org level to the Bonza level, the way that we have been welcomed by the Bonza community was amazing.

Like, very, very amazing. And everybody that is kind of like crossing all of these opportunities. There was an Asia Summit in Taipei like a decade ago.

And ELS, like all of this opportunity that are crafted for having people to encounter. So it's much more than a name, I would say. But I like for me, like, yeah, the Bonza community were like phenomenal.

And I think it stepped up my idea of not, I'm not alone. And I can also speak based on an experience that is like, that is wide. And I, yes, like the, I think, I think everybody does show up.

I mean, they don't have names, but it's kind of like surprising, like people do like show up with the things and stuff and they surprise you. And then you just feel that you can move forward faster. Like, you can just like, you're doing the right thing.

And there are people that doesn't make you feel alone, which are many and sometimes nameless. So, and also, I mean, your time is amazing. Like this whole thing is amazing.

So, yeah, everybody does show up.

[Sassy Panda] (3:23:13 - 3:23:14)

Anyone who shows up?

[Koi] (3:23:41 - 3:26:17)

This kind of icons thing.

And we did in 2019, we actually did a gratitude event in a park where we just invited like a volunteer and crews and team camp just to show up as kind of a potluck picnic in a park. And I made this kind of like sticker and I wanted to make an icon with like 11 gratitude and with this symbol. So, I took the 10 principle icons and I draw something that was extremely simple and based on those kind of imaginary of the graphic.

And then it turns out, I think last year that somehow these things got distributed on Facebook for some reason. And I think because I brought it at Bonza or something. And then someone from the Australian community commented on Facebook that that was a logo of, I don't know, maybe like a part right or like reactionary, I don't know, music group, something, blah, blah, blah.

I have no idea about your aussie culture. And I was blasted on Facebook. It's like how these people like use the images from internet without even knowing the references and blah, blah, blah.

And then Lumos forward to me very kindly. And I was like, Lumos, I tell you, I draw it myself. You know, it's the very simple, basic.

I mean, it's just like, and there was these things. Oh, my God, I did something so wrong. And I've been going around giving this so wrong piece of paper all of these years.

I don't know, I had like this moment. At the same time, I said, no, well, I did this, I did that, like really out of a moment of making something. And then maybe I will change it eventually in the next print.

Or I will burn all of the ones that are left. But it was so interesting, because we were talking about cultural, you know, you can always step into some kind of, there's always something that you don't know. So I think I'm grateful for the people that instead of blaming you for what you don't know, they teach you something in a pure way.

And the burn is a fantastic, is a fantastic stage for this to happen. You know, that's where really like you're learning without being taught. That's great.

So I would cheer to all of them. And I have a few names and a few situations coming to my mind.

[Stevan] (3:26:39 - 3:27:20)

That's what I'm thinking now. It's like, because most of the stuff that happens, you guys have been through this, you know, cancellation, last minute cancellations, you know, being scrutinized, you know, being studied, stuff like that. So, yeah, thank you for all you do, your participation and, you know, for teaching us.

So, yeah. And just sharing, like you said, the Bonza Network and the community is fantastic. And it's a great platform for that.

Sharing information, sharing knowledge, you know, passing on stories, stuff like that. So, yeah, it may seem trivial, but these are the stuff I love. So thank you.

[Koi] (3:27:20 - 3:29:20)

Yeah, thank you, because this can, I mean, this comes from, I mean, it comes from a certain amount of maturity, you know, which is like a strange word, because it's not something that gives you authority or entitlement of things, but it gives you the possibility to understand that whatever is happening, it's possible. If it's happening, it's possible. And then you just have to figure it out.

And for me, the way that I was, we were welcome at the first Bonza, which was amazing, like absolutely amazing experience. And like, wow, I mean, I can talk, you know, this is like, I can be intellectually active, emotionally engaged, and also personally vulnerable at the same time. You know, with no hats.

I mean, just the hat for decoration, but no hats, like no, no thing. And then KiwiBurn, like seeing a production, like the production side and the community side of someone that has been going through such a long history where not everything needs to be explained. It's not that only what can be explained is real, but what is happening is real.

And then, and then it's up to you to kind of like, figure it out. Like, why things are in the way they are, because that's what is going to bring you to how things can become possible. And so the fact that there is this very open and generous form of exchange is great.

And I think that if we share this audio to our dragon burners, that would be like a Pandora box of things that may come out. So this is just like, it's really so good. So good.

Thank you.

[Stevan] (3:29:21 - 3:29:25)

And also thank you for reminding us that it's just fucking camping.

[Koi] (3:29:25 - 3:29:39)

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, that's like, sorry, but we still have the best patch. We need a patch, but the best patch, like something like that.

You have to figure it out something, you know, like this is still, this is fucking camping.

[Stevan] (3:29:40 - 3:29:42)

It's replaced. Fuck your burn. It's just fucking camping now.

[Koi] (3:29:43 - 3:29:48)

It's so much better. I'm sorry, but it's so much better. Fucking camping.

[Stevan] (3:29:49 - 3:29:55)

Awesome. Thank you very much Sassy Panda and Koi for having a chat and giving us some insights.

[Sassy Panda] (3:29:56 - 3:29:58)

Thank you for having us.

[Koi] (3:29:59 - 3:30:03)

Thank you for your time and thank you for your late hours. Absolutely amazing.

[Stevan] (3:30:04 - 3:30:06)

And hopefully to see you on a paddock somewhere soon.

[Koi] (3:30:08 - 3:30:09)

Yeah, we'll make it happen.

[Stevan] (3:30:11 - 3:30:14)

Come down under to Underland or something.

[Koi] (3:30:17 - 3:30:20)

We'll see each other very soon.

[Stevan] (3:30:20 - 3:30:21)

Yes. Thank you.

[Koi] (3:30:22 - 3:30:22)

Thank you.

[Sassy Panda] (3:30:23 - 3:30:23)

Thank you.

Transcripts transcribed by TurboScribe.ai