On May 25th, Song Zuying, well-known as “the Queen of Chinese Folk Songs”, will hold her solo concert in Yichang. The news immediately draws insiders’ attentions. Early in 2011 and 2012, several large-scale concerts with over ten thousand attendants were held in Yichang, including the solo concerts of top notch, like Jacky Cheung and Jay Chou. Success of such commercial performances in a 2-class city like Yichang has greatly inspired the brokers of commercial performance.

Xue Meng, general manager of a cultural communications company in Yichang, is a contributor who has long pioneered in the market of commercial performance of Yichang. In April, 2011, he, who used to share the market of commercial performances in Chongqing, returned to Yichang and successfully hosted a large-scale and high-level performance concert. Though his first trial resulted in a loss for the low ticket sales, Xue in late 2011 organized a solo concert of Jacky Cheung in Yichang Stadium with 30 thousand fans, part of whom were from other cities, such as Shiyan, Jingzhou, Jingmen and so on, and in 2012 achieved greatly with a concert starring Jay Chou and Elva, “King and Queen” of present music concerts. On May 25th, Xue will introduce the concert of Song Zuying to Yichang.

Yichang is a surprising sample of the industry of commercial performance in the 2-call cities. Market of commercial performances is at present in a dilemma and most of the theatres are left unused in many other in the 2-class cities Hubei Province except for one or two cities such as Yichang, for misdistribution of the market shares among cities in Hubei Province. However, Yichang, equally rated as a 2-class city of Hubei Province, takes a lead as a growing exception in development of the commercial performance market with much potential.

Some professionals believe that the native audience still have their demand of culture consumption of high-quality commercial performance, though many commercial performances failed successively in the other 2-class cities of Hubei Province. Once some performance deliberately hosted fulfills their needs with high quality, their enthusiasm of cultural consumption ignored long will show enormously. This is the very reason why Yichang occupy the leading pack among the 2-class cities in Hubei Province in developing the market of commercial performances.