Jumping into East Lake,
and the beer named after it

This is the one thing in Wuhan that visitors consistently hear about and consistently fail to see, because it happens on a handful of days in the hottest part of the year and almost nothing about it is announced in English. Here is what it is, what it costs, and whether it is worth arranging a trip around.

What it actually is

Not a sport, not a competition, and not a swimming event. There is no start line and no winner. A bank on the shore of East Lake gets a temporary ramp and a sound system; a few hundred people queue up; and one after another they launch themselves into the water — off the ramp if they have a bike or a skateboard, off the edge if they do not. Costumes are normal. So is a can of beer in one hand.

The crowd is the point. Several thousand people stand on the shore watching other people fall into a lake, and then a band plays. If that sounds like an anticlimax written down, that is because it is: the event does not survive description. It survives being there in 35 °C heat with a cold drink.

How a rainstorm turned into a city ritual

In the summer of 2010 a group of BMX riders were practising on the flat above Wuhan University when it started raining hard. Riding home past Lingbo Gate — a set of concrete diving-platform steps on the lake shore — they pushed their bikes up onto the platform and jumped in. The drop gave them airtime they could not get on flat ground, and the water made landing survivable. They came back days later with a purpose-built ramp.

That year the artist Li Juchuan (李巨川) had started a project called Everyone’s East Lake (每个人的东湖), a response to reclamation and development pressure on the lake. One of the riders brought the jumping into it, and the event was recorded as a piece of performance art carried out by sporting means. The slogan that came out of those years is still quoted: “we don’t need Happy Valley to have fun” — a reference to the commercial theme park.

So the origin is a protest, and the trajectory is not a straight line. Which brings us to the ticket.

The year it started charging

For fifteen years the event was free and loosely organised. It is now organised properly: permits, a surveyed water area, rescue swimmers, a fenced site, a market, sponsors — and, from 2026, a ticket. The 2026 edition ran 4–6 September rather than its usual first weekend of August, because part of the site was under repair. Single-day admission was ≈$5.24¥35 — Reported by secondary sources; verify on site., with a three-day early bird at ≈$13.16¥88 — Reported by secondary sources; verify on site.. Tickets were sold through the brewery’s WeChat mini-program and its Xiaohongshu and Douyin accounts, then swapped at one of two gates for a wristband — which was the only thing that got you back in after you left.

Here is the fact that matters more than the price. Jumping is capped at 400 slots. They were released on 19 August and were gone in one minute twenty seconds. Buying a ticket in September bought you the music, the market and a place on the bank; it did not buy you a place on the ramp. The jumping itself ran on 5–6 September only, off two platforms built for the first time this year — 0.7 m for beginners, 1.5 m for everyone else. Zhang Jiaqi, a Tokyo Olympics diving champion, turned up on the opening afternoon and went off the high one several times.

The organiser’s case, as given to local press: 2025 drew close to 50,000 people, the crowd needed managing rather than celebrating, and the revenue went into security, staging and programming. That is the organiser’s account and we are not going to audit it. The criticism, as published: an event that began as a protest against the commercial development of East Lake had itself become a ticketed product. We are not adopting that one either. What is on the record, and is worth knowing because it explains the ticketing channel, is that in the last week of August the brewery announced full refunds for everyone who had bought through it, after buyers pointed out that a beer-sales company may not hold the licence to sell tickets to a public event. The event went ahead anyway, at the same price, under the same wristband rule.

What all of that means if you are visiting is narrower than the argument suggests. A free, unannounced, word-of-mouth event was hard to find out about; a ticketed one is easy to find and still hard to get into the water at. The ticket solved the first problem and not the second.

One caution on the year. The Wuhan municipal government and CCTV both date the first jump to 2010. A 2025 Hubei Daily report, quoting the co-organiser’s marketing director, says 2011. We print the range rather than pick a side.

The beer with the same name

“Tiao Dong Who” (跳东湖 IPA) is brewed by No.18 Brewing (拾捌精酿), the production arm of a Wuhan beer bar called 18号酒馆 that started brewing in 2013 and bottled this beer in November 2016. It is a west-coast-leaning American IPA — 6.2% ABV, around 60 IBU on the brewery’s own published figure — bitter, citrus-forward, and named in obvious tribute to the event. It won gold at the Brussels Beer Challenge in 2024.

The brewery’s other Wuhan-specific beers tell you more about the city than the IPA does: Guozao (过早) is a breakfast stout named after the morning meal, and Nine-Head Phoenix (九头鸟) takes the city’s least flattering nickname and puts it on a label.

Two things to keep straight. The beer is named after the event; it is not the event’s official drink, and we have found no evidence that it ever was. And the event is not a beer festival that happens to have jumping — the jumping came first, by six years.

The beer scene around it

Wuhan’s craft beer scene began around 2012 and by 2025 had more than sixty bars that the trade itself counts as serious — roughly twenty of them in Hankou, with clusters in Optics Valley and around Jiedaokou. That is a five-fold increase on the 2020 count. The event is where a lot of people first meet the local breweries; the bars are where you actually drink.

If you want to go

• When: summer — recent editions have landed in the first week of August, and 2026 slipped to 4–6 September because part of the site was under repair. It is not a fixed date in the calendar and it is not announced far ahead. Do not plan a trip around it; check whether it happens to fall inside one.
• Ticket and slot are two different things: admission is a ticket, but getting wet needs one of a few hundred jumping slots, released separately in mid-August, gone in under two minutes. If you want to jump rather than watch, the slot release is the date to watch — not the ticket sale.
• Where: the Chucheng (楚城) shore inside East Lake Scenic Area, at the foot of Moshan. Since 2018 the event has been held here rather than at Lingbo Gate, because Lingbo Gate cannot hold the crowd.
• Getting there: metro Line 8 to Liyuan (梨园) then a taxi, or straight taxi. It is inside a scenic area with gates, so a taxi will not drop you at the water — allow walking time and expect the roads around Moshan to be slow on the day.
• What to bring: a change of clothes if you intend to jump, sun protection, and a charged phone — the ticket is an order code you swap for a wristband at the gate, and the wristband is the only way back in if you step out. There is little shade and the queue for the ramp is long.

Why it belongs on this site at all

Because it explains something the sights do not. Wuhan is a city where the river and the lakes are treated as public property that belongs to whoever is willing to get wet — the Yangtze swim on 16 July is the same instinct on a bigger scale, and the ferry crossing at $0.22¥1.5 — Official / verified figure. exists for the same reason. An event where several thousand people watch each other jump into a lake for no reason is not a tourist attraction. It is a fairly accurate portrait of the local temperament.

If you want the water story rather than the party, read East Lake for the lake itself, the Yangtze swim for the July crossing, and the ferry for the cheapest hour on the water.