Millennium City Park

Millennium City Park is a large-scale recreation of the city depicted in the Song-dynasty masterpiece "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" — a scroll painting that has been called the Chinese Mona Lisa for its cultural ubiquity. The park is unapologetically theatrical: costumed performers play merchants, fortune tellers, acrobats, and court officials; reproduction Song-dynasty streets and buildings line artificial canals; boat rides and mock ceremonies fill the schedule. It would be easy to dismiss as kitsch, and in some respects it is, but the ambition of the recreation is genuinely impressive and gives visitors without a scholarly background in the period a visceral sense of what a medieval Chinese capital felt like at its height.

The evening shows are the highlight — light projections on the lake surface recreate scenes from the original painting, and the water shows incorporate the architectural silhouettes of the park's Song-style buildings. Entry (¥120 or more for evening performances) includes access to the main areas; some performances require separate booking. Allow three to four hours for a thorough visit. The park is best visited on weekdays when the crowds are thinner.

things to do sight
A story
The park is based on "Along the River During the Qingming Festival," a five-metre-long Song painting that depicts a single day in Kaifeng around 1100 CE — the world's largest city at the time. Scholars have spent centuries cataloguing every boat, stall, and figure in the scroll; the painting has been recreated as a digital animation that plays in a darkened room in the park. Watching the painted city come to life, with its 800-odd figures moving and speaking, gives a peculiar sensation of history becoming present.

Other places in Things to Do