Guangzhou Cultural Park is located by the Pearl River. It is a park named after culture. The predecessor of the Cultural Park was the South China Native Products Exhibition and Exchange Conference in 1951. Later it was called Lingnan Cultural Relics Palace. In 1956, it was renamed Guangzhou Cultural Park. At present, the park is a special park with cultural and artistic exhibitions and performances as the main content and has a profound Lingnan cultural tradition and a good ecological environment. For more than fifty years, various exhibitions in the park have been continuous. Performances on the central stage are held day and night. The three traditional events of the Spring Festival Flower Fair, Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival, and Yangcheng Chrysanthemum Fair have been renowned for decades. There are also a variety of entertainment activities such as storytelling, chess, lantern riddles, songfests, and folk art forms, which are very popular among tourists. The park’s exhibition facilities are complete. There are currently many exhibition halls such as the Exhibition Center, Nine Halls, Seven Halls, Four Halls, and Yilu. Two permanent halls, the Aquarium and the Wan Zhaoquan Sculpture Hall, and a comprehensive mass cultural activity base, the Chess Art Hall, have also been opened. The park often exhibits exhibitions on culture, economy, politics, and international exchanges in various ways such as self-organizing, co-organizing, and joint organizing. There are countless exhibitions held over the decades. Ten major cultural brand activities: 1. Colorful Spring Festival – ‘Spring Festival Flower Fair’ started in the lunar New Year of 1957. By carefully planning the theme, innovatively designing the scenic groups, and properly arranging cultural activities, the Cultural Park is turned into a sea of flowers that is full of prosperity, joy, and peace. Among them, the ‘Lantern Festival Lantern Show’ is the grand finale of the ‘Spring Festival Flower Fair’ and brings the festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival to a climax. Now, the ‘Spring Festival Flower Fair’ has become an extension of the New Year’s Eve flower market and is a good place for Guangzhou citizens to celebrate the Spring Festival, enjoy the spring scenery, and feel the traditional New Year atmosphere.
2. Mid-Autumn Lantern Shadows – The ‘Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival’ started in 1956 and is held during the Mid-Autumn Festival every year. It is deeply loved by citizens. It was once talked about as ‘a thousand lanterns and millions of audiences’. The lanterns in the Cultural Park are brightly colored and exquisitely crafted. They combine the lantern-making techniques of Sichuan and Foshan, and have all the elements of shape, color, light, sound, and movement. Today, watching lanterns and enjoying the moon in the Cultural Park during the Mid-Autumn Festival has become a pleasant activity for Guangzhou citizens. 3. Charm of Yangcheng Chrysanthemums – The ‘Yangcheng Chrysanthemum Fair’ started in 1953 and is held in mid-November every year. It is a large-scale chrysanthemum exhibition that has been continuously held in Guangzhou. The Yangcheng Chrysanthemum Fair aims to carry forward the long and profound chrysanthemum culture tradition of Lingnan and inherit the chrysanthemum cultivation techniques. It has been deeply loved by Guangzhou citizens for many years. 4. Wuyang Chess Studio – The ‘Wuyang Cup’ national chess competition started in 1980. It is a domestic folk chess event. The participants are all domestic masters and represent the high level of Chinese chess. Around New Year’s Day every year, the ‘Wuyang Cup’ meets chess fans as promised. A large chessboard is hung on the central stage to announce the moves. There are huge crowds of spectators under the stage watching and discussing, which has become a major landscape of the Cultural Park and a characteristic of Lingnan chess culture.5. The Guangzhou Youth Calligraphy and Painting Competition, initiated in 2004, is held annually to preserve and promote traditional Chinese art forms and to cultivate and select new talents. The competition gathers many young calligraphy and painting elites from the city, showcasing the strong potential for development in Guangdong’s calligraphy and painting industry.
6. The ‘Yangcheng Ancient Stage’ in the Cultural Park was a popular platform for storytelling during the peak of Guangzhou’s storytelling culture in the 1950s and 1960s. In recent years, the Cultural Park has revived the storytelling tradition and invited renowned storyteller Yan Zhitu to perform every Saturday afternoon in the Chess Art Museum. 7. The ‘Mass Cultural Activity Square’ is a cultural performance venue meticulously created by the park for the general public. It is centered around the central stage and square, and provides professional supporting facilities. This innovative model has collaborated with numerous folk performance groups, social enterprises, and media, expanding the service functions of the central stage and winning the third prize of the ‘Municipal Garden Bureau Service Innovation Award’ for 2006. 8. The ‘Yi Lu Ink Fragrance’, originally known as ‘Guangzhou Gallery’, is dedicated to promoting Lingnan culture and establishing a base for calligraphy and painting art exchanges. It attracts well-known figures from the domestic and international calligraphy and painting art circles to meet and exchange regularly through exhibitions of famous artists’ works and interactive calligraphy sessions, exploring the artistic heritage of music, chess, calligraphy, and painting from the park’s history of over fifty years. 9. The ‘Chess Art Pavilion’ is a comprehensive performance venue that, in addition to traditional chess competitions, hosts various forms of mass cultural activities such as quyi (traditional Chinese performing arts), light songs, lantern riddles, storytelling, mass singing gatherings, and cultural art lectures, providing a platform for quyi enthusiasts and chess lovers to communicate and improve. 10. The ‘Aquatic Pavilion’, located to the east of the park’s central square and originally built in June 1951, is one of the first aquatic pavilions built in China after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The exhibition hall displays a variety of marine and freshwater flora and fauna specimens, images, and models, serving as an important window into the overview and development changes of Guangdong’s marine and fishery production. Opening hours are from 07:00 to 21:30 all year round. For monthly park event schedules, please visit: http://www.gzwhgy.com/Notice.asp
