Millennium City Park (Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden)

Millennium City Park (Qingming Shanghe Yuan) is an immersive historical theme park in Kaifeng that brings to life Zhang Zeduan's celebrated Song-dynasty scroll painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival. Where the original artwork depicts the bustling streets, waterways, and daily commerce of the Northern Song capital Bianliang (modern-day Kaifeng), the park rebuilds that very city as a living, walkable streetscape. Visitors step through the gates into a reconstructed Song metropolis, with enough architectural detail and street theatre to feel as though they have wandered into eleventh-century China.

The park is organised into three main zones: the welcoming Yingbin Square, the Northern Garden, and the Southern Garden. Together they retrace the social rhythms of a Song capital, from craftsman workshops and tea houses to archery grounds and opera stages. Costumed performers, musicians, and acrobats move through the lanes, recreating the folk entertainments that once made Bianliang one of the most vibrant cities of the medieval world. The layout rewards slow exploration, since every alley seems to hide a new artisan demonstration or a small stage hosting a short performance.

As one of Kaifeng's signature attractions, the park is also the permanent venue for the large-scale open-air evening show "Great Song Tokyo Dream", which transforms the central lake into a stage for hundreds of performers. Daytime visits focus on the architecture, artisan demonstrations, and family-friendly activities, while the night show offers a more theatrical retelling of the Song dynasty's golden age. Travellers planning to see both should allow a full day, with a break for Kaifeng's celebrated local cuisine.

What makes Millennium City Park distinctive among Chinese theme parks is its fidelity to a single, well-documented source. Rather than an abstract "ancient China" pastiche, every street, bridge, and boat is grounded in a specific painted record. For international visitors unfamiliar with the original scroll, the park functions as an accessible three-dimensional introduction to Song urban life, one of the most prosperous and culturally refined periods in Chinese history, and a key reason Kaifeng remains on the itinerary of travellers exploring Henan province.