By Dongyan Chen, Editor
Chongqing- Wharf boats are docking on the rippling and blue Yangtze River, back against White Emperor City and Qutang Gorge, and looking up to the towering peaks of the Three Gorges, thus giving birth to the magnificent landscape. This is a scene of the Return to the Three Gorges, a live show directed by world-famous director Zhang Yimou, that has kicked off recently in Fengjie County, Chongqing.
It is Chongqing’s first large-scale live poetry and landscape show directed by Zhang Yimou, a well-known director. After over one year of preparation, the construction personnel has completed the pontoon’s main body and mounted machines of the performance stage, while the stage design and machines are still being debugged.
the construction site of the live show Back to The Three Gorges.
A Combination of Poetry and Landscape
Situated in the center of the Three Gorges Reservoir Region, Fengjie County boasts world-class scenic areas, including White Emperor City, Qutang Gorge, Kuimen Gate, and Xiaozhai Tiankeng. It also enjoys more than 2,300 years of historic culture. 742 poets have remained 4,464 poems here, earning it the “City of Poems” in China.
With huge sums of investment, the Back to the Three Gorges is an independently innovative project involved in the maximum volume and the most complicated technologies in inland rivers worldwide. The audience pontoon, with a total length of 111.6 meters and a width of 32 meters, can accommodate 1,738 viewers. The performance pontoon is 160.8 meters long and 54 meters wide.
This about one-hour show covers 10 poems from renowned poets, including Li Bai, Du Fu, Liu Yuxi and Su Shi. Their creation background and poetry mood are presented visually to the viewers, who can appreciate the magnificent natural landscape of the Three Gorges, the unique customs of Sichuan and Chongqing, as well as the profound cultural deposits of Fengjie County.
To Build a Famous Cultural Tourism City
The beautiful landscape of the Three Gorges.
The Return to the Three Gorges is a cultural and tourism project aiming to explore Fengjie County’s historic culture and tourism. The brand-building will play a crucial role in promoting the tourism of Fengjie County.
Baidicheng or Baidi City is an ancient temple complex on a hill on the northern shore of the Yangtze River in China, 8 km east of the present-day Fengjie County seat in Chongqing municipality.
Fengjie County has been striving to protect and take advantage of “ecological environment” and “cultural characteristics” over these years, so as to establish a famous cultural tourism city. It plans to facilitate its development through cultural tourism, to achieve the following annual goals: 1.15 million visitors with tickets, 950,000 overnight visitors, tourism revenue of RMB 7.6 billion, as well as an increase of over 30% in both the number of overnight visitors and the comprehensive tourism revenue.