Yangtze River Cultural and Arts Season kicks off
2025-09-13 18:09:45
By Yi Shuya
The 2025 Yangtze River Cultural and Arts Season opened on September 12 at the Sanyang Square along the Hankou River Beach in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. The seven-week long festival will conclude on October 30 in Yichang.
The grand opening ceremony performance used the Yangtze River as its stage and the sky as its screen, featuring folk songs, chime-bell symphonies, dance dramas, and famous foreign songs about rivers.
A grand light show accompanied by drones and fireworks created a cultural spectacle spanning across the riverside, river surface, and skyline.
The 2025 Yangtze River Cultural and Arts Season opened on September 12 at the Sanyang Square along the Hankou River Beach in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. The seven-week long festival will conclude on October 30 in Yichang.
The grand opening ceremony performance used the Yangtze River as its stage and the sky as its screen, featuring folk songs, chime-bell symphonies, dance dramas, and famous foreign songs about rivers.
A grand light show accompanied by drones and fireworks created a cultural spectacle spanning across the riverside, river surface, and skyline.
The opening ceremony of the 2025 Yangtze River Cultural and Art Season
During the opening ceremony, a performer portraying the ancient poet Qu Yuan emerged from a blue “tunnel of time” to recite his verses from the Songs of Chu. Qu Yuan is a celebrated poet and statesman of the State of Chu (c. 1030 BC – 223 BC), born in 340 BC in present day Yichang.
Above the stage, fireworks, 4,000 drones and a light show transformed the poetry’s imagery into a spectacular scroll against the backdrop of the night sky. Celebrating the enduring spirit of the Yangtze, the performance weaved the grandeur of history with the vitality of modern China.
Dancers perform "Chu Ci - Chapter Nine: Crossing the River" at the opening ceremony. Photo by Xue Ting, Zhang Hong, Ni Na.
Experts noted that the Yangtze River culture is a testament to more than 5,000 years of agrarian civilization and the legacy of the ancient State of Chu. Cities like Yichang and the broader Hubei region act as the vital guardians of this legacy.
The season is a tapestry of a variety of programs, including innovative artistic events, cultural exchanges, and tourism promotions along the Yangtze River. As a grand finale of the season, the closing ceremony will be held on October 30 and integrated with the China Central TV Station Movie Channel’s M-Chart Award Ceremony.
Special events include M-Chart fan meetings, big data movie panel discussions, and the “Three Gorges Film Journey: Movie Channel Explores the City” livestream session. The organizing committee will also distribute complimentary tickets to the public through online platforms.
Beyond the festival, Hubei Province will further promote its attraction as a tourism destination across the world through the “Zhiyin Hubei Global Partners” initiative, aiming to develop 1,000 partners in 100 cities worldwide within three years. This program will build an international professional network for promoting Hubei’s “High Mountains and Flowing Water” cultural resources and tourism destinations, enhancing its global visibility and appeal.
In this new era, the Yangtze River will embrace a more open posture, engaging in dialogue and integration with global civilizations. In the process of building a shared future for humanity, the Yangtze will journey alongside the world’s great rivers toward a promising future.
Jointly guided by China’s central cultural authorities and hosted by the Hubei Provincial People’s Government, the Changjiang Water Resources Commission and China Three Gorges Corporation, the Yangtze River Cultural and Arts Season serves as a platform to showcase the Yangtze River culture, tell its stories to the world, and strengthen Hubei’s role as a cultural hub along the Yangtze Economic Belt.
