Martin Li
THE fifth Park Culture Festival will open Sunday at Shenzhen International Garden and Flower Expo Park, the festival s main venue, the urban management bureau said yesterday.
Covering 21 city and district parks, the annual festival will run for six days and feature a range of cultural activities to mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and promote the 26th Universiade, which is due to be held in Shenzhen in August next year.
During the festival, the main venue will treat visitors to a cultural performance each night, featuring concerts, talk shows and flower arrangement displays.
A seminar on park culture and information exchange will be held at the main venue on the opening day.
Sports activities will be the theme of Dashahe Park in Nanshan District, one of three parks to participate in the festival for the first time.
Residents will be invited to take part in tennis, basketball, shuttlecock and tug-of-war competitions. Dashahe Park used to be a landfill site but now boasts environmentally friendly features such as solar streetlamps and a water recycling system.
Other highlights during the festival include traditional Chinese art performances, flower exhibitions, lectures on gardening and open-air movie screenings.
Residents can log on to http://www.szparks.gov.cn for a detailed schedule of activities across the 21 parks.
The diversity of cultural activities during the festival is aimed at attracting more residents and tourists. It s also an effort to turn Shenzhen into a park city, said Tian Xuegen, director of the city s park management center, which was established in April and put 29 city parks under unified management.
However, most of the 21 parks are located within the old special zone, which comprised four of the city s six current districts.
There are few large parks in Longgang and Bao an districts. We have proposed that the government builds more parks next year, Tian said.
There were 653 parks in Shenzhen by April, covering an area of over 200 square kilometers, according to the bureau.
Last year s park culture festival attracted more than 2.9 million visitors and featured 770 performing troupes.
