Park festival offers cultural feast

Bougainvillea flowers are exhibited at Lianhua Hill Park at the 2018 Shenzhen Park Festival. Liu Xudong

The monthlong Shenzhen Park Festival will be inaugurated Nov. 8 with a series of cultural activities to be held at seven city-level parks and 22 district-level parks, the urban administration said yesterday.

“The festival will feature a range of folk activities like music, sports and recreation, while each park will have a different theme,” said Yang Lei, deputy director of the bureau, at a news conference yesterday.

Besides traditions like grassland concerts, street dances, musical plays for children and operas for the elderly, the organizer will hold a carnival of nature education and street artist performances.

The Shenzhen Bay Park grassland concert will be held for three straight days, Nov. 13 to 15, with performances by China National Traditional Orchestra, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra and Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. At Lianhua Hill Park, musical performances from different nations will be held Nov. 16 and 17.

“For the first time, the organizer will introduce street artist performances at Lianhua Hill Park on Nov. 23 and 24, where residents can enjoy performances on different types of musical instruments, as well as acrobatics and magic,” Yang said.

The children’s musical plays and traditional band programs will be held from Nov. 17 to 24 at the theater of Shenzhen International Garden and Flower Expo Park. The operas will be held in the main square of Donghu Park.

The carnival of nature education will be held Nov. 9 and 10 in Lianhua Hill Park. It will consist of parties, exhibitions, movies and lectures put together by 20 nature education institutions from Shenzhen and other Greater Bay Area cities.

Coinciding with the park festival, Lianhua Hill Park will initiate its 20-day-long bougainvillea flower exhibition. The annual exhibition has been presented for the last 21 years since its initiation in 1999. The exhibition area covers 200,000 square meters and the organizer will arrange 2,000 volunteers to guide visitors to appreciate the different species of flowers.

Tickets are free, but residents who want to attend the Shenzhen Bay Park concerts and the children’s musical plays need to get tickets online through the WeChat accounts, 深圳市公园管理中心” and “美丽深圳.”