XUAN'EN RIVERSIDE NIGHT SCENE
Xuan'en · riverside music and light show
How a county town was reborn through light
XUAN'EN RIVERSIDE NIGHT SCENE
How a county town was reborn through light
In 2020 Xuan'en had just been lifted out of poverty. Tucked into the mountains on Hubei's south-western border, with no famous peak to lean on and no core IP behind it, the county received 2.75 million visitors and earned ¥1.184 billion in total tourism revenue.
The Gongshui River runs through the town, 墨达楼 stands on its bank and 兴隆老街 lies quietly alongside. Xuan'en is not short of assets — it was short of a way to be seen. By day it could hold you; after dark it gave you no reason to stay.
Going on site, we diagnosed six core problems: badly ageing fixtures; wiring that posed safety risks; lighting styles each going their own way; heavy overlap with neighbouring scenic areas; no sense of detail or layering; and cultural meaning barely expressed.
Every figure carries a public source and can be traced and verified.
| Stage | Year | In one line | Key data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taming the river | from 1988 | Turning an "unpredictable river" into "controllable water" | Channel widened to 69 m, four tiers of automatic flap gates, water level fully regulated |
| Cleaning the water | from 2008 | Water has to look right — and smell right | First underground utility tunnel in the prefecture; water quality stable at Grade II |
| Building the scenery | from 2016 | Building the county town as if it were a scenic area | Planned by Zhejiang University; 4A status in 2021 — the province's only county-level 4A |
| Reviving the town | from 2022 | Night tourism turns passing traffic into staying visitors | 龙游贡水 earns over ¥40m a year; visitors past ten million |
| Hosting events | 2026 | From "internet-famous" to "able to carry big occasions" | Water-borne opening ceremony for the provincial ethnic games; riverside lighting specially arranged |
The city came first, the scenic area second. Get the river right; then run the whole county town as a scenic area — no walls, shared by residents and visitors alike.
Turn the whole core of the county town into an open-air night-tourism stage — the river as axis, the buildings as backdrop, the streets as setting, and people as part of the scene. A window, a lane, every resident and every visitor is part of this theatre.
The riverside music and light show is made up of several pieces:
Digital twin · City-wide point control · Multi-protocol integration
EXTENDED PROJECTS
Pedalling charges the light: the lighting works as a progress indicator, stepping up with every push. Fill the bar and it instantly triggers the large-scale 墨达楼 facade show — the rider becomes part of the installation
Publicly tendered project: 《浪漫卡路里》interactive bike light show
Content creation for the interactive installation
Designed the interaction and content linkage behind the pedalling progress indicator and the "full charge triggers the 墨达楼 facade show" mechanic
Part of the Xuan'en project (2021–2026)
Beside the north-bank fountain and 西贡小筑 guesthouse
A walkable, step-responsive grid of light laid into the paving, linked with the city living room's digital water screen, the interactive bikes and the building lighting to form a cluster of "playable, felt, shareable" installations
Publicly tendered project: Xuan'en City Lounge Plaza landscape and digital-interaction upgrade
Design and delivery of the interactive lighting content
Content design and synchronisation for the 寨遇 Square ground light show, forming a clustered experience with the digital water screen, the bikes and the building lighting
Part of the Xuan'en project (2021–2026)
A forged copper sculpture modelled on Tujia, Miao and Dong stilt houses (9.5 × 5.5 × 8.6 m), with an interactive light and water show and a water screen — visitors can scan a code to send a confession or walk through a digital curtain of water
Content for the interactive light and water show
Content design and delivery for the interactive light and water show and the water-screen system, including code-scan confessions and walking through the digital water curtain
Part of the Xuan'en project (2021–2026)
Drawn from the Book of Songs (《诗经·小雅·鹿鸣》), where deer call and graze while host and guest delight in each other's company: the five courtyards take the themes "鼓瑟", "周行", "德音", "旨酒" and "鼓琴", using the culture of shared feasting to express both the hotel's welcome to honoured guests and the government's "build the nest to attract the phoenix" policy
Landscape design and night lighting
Gold Award, 13th Yeyebei (Garden冶) Awards
2019–2021 Lead designers: LI Baofeng, YU Zhiguang
Forty-five days, from drawings to switch-on. Xuan'en was an early flagship project, covering landscape improvements and the dragon-form corridor among other works; the actual cycle was 45 days.
Where CIFANG came in:
Sources: published Xuan'en County government data, CRI Online 2025.8, Hubei Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism 2026.3 and others.
We may hold the pen, but the story has always belonged to this land.
Everything that shines grew out of Xuan'en itself: the resolve and foresight of the county party committee and county government, willing to treat the entire core of the county town as a canvas; the leadership teams at 城发集团 and elsewhere, coordinating day and night to guarantee high-quality delivery across the whole chain; and the close cooperation of every participating unit and artist, positioning a precise lighting system within an extremely short build window.
And so the city has become a place that tells stories again — a place people step out of their homes to gather in.
Testimonials
Public comments from local government, the client, experts, and residents and businesses at the project site.
A stage for private businesses and individual entrepreneurs to perform on. Business clustering has risen to 85%… and the cultural-tourism heat on both banks of the Gongshui keeps building.
Building industry along the way, holding to long-termism in the "city and scenic area as one" direction; generating income along the way, putting operations first in the "city-tourism integration" idea; enriching residents along the way, keeping faith with the original purpose of serving the people through "shared by hosts and guests".
Xuan'en County has shown broad thinking, strong measures and outstanding results in all-area tourism planning, developing distinctive industries and managing urban construction, offering Badong valuable experience we can learn from and apply.
The design case makes full use of the site's history and culture, drawing design elements from literary works to reawaken people's memory of the area's history and culture. The theme is clear and highly targeted, the scheme is clearly expressed and complete in process, it incorporates technological elements, and it attaches real importance to using the site's ecology — the design suits its place and carries a strong sense of regional culture.
Occupancy is close to 100% on public holidays, and still above 60% on an ordinary weekend.
Since 墨达楼 was built and 龙游贡水 started operating, business has improved a great deal for us.
I used to dream about poetry and faraway places. Now the poetry and the faraway place are on my doorstep.
The most important thing is that the children are looked after. I grew up as a left-behind child, and I did not want my children to be left behind too.
After thorough site visits and discussion we decided to bring in laser projection, drones and other modern light technologies… creating a new line-up of night-time attractions: large-scale projection, drone displays, laser shows, fireworks and 龙游贡水.
Practice proves that intangible cultural heritage is not a dusty antique but a golden key to tourism development and rural revitalisation.
Xuan'en County has achieved notable results in weaving intangible heritage into cultural-tourism settings, embedding industry development in rural tourism, and aligning urban construction with city-tourism integration, creating a distinctive cultural-tourism brand whose experience is worth Wufeng learning from.