Beijing Happy Valley theme park lights up the night

As dusk sets in and the lights illuminate, Beijing Happy Valley theme park transforms to a wonderland, where visitors can find themselves witnessing a phantasmagoria of landscapes and creatures, or walking into a thrilling 20th-century street chase scene.

In celebration of its 15th anniversary, the Beijing Happy Valley theme park opened to the public on May 1, its sixth project that centers on enriching tourists' nighttime experiences.

Technological methods, including LED lights, multimedia, and interactive projections, are widely adopted throughout the park to enhance and transmogrify the real-world environment, so that the park will provide a completely different scene and experience at nightfall.

The upgrade also features eight shows of diverse themes and styles that take place in the park on a daily basis, including a stage performance on the theme of the Sanxingdui archaeological site, an immersive acrobatic play set in early last century, an iridescent light projection show and a daily parade comprising 17 floats and more than 100 performers.

Zhao Xiaobing, general manager of Beijing Happy Valley, introduced the theme park's continued construction aims to keep the sense of fun and provide enjoyable visiting experiences for the tourists with constantly updated products and improved customer service.

"Rome was not built in a day. Beijing Happy Valley has been established for 15 years. Our strategy is a step-by-step one, that it should first be an amusement park loved by Beijing residents, then it should appeal to people from around the country, and finally aim for globalization," Zhao says.

"We decided in 2003 that every three years, we must provide our visitors with something new, hence the latest sixth construction project."

This year, the theme park features a focus on Chinese cultural elements, both historical and modern. Apart from the Sanxingdui stage performance, a National Fashion Cultural Festival is now taking place at the park from April 3 to June 20, encouraging young people to visit the park donning traditional Chinese clothing and celebrate their Chinese cultural identity.

"Now our young people are becoming more and more confident in our own culture. Instead of the exotic, they now want Chinese style. So we are drawing inspirations from traditional culture, such as Chinese mythology and the latest archaeological findings," Zhao says.

According to statistics provided by the park, in the past 15 years it has received nearly 50 million tourists. In the 2019 TEA/AECOM Global Attractions Attendance Report, Beijing Happy Valley is included as one of the top 25 amusement and theme parks worldwide.

As the sixth project has been completed, the theme park has launched its seventh session of construction on the provisional theme of Classic of Mountains and Seas.

Weibo user, Cui Xiaoshou, describes herself as an unwavering fan of Beijing Happy Valley and has kept a journal of her hitherto 210 visits to the theme park.

In the visit on May 13, which was her first visit after the sixth project was opened to public, she says that it felt like her first time ever visiting the park: "There are too many performances I'd like to see, and too many locations I'd like to visit. I cannot take enough photos of the gloriously colorful lights."

Concerning the performances she has seen, she says: "The plot is coherent, the performance is realistic, and it also has a lot of interaction with the audience, added with magic and acrobatic performances. It's really very wonderful. I can't help but applaud and cheer."

The new construction of the amusement park responds to Beijing's goal to promote the night economy and boost consumption. In July, 2019, Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau released an announcement, stating the goal to construct a number of landmarks, business districts and lifestyle zones which meet consumer demand at nighttime by the end of 2021.

The premiere of the park's sixth project on April 28 also marked the beginning of the "night capital" consumption season hosted by Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau, with a series of events including markets, music performances and food festivals to be hosted throughout Beijing this summer.

The park has also joined seven other companies in establishing Beijing's Nighttime Economy Promotion Alliance, aiming to bring together representative companies from Beijing's different business districts, establish a platform that facilitates their communication, provide diverse nighttime activities for Beijing citizens and promote the development of night economy.

chengyuezhu@chinadaily.com.cn