Xiamen Garden Expo Park 厦门园林博览苑

About Xiamen Garden Expo Park

Xiamen Garden Expo Park (厦门园林博览苑) is a park of islands, channels and bridges in Xinglin Bay (杏林湾), Xinglin Subdistrict (杏林街道), Jimei District (集美区), Xiamen (厦门), built as the venue of the sixth China (Xiamen) International Garden and Flower Expo, held in 2007.

The expo was jointly hosted by the national Ministry of Construction and the Xiamen municipal government, and the park opened on 23 September 2007. Rather than taking farmland, planners chose Zhongzhou Island (中洲岛) and built up land on a large mudflat by hydraulic fill, and the project also dealt with Xinglin Bay, then one of Xiamen's three foul-smelling bays. Channels cut during construction reshaped Zhongzhou and nearby islets into nine islands, and the park also takes in parts of the bay's west and north shores. The park covers 10.82 square kilometres, of which 5.55 are land and 5.27 water.

Since the park was built, more than ten thousand cormorants have arrived from Qinghai Lake (青海湖) each November to spend the winter on Xinglin Bay; they used to winter at Kinmen (金门). The purple swamphen, absent from Xiamen records for 144 years, was recorded again in the park in 2014. The park is listed as a national key park, a national 4A tourist attraction, a national urban wetland park and an important wetland of Fujian province.

The Xinglin Pavilion (杏林阁) and the bridges are the park's main viewpoints. At the entrance, Yunzhen Bridge (蕴珍桥) is a cable-stayed crossing with separate car and footbridge decks at different heights; from the higher footway visitors look over the gardens, and a large harp sculpture stands at its centre. The Moonlight Ring (月光环), a steel structure that came through Typhoon Meranti (莫兰蒂), uses adjustable LED lighting to evoke 'a bright moon rising over the sea' (海上生明月).

Jimei is the home town of the overseas Chinese leader Tan Kah Kee (陈嘉庚), who hoped to make Xinglin Bay a West Lake of the south, and the planners added a Chinese Education Park (中华教育园) with its gate facing the Moonlight Ring at the end of Yuanbo Avenue (园博大道). Its Sages Square has statues of 22 ancient and modern educators, including Tan Kah Kee. The education park also has pictograph sculptures, 19 sculpture groups of classic idiom stories such as Cao Chong weighing the elephant, miniatures of landmark university buildings and the gates of well-known universities.

What to look for

• Yunzhen Bridge (蕴珍桥), the cable-stayed entrance bridge with a raised footway and a harp sculpture
• The Moonlight Ring (月光环), a steel ring lit by LEDs at the end of Yuanbo Avenue
• Xinglin Pavilion (杏林阁), one of the park's main viewpoints
• Sages Square in the Chinese Education Park, with statues of 22 educators including Tan Kah Kee
• Wintering cormorants on Xinglin Bay from November
• The idiom-story sculptures and miniature university buildings in the Chinese Education Park

Location & getting there

Getting to Xiamen Garden Expo Park

• Search for 厦门园林博览苑 with 厦门市 and 集美区.