Peacock River and Korla Riverfront 孔雀河与库尔勒城市河岸

About Peacock River and Korla Riverfront

A first-person account carried by China Daily, credited to Shiliuyun (石榴云) and told by the Korla resident Li Hanchao, traces how the bank was remade. In the mid-1950s the bank was all earth embankments, the channel narrow and winding, and the only two bridges over the river were narrow wooden ones, Shizi Bridge and Kuihua Bridge. In the late 1970s Korla became a city and buildings went up along the north bank while the south bank stayed farmland; in 1989 the Tarim oil exploration and development headquarters moved onto the south bank and the city became an important petrochemical base.

The city tourism bureau's listing of Korla's A-grade scenic areas describes the Swan River scenic area (天鹅河景区), a national 4A-grade area since 2014, as divided into a Swan River section, a Peacock River section and a Hongyan River section. The bureau places it in the city's southern urban district and calls it an important water link between the Peacock River and the Cuckoo River, running from Lixiang Lake in the south to Shizi Bridge in the east, ten kilometres in all, over about 2,400 mu of land with 765 mu of water. Along the route the listing counts twenty bridges, ten islands and twelve wharves and names sculptures of Cen Shen, Ban Chao, the Korla pear and the Hetu Luoshu diagram among other features, with the Dream Music Fountain, which the bureau calls southern Xinjiang's largest, standing before Tianyuan Bridge.

The account records two later projects: in 2000 the city carried out a Peacock River tourism and leisure belt project, widening and straightening the channel and replacing the embankments with granite, and in 2011 a three-rivers link-up shantytown redevelopment joined the Peacock, Cuckoo and Egret rivers, expanding the city into three districts and leaving the Peacock bank no longer the whole city's central area. The catalogue name is an editorial one. No cited source treats the Korla riverbank as a single managed attraction, and the sections, bridges, wharves and fountain appear in the listing's entry for the Swan River scenic area, not in an entry for a riverside route.

What to look for

• The Peacock River section (孔雀河段) of the Swan River scenic area, one of the three sections the city's A-grade listing names
• Shizi Bridge (狮子桥) and Kuihua Bridge (葵花桥), the two bridges the account records over the river in the 1950s
• The sculptures the listing names along the route, among them Cen Shen, Ban Chao, the Korla pear and the Hetu Luoshu diagram
• The Dream Music Fountain before Tianyuan Bridge, which the city listing calls southern Xinjiang's largest
• The granite embankments and the widened, straightened channel the account dates to the city's 2000 tourism and leisure belt project

Location & getting there

Getting to Peacock River and Korla Riverfront

Choose a precise starting address and return transport stop. Access to individual buildings, performances or viewing platforms is separate from access to public streets.

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