Leadership Insights | Illustrated Lectures: Jiujiang: Riding the Tide of a Big River

All work to protect the Yangtze River must be undertaken from the perspective of a community of life featuring harmony between humanity and nature and the sustainable development of the Chinese nation.

Jiujiang is where the Yangtze River, the Beijing-Kowloon Railway and Poyang Lake converge. It has 152-kilometer shoreline of the Yangtze River, making it a major water transport hub in China since ancient times and an important node city in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. This time-honored city is famous not only for its unique geographical location, but also for its rich historical and cultural heritage. Numerous cultural celebrities have left footprints in Jiujiang throughout history. Tao Yuanming, a poet at the end of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), was a native of Jiujiang. Famous for An Account of the Peach Blossom Spring, he was a representative figure in the history of Chinese culture. During the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), Jiujiang gave birth to renowned writers and calligraphers such as Huang Tingjian.

In April 2022, the Jiujiang section of the Yangtze River National Cultural Park began construction. The park, with the Pipa Pavilion described in Bai Juyi’s poem “Pipa Song” as the focus, strings together ancient buildings such as the Suojiang Tower and the Xunyang Tower to create a public space integrating natural and cultural sights. Walking into the Pipa Pavilion amid melodic music, visitors can immerse themselves in the beauty of the pavilion the bank of the Xunyang River; Strolling along the river from the Pipa Pavilion, one can arrive at the Suojianglou Scenic Area to enjoy the blue sky and overlook the river atop the observation deck there; Tracing upstream, one can see the Xunyang Tower, where one can enjoy the magnificent beauty of the Yangtze River and the Lushan Mountain. The construction of the Jiujiang section of the park makes full use of the natural scenery on the shores of the Yangtze River and highlights the uniqueness of Jiujiang culture, creating the “most beautiful part along the shoreline of the Yangtze River”.

The Yangtze River flows endlessly, and Jiujiang is also glowing with new brilliance through continuous innovation. The combination of culture and tourism not only allows tourists to feel the weight of history, but also enables the city to retain the cultural roots in the development process and realize the organic integration of tourism with culture and ecology, so that cultural inheritance and urban development can form a benign interaction.