Xinghai Square
Xinghai Square is in the southern beach scenic area of Dalian, located to the north of Xinghai Park and Xinghai Bay. It covers 1100,000 square meters, which is the largest city square in Asia. Xinghai Square was completed on June 30, 1997, and built to celebrate the return of Hong Kong.
To the north, five hundred meters away from Central Avenue of the square is the Exposition Center. To the south is the square of hundred-year city sculpting, five hundred meters away from the blue ocean. Red bricks are on the ground of the central avenue, with fresh green grass on both sides. There are lots of stone lamp poles that look like navigation lights, distributed every other 20 meters, which means China is oriented to the ocean and is internationally recognized.
The central part of Xinghai Square covers 45,000 square meters, it has the largest white marble pillar, whose DIA is 1.997 meters, for memorizing Hong Kong’s return time. There are nine dragons on the pedestal and column trunk of the marble pillars, which means all of the people from nine states (in ancient times, China was divided into nine states) of China are descendants of dragons. A 2.3-meter “Wangtianhou” sits on the top of a marble pillar, shining with golden light. Each of the five white marble columns around the marble pillar lifts a palace lamp, with shinning effulgence.
The design of the square center emulates the Heaven temple’s Circular Mound Altar in Beijing, which is made up of 999 Sichun cipolin, with giant yellow five-pointed stars on the periphery. These two colors——red and yellow symbolize the descendants of the Yan and Huang emperors ( “Yan and Huang” are two Chinese emperors in ancient times, who led Chinese people to beat the powerful north tribe and started opulent lives, around 5000 years ago. “Yan” in Chinese means red, and “Huang” has the same pronunciation as “yellow” so Chinese people always use red and yellow to stand for descendants of these two emperors ) Chinese Era (combination of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches), twenty-four solar terms and twelve Chinese zodiacs are carved on the cipolin. The DIA of the square’s inner circle is 199.9 meters, and the excircle’s DIA is 239.9 meters, which means Dalian will have her five hundredth birthday in 2399.
Xinghai Square is encircled by the giant musical fountain, also nine Tripod of a variety of shapes and forms around, each has a large Chinese character on it, written in “Wei” dynasty handwriting, all of the characters could make up one sentence—— “Long live the great unity of Chinese people ”. Walk to the south from the central part, you can see the “ancient status of the city”. The end of it is a giant book, facing the spacious ocean, which means Dalian starts a new page after hundreds of years. Correspondingly, the Xinghai Exhibition Center is to the north of the central square, which is a modern architecture combining expo, convention, transaction, finance, and entertainment.
How to Get There
The NO.23, 16, 406, 711, and 801 public buses all stop by Xinghai Exhibition Center, you could always choose to take the No. 202 Trambahn and get off at Xinghai Exhibition Center.
Opening Hours:
- Open time:05: 10－23: 00;
- Tour time: 20 minutes
- Bus: 22, 202