The 2025 Yangtze River Culture Festival drew to a close on Nov 20 in Zhangjiagang, a county-level city of Suzhou, Jiangsu province, marking the end of a month-long celebration that brought fresh energy, creativity, and international visibility to Yangtze River culture.
The 2025 Yangtze River Culture Festival concludes on Nov 20 in Zhangjiagang. [Photo/WeChat account: zhangjiagangfabu365]
The closing ceremony featured a special Zhangjiagang stop on the provincial tour of outstanding stage productions and public cultural performances. Top performers from across Jiangsu shared the stage, presenting a high-caliber program spanning traditional Chinese music, opera, dance, and more — offering local audiences a refined and diverse artistic feast.
Top performers from across Jiangsu perform at the closing ceremony of the 2025 Yangtze River Culture Festival. [Photo/WeChat account: zhangjiagangfabu365]
This year's festival partnered with cities across the Yangtze River basin, with Chongqing as the guest city of honor. Activities were organized under five signature sections: "Yangtze River Cultural Relics", "Yangtze River Intangible Heritage", "Yangtze River Arts", "Walking along the Yangtze River", and "Open Yangtze". Notably, the festival placed strong emphasis on boosting consumption, growing cultural industries, strengthening cultural brands, and benefiting local communities. It was held in tandem with the 2025 Autumn Culture & Tourism Consumption Promotion Season, converting cultural resources into consumer spending power and driving both foot traffic and revenue.
Over the past month, the festival has taken a more youthful, open, and immersive approach to cultural presentation as it steps onto a larger global stage.
Highlights ranged from the creative premiere of the cultural-heritage integration production An Invitation, to "The Kaleidoscope of the Yangtze River – The Billowing River and the Prosperous Jiangnan" exhibition, which brought together 15 museums and cultural institutions and displayed 159 artifacts.
On the industry side, the Cultural & Tourism Industry Partners Meeting drew 28 leading companies from across the sector and resulted in the signing of agreements for a number of major projects, including the Spotlight Automotive Industrial Tourism Development & Operation Project and the Huideng Information Technology Tourism Development & Operation Project. The four-day "Yangtze River Elegance Fair" event attracted over 200,000 visitors and generated nearly 1 million yuan ($140729.35) in revenue, up 21 percent year-on-year.
Tourism-driven momentum continued with the Yangtze River cycling event, which boosted visitor numbers to Shuangshan Island by 37.7 percent, while the launch of the "Hi, Yangtze River!" tourism cooperation initiative earned enthusiastic feedback from overseas travel operators.
With tangible achievements across culture, tourism, consumption, and cross-regional cooperation, the festival is writing a compelling new chapter in the "humanistic economics" of high-quality development.
Since its debut in 2004, the Yangtze River Culture Festival has evolved over 22 years from a local cultural showcase into a major provincial-level event. It now engages 13 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities along the Yangtze River and has brought together more than 200 cultural institutions and performing arts troupes, building a shared cultural community across the basin.