Changfeng Park, a nice place for recreation and amusement, is located in the western part of urban Shanghai. It has been awarded one of China’s top 100 gardens by Chinese Park Association under the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People’s Republic of China. Its first-phase construction started on April 4, 1957, its second-phase construction in July, 1958 and it was opened on the national day of the year 1959. As the only landscape park in Shanghai, Changfeng Park is a large-scale comprehensive park with an area of 364 thousand square kilometers. At the very beginning, it was named ‘Huxi (western Shanghai) park’ and renamed ‘Biluohu (green lake) park’ when it was partly opened on July 1, 1958. On September 29, 1959, Wei Wenbo, the then deputy secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, changed its name to ‘Changfeng (wind) Park’, taken from a famous sentence ‘wish I could ride the wind and break the waves’ of The Book of Song. He also named its largest manmade lake of Shanghai ‘Silver Shovel Lake’ and its highest manmade hill ‘iron arm hill’ (Taken from a seven character regular verse by Chairman Mao Saying Good-bye to the God of Disease: We dig with silver shovels and iron arms shake the earth and the Three Rivers) . After the establishment of the park, Marshal Nie Rongzhen, Liu Bocheng and Chen Yi came to fish and tour in the park respectively in spring 1961, 1963 and autumn 1964.
Engineer Liu Lvhua from the former Shanghai Garden Management Office was responsible for the design of general layout, topography and green-planting of Changfeng Park. His design has inherited traditional Chinese garden art, used the gardening experience of Beijing, Hangzhou and Suzhou for reference and taken into consideration the park’s functional needs as a modern city garden in Shanghai Municipality. The park’s general layout imitates nature, with large lakes and the 16 meter high Iron Arm Hill as its special landscape. Up until now, there are altogether more than 20 sight spots within the lakes and hills of the park. They are: Iron Arm Stones, Silver Shovel Waves, Japanese Maple Oasis, Sunset Scene, Three Friends in Cold Weather, Spring Welcoming Pond, Water Lily Pond, Lily Pond, Fishing Pond, Blackbark Chinese Pine Hill, Peony Garden, Indian Azalea，Chinese Rose Garden, Yulan Magnolia, Cherry Blossom Garden, Zigzag Corridor, Decorated Corridor, and also patriotic education base for the teenagers such as group sculpture of The Young Pioneer Team Undercover, bronze statue of Leifeng.
Set up in the year 1999, Changfeng Ocean World is China’s first themed marine aquarium. With a construction area of more than ten thousand square meters, it showcases more than ten thousand marine creatures of over 300 kinds and is one of the education bases of science popularization for the teenagers in Shanghai and the country.
In 1997, the park successfully held the fourth China Flower Exposition as well as the first China Flower Fair, which has greatly enhanced its popularity. From 1998 to 2006, it has held five consecutive Shanghai International Flower Festivals every other year. In October 2003, Changfeng Park has successfully held the fifth Shanghai International Arts Festival – the Italian Baroque Luminaire Exposition, Asia’s largest and most delicately decorated lamp exposition of color lamps. In May 2005, the park also held the spectacular lantern festival themed ‘Disney’s Night in Shanghai’, which was Disney’s first authorized event in China.
Changfeng Park (Changfeng Ocean World) has submitted application materials to Shanghai Tourism Bureau in the hope of meeting requirements for a national 4A grade tourism attraction.
