AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Chaoyang Park (朝阳公园) is Beijing's green lung on the city's east side — the largest urban park inside the Fourth Ring Road, a sprawling 288.7-hectare landscape in which almost 68 hectares are lake and waterway and roughly 87 percent is green space. Stretched about 2.8 kilometres from north to south and 1.5 kilometres across, it holds leafy trails, flower gardens, rowing lakes, an amusement fairground and a beach-style waterfront where the 2008 Olympic beach volleyball matches were played.↗↗↗
Open from early morning until late and rated a national 4A scenic area, it sits just beside the embassy quarter and the CBD, so it doubles as a quick escape from the city's glass towers — a place to rent a boat, wander past sculptures, catch a festival or simply walk one of Beijing's biggest and busiest public parks.↗
From Brick Kilns to a 'Green Lung'
The park's setting was far from genteel when it was born. This land between the old villages of Maizidian, Liulitun and Shuiduizi was once a string of clay pits and brick-and-tile kilns — the water-filled '串儿窑' holes left behind by abandoned kilns became fishing ponds and rough playgrounds. The name Shuiduizi itself reaches back to the Qing era, when grain for the Eight Banners was husked here using water-powered stamps. Construction of a people's park began in November 1984 under the slogan 'a park built by the people'; first named Shuidui Park, it was renamed Chaoyang Park on 12 May 1992, and in December 1999 the park's current name was ceremonially inscribed by General Secretary Jiang Zemin.
