Qiushui Square (秋水广场): Nanchang's Fountain, Skyline & the City That Crossed the River
Nanchang's Qiushui Square musical fountain, the Honggutan skyline across the Gan, Greenland Twin Towers, a Guinness light show, and how to watch it all.
By Hello Nanchang · Last updated
Gan River, Honggutan District · Tonight: check on-site board; typical times 7:30 PM & 8:30 PM
The night the river throws a jet of water 40 storeys high
Get to the railing before the music starts. On a summer weekend the crowd at Qiushui Square (秋水广场, Qiūshuǐ Guǎngchǎng) is three deep along the Gan River (赣江) — grandparents fanning themselves, teenagers filming, a man selling glowing plastic wands nobody's child can resist. Then the first bars roll out of the speakers, the water begins to breathe, and a single central jet climbs, and climbs, until it's a column of white taller than most buildings behind you — reportedly up to around 128 metres, which is roughly a 40-storey tower made of water and light. Downriver, the whole opposite bank flares gold: Tengwang Pavilion (滕王阁), 1,300 years of it, lit up and staring back across the water at a fountain named after a poem written on its own upper floor.
That's the trick of this place, and why it's worth a whole evening rather than a photo stop. Qiushui Square isn't just a fountain. It's the front porch of the new Nanchang — a city that, in a single generation, picked up its government, its banks and its skyline and moved them across the river onto what used to be empty sand flats. Stand here after dark and you're looking at both Nanchangs at once: the ancient one on the east bank, the glass-and-LED one at your back.
(The video at the top of this page is that fountain show — worth thirty seconds before you read on, so you know what you're chasing.)
Qiushui Square by day — the vast riverside plaza and its fountain platform at rest, the old-town skyline hazy across the Gan. After dark it becomes the scene in the video above. Photo: 钉钉 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
A square named after a line of poetry
Start with the name, because it's the soul of the place. In the year 675, a 26-year-old prodigy named Wang Bo (王勃) passed through Nanchang, was pulled into a banquet at the newly restored Tengwang Pavilion, and — as the story goes — dashed off the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng (《滕王阁序》) on the spot, to the astonishment of a room that had expected a polite nobody. One couplet from that evening became one of the most quoted lines in all of Chinese literature:
落霞与孤鹜齐飞，秋水共长天一色
The setting sun-glow and a lone wild duck fly together; the autumn waters merge with the vast sky as one.
Fourteen hundred years later, when Nanchang built its riverfront plaza on the opposite bank, it lifted two characters straight from that line — 秋水, "autumn water" — and called it Qiushui Square. It's a deliberate, almost cheeky echo: the square that quotes the poem sits directly across the Gan from the pavilion where the poem was written, close enough that on a clear night you can read one skyline against the other. Baidu's own encyclopedia calls it "a cultural echo across time and space with the Tengwang Pavilion on the opposite bank," and for once the marketing copy is right.
So before you cross over to the fountain, it's worth knowing you're standing inside a 1,300-year-old joke about the same stretch of water — the "autumn waters merging with the sky" that Wang Bo saw, now doing it in light. If you haven't yet, pair this with our guide to Tengwang Pavilion (滕王阁) on the far bank; the two sights are two halves of one view.
The fountain: how big, how high, and is it really Asia's largest?
Let's settle the question everyone asks, honestly. Chinese tourism sources routinely bill the Qiushui Square music-fountain group as the largest in Asia — and you'll see that line on signboards, travel apps and half the blog posts about it. It's a genuine spectacle, and on the ground it certainly feels that big. But "largest in Asia" is a promotional claim, not a figure certified by any international body, and older descriptions of the same fountain called it "Asia's second largest." No neutral referee has ever ranked the world's musical fountains. So: enjoy it as one of Asia's great fountain shows, treat the superlative as a boast rather than a fact, and don't let the ranking decide whether you go — the show itself does that.
What's more useful is the scale you can actually see:
- The central jet — widely cited at up to around 128 metres, a tower of water taller than almost everything on the old-town bank. (Reported heights for the jet vary by source, so read that as "reportedly up to," not a surveyed number.)
- The water line — the fountains run in a long arc along the riverbank, part of a crescent plaza with roughly 1,100 m of river frontage and a total square area cited at somewhere around 87,000–100,000 m² (sources differ). The fountain pool alone is reported at something like 12,000 m².
- The choreography — jets fan, cross, pulse and collapse in time to music, backlit in colour, so the whole arc reads as one moving sculpture rather than a row of sprinklers.
The square opened in January 2004, and the fountains were given a major upgrade in December 2013, which is roughly when Nanchang's whole riverfront became a serious after-dark attraction (more on that below).
When the fountain runs — and how to watch it well
This is the part to get right, because a dry fountain is a long way to walk for nothing. The music-fountain show is not on every night. It typically runs on weekend and holiday evenings, usually with two shows — one around 7:30pm and one around 8:30pm, each lasting roughly 15 minutes. It's free. But schedules shift with the season, the weather and river conditions, and shows are cancelled in strong wind or when the water's high — so check locally the same day (ask your hotel, or look at the Nanchang tourism or Honggutan notices) before you build an evening around it.
How to do it like someone who's been:
- Arrive 15–20 minutes early and claim a spot on the front railing — the crowd thickens fast in the last ten minutes.
- Stand river-left of centre if you want Tengwang Pavilion lit up in the same frame as the jets — that's the shot.
- Expect a little spray if there's any breeze off the water. Front-row is wetter and better.
- Between the two shows, don't just stand there — walk the boardwalk, ride the wheel, or grab a cold drink; the second show is the same length, so you've got an hour to fill.
- Golden hour first, then the show. Come at sunset, watch the light go off the water the way Wang Bo did, then let the fountain take over as it gets dark.
Dusk over the Gan and the Honggutan waterfront — the hour to arrive, when the water goes the colour Wang Bo wrote about and the lights come up. Photo: Ddayzzz / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).
Honggutan: the city that crossed the river
Everything behind the fountain — the towers, the government buildings, the wheel, the hotels — sits in a district called Honggutan (红谷滩), and its story is genuinely remarkable once you know it. The name means, roughly, "red valley sandbank," because that's what this was: riverside sand flats on the west bank of the Gan, largely empty, facing the historic old town across the water.
Then Nanchang made a decision that few cities dare to make. Under a strategy called "One River, Two Banks" (一江两岸), it resolved to move its administrative and financial core across the river onto that empty sand. The paper trail is unusually crisp:
- Early 2000 — the city issues its first plan to fully develop and build Honggutan New District, and stands up a construction headquarters.
- 11 July 2000 — ground is broken on the 4.28 km² central core.
- 28 December 2001 — the city's Party committee, congress, government and other organs physically relocate to the new center on the west bank. This is the vivid part: the government of a provincial capital packed up and moved across the river onto reclaimed sand flats, on schedule.
- 2002 — the Honggutan New District management committee is formally established to run the build-out.
- 2019–2020 — Honggutan graduates from a "new district" run by a committee to a full county-level administrative division: approved by the State Council in December 2019 and formally established/unveiled in June 2020 as Honggutan District (红谷滩区).
Today it's the administrative and financial heart of both Nanchang and Jiangxi province — the seats of the provincial and municipal governments both sit here, alongside well over a thousand financial institutions. The district now covers roughly 400 km² and is home to somewhere over half a million people (the 2020 census counted about 556,000; more recent estimates run higher). That's a whole downtown, grown from sandbanks to skyline inside about two decades.
For a traveller, here's why it matters: when people talk about Nanchang's riverfront light show, its glowing towers, its fountain and its giant Ferris wheel, they're talking about Honggutan. It's the "new Nanchang" you photograph from the old town, and the place you stand in to photograph the old town back.
The skyline that made international headlines
Honggutan's riverfront isn't just locally famous. Two things here hold Guinness World Records, and they're often muddled together, so let's keep them separate.
1. The "One River, Two Banks" light show. The synchronized light-and-sound display that runs across Nanchang's riverbank buildings holds the Guinness World Record for the "most buildings in a permanent light and sound show" — 293 buildings, achieved by the Jiangxi Nanchang Tourism Group on 22 October 2015. The permanent show launched in December 2014 and, per Guinness, surpassed Hong Kong's "A Symphony of Lights." Note the precise wording: it's the record for the most buildings, not for being the "biggest" show — a distinction worth keeping if you want to sound like you actually read the plaque. We go deep on how the whole two-bank display works, and where to watch it, in our One River, Two Banks light-show guide.
2. The Greenland Twin Towers' LED façade. Separately, the giant LED lighting curtain wrapping Honggutan's tallest towers set a Guinness record for the world's largest LED-illuminated façade at the time (reported at around 35,300 m² by secondary sources, said to surpass the Burj Khalifa's display), recognised in 2015. Two different records, two different things — don't let anyone tell you the towers hold the "293 buildings" title.
Beyond Guinness, honest note: despite what you'll read on some travel blogs, we couldn't find a genuine CNN, BBC or Reuters feature specifically on Nanchang's skyline, so we won't pretend one exists. The strongest independent English-language take is an analysis of Chinese city light-shows crediting Nanchang as the origin of the synchronized-skyscraper trend that later spread across China — which, if true, makes this unassuming riverbank the place the whole genre started. Treat that as an interesting argument from a blog, not gospel; the Guinness record is the hard fact.
The landmark cluster around the square
From the fountain railing, almost everything worth pointing at is within a short walk. Here's what you're looking at.
The Greenland Twin Towers — the tallest thing in Jiangxi
The two identical towers rising right beside the square are the Greenland Twin Towers (南昌绿地双子塔), officially the Jiangxi Nanchang Greenland Central Plaza (南昌绿地中央广场). Each is 303 metres tall — a matched pair, about 100 m apart — which makes them, as of now, the tallest buildings in Nanchang and in all of Jiangxi. (They were planned at 289 m, then raised mid-build to clear the 300-metre "supertall" mark — a very Honggutan move.) A taller tower has been planned for the city, so read "tallest" as "tallest to date."
- Architect: the American firm SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill) — the same practice behind a good chunk of the world's supertalls — for developer Greenland Group.
- Built: construction began in 2011; the towers topped out in 2014 and are generally cited as completed in 2015.
- Function: mostly Grade-A offices, with retail, conference space and a hotel component. Address: 998 Honggu Middle Avenue (红谷中大道998号), a few minutes from the square.
- The view: there's a public "303 Observation Deck" on the 60th floor, floor-to-glass, from which you can pick out Tengwang Pavilion east across the Gan, the Meiling hills to the west, and the Qiushui Square fountain below at night. Ticket prices and hours change, so confirm on Ctrip/Trip.com or at the door before you go up — don't count on a fixed price.
One disambiguation, because it trips people up: this is not the "Greenland Zifeng Tower (绿地紫峰大厦)." That's a different, single 268 m Greenland building in another part of Nanchang (the Qingshan Lake / Gaoxin area), also by SOM. The twin towers by the square are the 303 m pair — that's the pair you want.
The 303-metre Greenland Twin Towers over Honggutan's administrative square — the tallest buildings in Jiangxi to date, a few minutes' walk from the fountain. Photo: 钉钉 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The city government — Nanchang's civic front yard
Immediately beside the square sits Nanchang's municipal administrative center (南昌市行政中心), around Century Square (世纪广场). This is the concrete result of that 2001 river-crossing: the city's government seat, planted on the west bank, with the twin towers rising beside it and the fountain out front. It's a civic complex rather than a ticketed sight, so treat it as orientation — but it explains why this particular stretch of riverbank got the grand plaza, the tallest towers and the marquee fountain. This is Nanchang's official front yard, and it was designed to be seen from across the water.
The Star of Nanchang — the wheel next door
A short walk from the fountain stands the Star of Nanchang (南昌之星), a 160-metre Ferris wheel that opened in May 2006. Here's the fun bit of trivia: when it opened, it was briefly the tallest Ferris wheel in the world — a title it held until the 165 m Singapore Flyer overtook it in March 2008. So it's not the world's tallest anymore (don't repeat that on the postcard), but it's still a genuine giant: 60 enclosed, air-conditioned gondolas, a full rotation of about 30 minutes, and a slow, elevated look over the river, the fountain and both banks. Confirm current ticket prices and hours before you go. Ridden between the two fountain shows, it's a near-perfect way to fill the gap.
The riverside boardwalk that ties it all together
The single best free thing to do here — better than any ticket — is to walk the water's edge. The whole west bank is threaded by the Ganjiang Citizen Park (赣江市民公园), a green corridor built out in phases since 2005 that now runs roughly 28 kilometres along the river (with more still being extended), from around Yingxiong Bridge in the north down toward the freight rail bridge in the south. Inside it: an ~18 km greenway, a waterside leisure path, a jogging track, and — the good part — riverside boardwalks (栈道) that carry you out over preserved wetland on timber decking, close enough to touch the reeds.
Walk the boardwalk at dusk with the old-town skyline and Tengwang Pavilion across the water and you'll understand the whole "One River, Two Banks" idea in about ten minutes — no plaque required. It's flat, free, stroller-friendly and open all hours. If you only do one thing at Qiushui Square besides the fountain, do this.
How the west-bank cluster fits together — and why Qiushui Square looks straight across the Gan at Tengwang Pavilion.
Where to stay: the riverfront hotels
Honggutan is where Nanchang's best international-brand hotels cluster, most within a stroll or a short DiDi of the square — handy, because it puts you on the right bank for the fountain and the night lights without a river crossing. The two big names:
- Shangri-La Nanchang (南昌香格里拉大酒店) — the city's flagship five-star, at 669 Cuilin Road in Honggutan, right in the riverfront CBD. Rooms are sold on their Gan River views, and the hotel's own materials list Qiushui Square, the music fountain and the Tengwang Pavilion cruise among its neighbours — which tells you exactly how close it is. Around 470-odd rooms; a proper luxury base if you want the river out your window.
- Sheraton Nanchang Hotel (南昌喜来登酒店) — an international-brand riverfront hotel at 1669 Honggu Middle Avenue, near "Autumn Water Square" (the English name you'll see for Qiushui Square) and the financial-center towers. Upper-upscale Marriott/Sheraton tier; star ratings are listed inconsistently across booking sites, so book on the room and the location rather than the number of stars.
Other strong Honggutan options in the same CBD orbit include Wanda Vista and Wanda Realm Nanchang, and the InterContinental Nanchang (a touch further from the water but top-tier). Room counts and openings shift, so confirm current details when you book. If you'd rather have someone match a hotel to your dates, budget and which bank you want to wake up on, our team does exactly that — see Plan With Us.
How to visit — the practical plan
The good news: this is one of the easiest big-ticket evenings in Nanchang, and most of it is free.
A simple evening plan (about 2–3 hours)
- Ride Metro Line 1 to Qiushui Square (秋水广场) station and surface — the square and river are right there. (Confirm the current exit on the in-station map; metro layouts get updated.)
- Arrive around sunset. Walk out to the river railing and watch the light go off the water toward Tengwang Pavilion on the far bank — the exact view Wang Bo wrote about.
- Stroll the boardwalk (栈道) north or south along the Ganjiang Citizen Park while the sky darkens and the two-bank light show comes on across the buildings.
- Catch the first fountain show (typically around 7:30pm on weekends/holidays) from a front-row spot river-left of centre, so the jets and the lit pavilion share your frame.
- Fill the gap — ride the Star of Nanchang wheel, or head up the Greenland Twin Towers' 303 observation deck, or just grab a cold drink on the boardwalk.
- Catch the second show (around 8:30pm), then walk it off along the river before the last metro.
What to skip / know before you go
- Don't come on a random weeknight expecting the fountain — it mainly runs weekends and holidays, and it can be cancelled in wind or high water. Always check the same-day schedule.
- Midday is the weak version of this place — hot, no show, no lights. This is an after-dark sight; treat daytime as a walk, not the main event.
- Watch the last-metro time. If you stay for the 8:30 show and a boardwalk stroll, DiDi (China's ride-hail) is the easy fallback — set up Alipay or WeChat Pay before you travel so you can pay for everything, including any wheel or observation-deck ticket.
- It gets busy on summer weekends and holidays. That's part of the atmosphere, but if you want the railing, come early.
Practical info
- Getting there: Metro Line 1 to Qiushui Square station (confirm exit on-site); or DiDi/taxi to 秋水广场, Honggutan District. It's on the Gan's west bank, across from Tengwang Pavilion.
- How long: 2–3 hours for a full fountain evening; 30–45 minutes if you're just walking the boardwalk by day.
- Tickets: the square, the fountain show and the boardwalk are free. The Star of Nanchang wheel and the Greenland 303 observation deck are separately ticketed — confirm current prices/hours before you go.
- Fountain schedule: typically two ~15-min shows (~7:30 & ~8:30pm) on weekend/holiday evenings — check the same-day schedule locally, as it changes with season and weather.
- Pay & language: Alipay/WeChat Pay everywhere; little English signage — screenshots and a translation app help.
- Good for: families, couples, photographers, first-timers, an easy free night out. Less good for: anyone expecting a quiet midday sight, or hoping for a guaranteed weeknight show.
Chain it into your trip
Qiushui Square pairs naturally with the old town: do Tengwang Pavilion and the east bank by day, cross to Honggutan for the fountain and skyline after dark, and you've seen both Nanchangs in one loop. For the full after-dark picture — including the 293-building record show and the best vantage points on both banks — read our One River, Two Banks riverfront guide. And if you're slotting this into a two- or three-day trip, our Nanchang itineraries already build the river evening into the flow.
FAQ
Is the Qiushui Square fountain really Asia's largest?
It's widely billed that way by Chinese tourism sources, and it's genuinely one of Asia's biggest and most impressive musical fountains — but "largest in Asia" is a promotional claim, not an independently certified ranking (older descriptions even called it "second largest"). Go for the spectacle, not the superlative.
When does the fountain show run, and is it free?
It's free, and it typically runs on weekend and holiday evenings, usually with two roughly 15-minute shows around 7:30pm and 8:30pm. It's not on every night, and it can be cancelled in wind or high water — always check the same-day schedule locally before you go.
How do I get to Qiushui Square?
Take Metro Line 1 to Qiushui Square station and surface right by the river, or DiDi to 秋水广场 in Honggutan District. It's on the west bank of the Gan, directly across from Tengwang Pavilion.
What are the tall twin towers next to the square?
They're the Greenland Twin Towers (Jiangxi Nanchang Greenland Central Plaza) — two matched 303 m towers designed by SOM, completed around 2015, and currently the tallest buildings in Nanchang and Jiangxi (a taller tower is planned). There's a public observation deck on the 60th floor.
What's the connection to the Wang Bo poem?
The square takes its name — 秋水, "autumn water" — from Wang Bo's famous line "the autumn waters merge with the vast sky as one," written at Tengwang Pavilion in 675 CE, on the bank you can see directly across the river.
Is it worth pairing with Tengwang Pavilion?
Absolutely — they face each other across the Gan and are two halves of one view. Do the pavilion and the old town by day, then cross to Qiushui Square for the fountain and the lit skyline after dark.
Last verified: 2026-07 — transit times, fountain and show schedules, ticket prices, hours, hotel details and building records change; the "largest in Asia" fountain claim and some height/area figures are promotional or vary by source, so please double-check official and local sources before you travel.