Travel By Photo – Three Kingdom City, Wuxi

Another great sunny day with blue sky and bright sun in WuXi, China, on our 7th day in China South Yangtze region. We left our first destination of Wuxi Lihu Scenic area in the morning and headed straight to another scenic park. This is the difference between Self-travelling and packaged travelling. We tend to wake up later if we were travelling by ourselves. Off course it would be more relaxed that we could take our own sweet time but less tourists spots could be covered as well. Being a pro’s and con’s issue, it would depend on ourselves whether we want to see more tourists attractions or to experience more in-depth local cultures. For this case, as part of a all-inclusive-packaged travel to China, we were required to wake up as early as 6:30am in order to be able to cover as much destination as possible within a short period. While self-travelers are still sleeping in their hostel, we have visited the scenic Lihu Lake. While self-travelers are having their breakfast in one of the local stalls, we have reached our second destination of the day in WuXi…. 🙂 (Don’t be confused. I’m still an enthusiat of self-travelling because I preferred to experience more on the local lifestyle instead of rushing for travelers spots 🙂 )

Our second stop of the day in WuXi was this one: Three Kingdom City, an used-to-be television series shooting base for CCTV broadcast of China. The famous drama, “The Romance Of Three Kingdom” was filmed here. Now, it has become a renowned tourists attraction in WuXi. Touching a bit on the Chinese history, the story of Three Kingdom is all about the battlefield between the three main countries in China history, the Wei, Shu and Wu kingdoms. Off course, there were also other smaller kingdoms involved like the Qi, Chu, Yen, Cheng, Han, and Chow Kingdoms.

In front of the Three Kingdom City, I mean the filming base, there is a giant concrete statue of a Qi Ling (麒麟）, a symbol of power in Chinese beliefs.

Though it was just a filming base, the structures are all actually built-for-life . The design of the buildings were also strictly following the contemporary ancient Chinese architectures. This is the main entrance of the city. You can see the robustness of the structure as well as the uniqueness of the ancient chinese design.

Further approaching the entrance while our tour guides paying for our entrance fees of RMB55 per pax, we could see 2 armed wardens, one standing at each side, in warrior costumes. There is an umbrella shading for him also! Not bad err…. 🙂

Inside the “city”, visitors can wander around withing the compound to see and feel all kinds of architectures, history backdrops, drama scenes of Three Kingdoms. In order to film the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a series of buildings were needed to be built there. These include the King of Wu‘s Palace, the Ganlu Temple, the Caocao’s Army Camp on Land and Waterside, the Seven Star Altar and the Stunt Performing Court for Big Fire at Red Cliffs. If you have enough time, you could walk one round of the city. Otherwise, there are trams transporting visitors from one tourists spot to another, which could save you time by paying extra money. The choice is yours.

Visitors could experience the king’s lifestyle in this bedroom of Liu Bei, the King of Shu Kingdom where reds and yellow colours are prominent within the room. Red represents happiness while Yellow colour represents wealth and royalties in Chinese culture.

At the other side of the room, there is the throne of the King. Tourists could experience the prideness of a king by sitting there in the King’s costume and take a photo accompanied by these 2 beautiful ladies as your temporary queen consorts, with an additional charges off course…

Walking out of the residence of Liu Bei, I spotted this breathtaking garden view…

If you are a self-traveller, not being rushed by the tour guide (the norm in packaged travel 🙁 ), I would strongly suggest one to save the cost of the tram and walk through the city. The surrounding landscapes are simply awesome! Every piece of wood or tree is just so beautiful!

Visitors could also buy some ancient chinese costumes and decoratives from those shops withing the compound. (Don’t worry to have missed them though, there are plenty of them around…)

The Ganlu (甘露) Temple is located south of the King of Wu’s Palace. The temple comprises the Buddhist Hall, the Drum Tower, the Brick Pagoda and the Sword Testing Stone.

The Brick Pagoda up hill…. We didn’t go up there because we were rushing to see the live battlefield performance at 10a.m….

The above is a panoramic view of the Stunt Performing Court for Big Fire at Red Cliffs (赤壁). Tourists can appreciate magnificent historical scenes of burning the Red Cliffs by CaoCao. The scene is specially designed miniature scene with all the miniature warships, soldiers and barracks, as well as the miniature fire! Through remote control and electropneumatic control, the  warfare battlefield scenes are presented to the visitors. It was how the film was shot!

Just before the live battlefield performance, we passed by another cinematic scene, the Outer Gate of the CaoCao Army camp at waterside. Visitors could ride one ofe the warship for a short tour around the waterfront lake…

… overseeing the Mustering Platform, the Outer Gate of the Army Camp, Four Watchtowers and some warships as part of the CaoCao Army Camp of Three Kingdom.

This one doesn’t look like a warship to me though…

The Four Watch Tower and the waterfront…

Looking at the platform, the gates and  the warship had made me feel like we were in the time tunnel…

At 10a.m., the live battlefield performance began (some self-travelling travelers were still sleeping…) 🙂 We just managed to grab some good seats.

The live show was about the fight between horse-riding historical heroes of Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, dueling their enemy Lu Bu. Some stunning stunt performances of horse-riding are definitely worth watching.

UPDATED: Click HERE to view original High Resolution file of the above photos via Flickr.

After the show, we decided to walk out to the exit instead of taking the tram. The landscaping along our way had again caught my eyes and made my Panasonic Lumix FZ28 worked harder. 🙂

Though I’m a big fan of ancient Chinese history, I have not seen the drama of “The Romance Of Three Kingdom”. For me, Three Kingdom City is just another tourist scenic park for tourists to take beautiful scenic photos and for western visitors to appreciate the ancient Chinese architecture and culture. If I were to travel to WuXi by myself, I wouldn’t have visited this park at all. – Travel Feeder.

All photos above were captured with Panasonic Lumix FZ28

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.