Three Shows After Dark in the Cao Wei Ancient City

The city government’s own page on the Cao Wei ancient city begins with the reason the place is called what it is. In the late Eastern Han, Cao Cao brought Emperor Xian of Han to the city and held it for twenty-five years, and it became the political, economic and cultural centre of the north. In 221 Cao Pi ended the Han and founded Wei, and the name “Wei capital” dates from that moment. The ancient city occupies 3.9 square kilometres, with a core area of 1.87 square kilometres inside the moat, laid out along one axis with ten zones and twenty attractions, linked to the 5.3-kilometre moat, Spring and Autumn Tower, the Cao Prime Minister’s Residence and West Lake Park. One caution: the city describes it as built to the standard of a national 5A site, which is a building standard, not a rating already granted.

The city’s account of the 2026 National Day holiday sets out the programming that fills the streets. At the Cao Prime Minister’s Residence, the live performance Crossing Five Passes and Slaying Six Generals is staged for an audience that fills the seats. At Spring and Autumn Tower, a garden party called Light and Shadow of Spring and Autumn runs on two time bands, real performance in the day and light in the evening, so that visitors are moved from watching the story to standing inside it. In the ancient city, a robot performance shares the stage with a procession of the prime minister, with Han dress make-up and a market of themed goods around it. The same review records that Xuchang groups its city tourism under four names — quality from the east, Cao Wei and the Three Kingdoms, colourful Jun porcelain, and flowers and hot springs.

The newest thing on South Avenue is a row of lotus lamps, and they are built to be used rather than only photographed. The huge leaves, green with clearly legible veins, are spread in a line along the walkway so that their wide canopies drop a patch of shade; the lamp posts carry a ring of seats at their base, so anyone tired can sit, and the column also carries a small explanatory panel about a Three Kingdoms episode, which means a rest on the bench doubles as a history lesson. After dusk the warm light seeps out along the veins, the leaves light one after another, and the shadows fall on the stone paving like moving water. The guide gives the location as the south gate and commercial street of the Cao Wei ancient city, and recommends the hour after the lamps are all lit.