Discover Taizhou: City History, River and Park

Taizhou combines a long history with a museum dedicated to Peking opera, a historic city moat and green spaces by the water. It also has its own distinctive breakfast cuisine, with a variety of different dishes. This gives you several ways to focus your trip: cultural collections, opera history, a walk by the lake or regional food.

City History and Culture

In 2013, the State Council of China designated Taizhou a national historical and cultural city. If you are interested in the history of the place, the Taizhou Museum offers a good starting point. Founded in 1958, it preserves more than 10,000 artefacts, including more than 1,000 precious national cultural relics in classes one to three. The museum is classified as a national second-grade museum.

The size of its collection makes the museum a major cultural attraction in Taizhou. You can think of a visit as an opportunity to engage with the city’s material heritage, rather than getting to know Taizhou only through its present-day cityscape. For a family trip, this gives you a reason to decide together whether collections and history suit your group’s interests.

Another cultural landmark is the Mei Lanfang Memorial Museum. Its sections include an exhibition of historical materials and a knowledge corridor about Peking opera. The museum is located on Fenghuang Dun in Taizhou’s central urban area and is surrounded by water on three sides. The setting thus brings together the memory of Mei Lanfang and Peking opera with a location explicitly described as being by the water. For culture enthusiasts, the focus here is on historical materials and knowledge about the opera.

Fengcheng River and the Cityscape

Fengcheng River is a thousand-year-old city moat that has been relatively well preserved. Its history is therefore directly linked to the cityscape. More than 30 attractions in the Fengcheng River Scenic Area are located along the river. They include Wanghailou, Taoyuan, Meiyuan and a historic street. These named places give you several points of interest if you are curious about Taizhou’s history. The city moat is not just a historical term, but a defining feature with other attractions located along it.

A Different Focus: Tiande Lake Park

If you would like to spend time outdoors, consider visiting Tiande Lake Park. You can take a walk by the lake there. The park also includes a garden for Yangpai bonsai, a science museum and 13 urban themed gardens built on the water. This brings together different themes in one park: a lakeside walk, bonsai and science, as well as the distinctive layout of the gardens on the water. When planning your day, you can consider which aspect appeals to you most, without trying to combine them all into a single visit.

Discover Taizhou Through Its Food

Taizhou breakfast dishes include crab roe soup dumplings, pine nut shaomai, hot dressed dried tofu strips and fish soup with noodles. The variety of dishes makes the local breakfast cuisine a subject in its own right: on one side are soup dumplings and fish soup with noodles, and on the other, shaomai and hot tofu strips. If food is part of your travels, you can keep these names in mind as a guide to Taizhou’s culinary side. They give you a concrete impression of what breakfast in the city includes.

If you would like to explore more destination pages, you can also find Wuxi, Xuzhou, Yangzhou, Nantong, Kunshan, Yancheng, Huai'an and Lianyungang here.

For the main travel overview: Jiangsu.