Yangzhou is located in the middle of Jiangsu Province and a place where the Yangtze River and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal converge. It is within “the Yangtze Delta Region”, the most dynamic economic circle in China, and is an important port city prosperous with natural landscapes and historical relics in the Yangtze Delta Region.
Listed among the first cities of long history and rich cultural heritages, Yangzhou is a city with profound cultural deposit. Since 486BC when the Emperor of the State Wu ordered the construction of Hangou River and Hancheng City, Yangzhou, as a city, has experienced a history of almost 2500 years. In the long process, Yangzhou has experienced splendid prosperity in the East and West Han Dynasties, the Sui Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty and during the reign of the Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, leaving the footprints of a large number of well-known poets and scholars and boasting over 340 historic sites and relics. Yangzhou are unique and colorful in its cultural characteristics, boasting Yangzhou School of Learning, the Eight Eccentrics, Yangzhou Opera, Yangzhou art crafts, the potted scenery of Yangzhou style, the flat engraving typography, Huaiyang cuisine, etc. Yangzhou opera and story telling, the singing in Yangzhou style, the paper cutting, the lacquer wares, the jade wares and the flat engraving typography have been listed as the first intangible cultural heritages. The Slender West Lake Park and Yangzhou’s Ancient city area have been listed as candidates of China’s world cultural heritages.
Yangzhou has been approved as one of the first excellent tourist cities in China and appraised as one of the “Top 10 leisure cities in China”. Yangzhou is rich in tourist resources, boasting the uniquely beautiful sceneries of rivers and a number of gardens and buildings as well as the well-preserved ancient city area of the Ming and the Qing Dynasties. Yangzhou boasts the Slender West Lake Scenic Area, the only national-level cultural & tourism model area in the country; Geyuan Garden, one of the four most famous gardens in the country; the Daming Monastery, a monastery owns a history of over one thousand years; as well as the Heyuan Garden, an architecture art combines east with the west.