People's Park () is an urban public park and Qing-era

Chinese garden The Chinese garden is a landscape garden style which has evolved over three thousand years. It includes both the vast gardens of the Chinese emperors and members of the imperial family, built for pleasure and to impress, and the more intimate ...

Hexi District Hexi District ( is a district in the south-western corner of urban Tianjin, People's Republic of China. It is bordered by Heping District in the north-west, Hedong District to the north-east and Nankai District to the west. As of 2020, the distr ...

in central

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Originally built in 1863 as the private Rong Garden (), it was donated to the state and opened to the public in 1951.

Geography

People's Park is in the northeast of Hexi District, bounded by Xiamen Road in the east, Guangdong Road in the west, Qiongzhou Road in the south, and Huizhou Road in the north. It covers an area of , including of water.

History

Built in 1863 during the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

, the park was originally the private garden of the wealthy salt merchant Li Chuncheng (). Its formal name was Rong Garden, but it was commonly called the Li Shanren (Philanthropist Li) Garden. After the establishment of the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

in 1949, the Li family donated the garden to the state, and it was opened to the public on 1 July 1951 as People's Park. In 1954, Chairman

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

presented the park with his

calligraphy Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...

of its name. It is the only work of calligraphy Mao wrote for a park. After major renovation work, the park was reopened in 2009. Entrance is free.

References

{{Landmarks in Tianjin, state=collapsed 1863 establishments in China 1951 establishments in China Parks in Tianjin Urban public parks Gardens in China