Discover Shenzhen
Lianhuashan Park
莲花山公园
A hill park directly north of the Civic Center whose summit, with its statue of Deng Xiaoping, frames the single best free view of the Futian skyline. Kite-flying on the lawn is a local ritual.
The story
What makes this place special
Lianhuashan is the hill at the north end of Futian's central axis, and the park on it was laid out as the civic landscape of the new city centre. Its summit plaza, 4,000 square metres at 106 metres above sea level, holds a six-metre bronze of Deng Xiaoping on a 3.68-metre plinth, unveiled in November 2000 — the first statue of Deng erected as municipal sculpture with central Party approval — with the inscription written by Jiang Zemin. The statue faces south down the axis, towards the city that the policy it commemorates produced.
What you’ll discover
A green hill in the middle of the business district, with paths winding up through trees to the summit plaza. From the top you look straight down the axis over the Civic Center's wave roof to the towers of Futian and the Ping An Finance Centre — the single clearest view of what Shenzhen is. Below, there are lawns, a children's playground, fishing ponds, a kite-flying plaza that is genuinely used for kites, and the Guan Shanyue Art Museum at the park's edge.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- This is the best free viewpoint in Shenzhen and the one locals actually use. It costs nothing and takes about twenty minutes to walk up.
- Go up for sunset and stay for the lights. The skyline directly ahead is the whole point, and the towers put on a coordinated light show on some evenings.
- The kite plaza on the lower slopes on a windy weekend afternoon is the most purely enjoyable thing in the city centre, and no guidebook mentions it.
- Combine it with the Guan Shanyue Art Museum at the foot of the park, a serious collection of twentieth-century Chinese ink painting that almost no visitor finds.
- Take the metro to Lianhuashan Park or Civic Center and walk in from the south side so the axis view opens up in front of you as you climb.
When to come
Late afternoon into dusk, year round. Winter and autumn give the clearest view down the axis; in summer go up only after about five o'clock.
Getting around
The lower park is flat, paved and fully step-free, and the kite plaza, lawns and ponds are all easy. The summit is a real climb: the main approach is a long paved ramped path rather than steps, so it is possible in a wheelchair with a strong pusher, and manageable on a bad knee at a slow pace, but it is a continuous gradient of about a hundred metres of ascent. Some of the shorter routes up are stepped — take the vehicular-width path.
Worth knowing before you go
Climb at dusk - the Ping An Finance Centre and the Civic Center light up while you are at the top.
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