Datang Everbright City

Beyond South Square of Giant Wild Goose Pagoda begins a broad paved street running south from Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. This is Datang Everbright City—literally, “Great Tang, City Without Night.” The name sounds old, but it was coined for a modern district: construction began in two thousand two, and the first section opened in two thousand nine. The designers tied the new street to Giant Wild Goose Pagoda and placed shops, theaters, and buildings with Tang Dynasty-style facades along it.

The first concept did not work. Cars drove along the street, there were few visitors, and for many local residents it remained a row of similar stylized buildings. In two thousand eighteen, the team managing the district changed the traffic layout, closed it to traffic, repaved it, and placed performances right among passersby. By the beginning of the following year, a pedestrian street was already operating here, where there was no need to buy a ticket to one large theater: short free scenes repeated along the entire route.

One such scene was assigned to Feng Jiachen, a twenty-three-year-old dancer. After university, she earned money performing in stage productions, and now she passed a selection process among more than one hundred performers for an unusual act. Feng was fastened to a support inside a heavy hemispherical base hidden by a long skirt. By shifting her body weight, Feng rocked the entire construction, but it returned to an upright position—hence the image of a living roly-poly doll.

At first, Feng held a fan in front of herself and gently swayed back and forth. Then she added movements from classical dance and came up with the idea of reaching out to spectators. If a girl stood in front of her, the performer took her hand; she greeted a child with a broad bow. Spectators began filming these brief encounters and posting the recordings online. Within a few months, people were already coming from other cities for a “handshake with the roly-poly doll,” and the barriers around the performance area failed several times under the pressure of the crowd.

The organizers had to expand the troupe to five people. Feng received offers from entertainment companies, but refused to leave and continued performing here. After her success, the managing team began commissioning new street acts with poets, dancers, and characters from Tang Dynasty history. This explains the district's current purpose: shops bring it income, while performances built into the street itself keep passersby there.

At the northern entrance, the former roadway is gone. Where cars were supposed to move in the first version of Datang Everbright City, spectators now stand, and performers step out to meet them directly on the roadway.