On October 4, 2026, the gongs and drums sounded at 6 AM as opera rhythms arrived. During the National Day holiday, every corner of Hefei became a stage—inside professional theaters, renowned masters took the stage with melodies rising and falling; in city streets and alleys, songs filled the air accompanied by the warmth of daily life; across parks and scenic spots, immersive experiences could be encountered everywhere. Enduring melodies seeped into the city's fabric, illuminating the lives of its people. A city of spectacle revitalized scenes across the board, stirring the bustling life of the entire city! "Travel to a city for a single performance" is quietly becoming a trend. May the music end but the people remain together, with lingering echoes filling Luzhou.

Hefei with Opera continues to gain popularity. Before the National Day holiday, the second season of the "Hundred Operas Enter Anhui · Stars Shine Hefei" opera-themed event arrived as scheduled. The first season, launched last autumn, attracted nearly 90,000 visits to professional theaters for performances, with 74,000 tourists enjoying free access to major scenic spots across Anhui using event benefits, directly driving over 500 million yuan in related urban consumption and initially establishing the city IP of "Hefei with Opera." This autumn, the second season of "Hundred Operas Enter Anhui" has an even richer "opera flavor." During the holiday, the Peking opera "Phoenix Returns to Its Nest" let ticket holders fully indulge their opera cravings; the Lu opera "Wu Jingzi" sang out the enduring spirit of Anhui literati; the Ping opera "Zhao Jintang" let old opera fans feel like reuniting with old friends and made it easy for young people to get hooked... More performances will also move from theaters to every corner of the city. From October 6 to 7, "Hundred Operas Enter Anhui" will bring the Huangmei opera "The Female Son-in-Law" to Baihua Valley in Tangchi, Lujiang, arriving in rural scenic areas and reaching thousands of tourists. Great shows came one after another, and tickets sold out as soon as they went on sale. Han Jihua, an opera fan from Nanjing, Jiangsu, came to Hefei as soon as the second season of "Hundred Operas Enter Anhui" began. He was also a loyal audience member of the first season. Previously, whenever weekends or holidays came, he would rush to Hefei, having attended 57 performances in total. In his view, this event in Hefei brought together famous opera artists from north and south, with traditional operas and innovative productions both shining brilliantly—it was a remarkable and innovative endeavor. "As long as time permits, I don't want to miss a single show. Every opera and every performer is worth a special trip," Han Jihua said with emotion. On social platforms, many netizens from other places remarked after coming to Hefei to watch opera: "Hundred Operas Enter Anhui, there's something to it," while others said directly: "Hundred Operas Enter Anhui has brought opera to ordinary people's homes." High-quality performance resources and a rich viewing atmosphere have made Hefei a destination where opera fans are willing to "travel to a city for a single performance."

Diverse Performances All Splendid. It wasn't just opera that was bustling. During the National Day holiday, Wang Leehom's "The Best Place II" concert came to Hefei. Notably, for this performance with tens of thousands of attendees, all audience members could unlock city benefits with their concert tickets—free admission to ten major scenic spots for a limited time, exclusive discounts at multiple hotels, and coordinated cultural tourism benefits across the province, allowing you to continue roaming along the rivers and mountains of Jianghuai after the concert. With such warm and thoughtful cultural tourism amenities, it's no wonder many artists have actively "endorsed" Hefei. Previously, Zhou Shen joked at his Hefei concert that "Hefei is a very tasty city"; Jolin Tsai, when coming to Hefei for a concert, also said she feels especially close to Hefei every time she visits; Zhang Jie even made a special promise at his Hefei concert: "As long as I hold a concert, I'll come to Hefei." These gentle confessions successfully won over fans for Hefei and sparked waves of discussion on social platforms. It wasn't just stars singing for Hefei—it was also the public. This holiday, the "Sing Together with He" concert series continued. This event, held every weekend as scheduled, moved the stage to city squares, communities, and streets, open for free, with everyone able to take the stage and sing out loud, fully integrating performance into the everyday life of the city. Many residents and tourists also expressed their joy of participating on social platforms! The whole city is a stage, with surprises hidden everywhere. On October 1, Hefei Hechai · 1972 welcomed its seventh anniversary and launched the "Hechai Art Season 7.0" event. Road shows and parades followed one after another, and the park even launched "blind box-style random performances," allowing visitors to encounter stages while strolling through the park and enjoy unexpected artistic surprises. In Xiaoyaojin Park, "Singing Huangmei · Luyang Has Great Opera" opened during the National Day period. In Luogang Park, Anhui charm and local accents, Chaoshan folk custom performances, and CCTV-style light shows took turns on stage. In the "Come Listen to Crosstalk" theater at the Xinliangcang Cultural and Commercial Complex, three additional shows were added daily. Theater manager Xue Peisen said frankly: "I hope more audiences will walk into the theater and feel the charm of traditional Chinese performing arts..." Diverse performances were thus scattered throughout the city's streets and alleys. When professional stages are moved downstairs from residents' homes, watching a performance is becoming as ordinary as taking a walk or going shopping. Changes have quietly followed. Top-tier concerts draw traffic and gather crowds. Street-level benefit performances warm hearts and stay close to life. Trendy and innovative performances have many highlights and attract new fans. Hefei is breaking the boundaries of performance, letting artistic excellence of different styles and different circles spread to every corner of the city.

Immersive Performances Bring New Life. During the holiday, stepping into Li Hongzhang's Former Residence, the immersive real-scene drama "Li Hongzhang" was restoring historical storms through real-scene storytelling, allowing visitors to understand Luzhou's past through interactive experience. Pausing at Bao Park, the holographic theater "Judge Bao Investigates the Luzhou Mystery" performed continuously every day during the holiday. Relying on the classic Judge Bao IP, naked-eye 3D and 270° surround projection technology interpreted Judge Bao's suspenseful cases with a blend of virtual and real, transforming audiences from "spectators" into "characters in the play." At Hefei Sunac Land, the large-scale historical real-scene performance "The Battle of Feishui" was staged spectacularly, with live stunt work, film-grade special effects, and immersive explosion scenes advancing layer by layer, leaving visitors awestruck and fully immersed in the magnificent scenes. In addition to these classic works that continue to meet audiences, during this year's National Day period, Hefei's immersive performances were also newly updated. The original immersive stage play "It's Up to You, Bao Daren," created by the Hefei Quyi Troupe, was brilliantly staged at the European Style Street City Music Hall. Relying on a two-level real-scene stage and integrating multiple elements such as suspense reasoning, real-scene evidence searching, and interactive performance, it unlocked new ways of cultural tourism experience with a youthful and immersive form of expression. The stage has no boundaries, art has no threshold, and great shows never end. From scattered single performances to systematic performance clusters, from short-term cultural tourism activities to long-term urban industries, Hefei is continuously upgrading the development model of the performance industry and deeply embedding it into the city's developmental fabric.

A City of Bustling Life Enriches the City. A city of spectacle, and even more, the expectation of a city of bustling life. How can visiting audiences be encouraged to stay? How can urban cultural tourism achieve a qualitative transformation from instantaneous traffic to long-term retained volume? A small performance ticket stub is being given more expectations. Using performance ticket stubs as a bond, it connects the entire consumption chain of watching performances, touring parks, dining, shopping, and accommodation. Relying on key events such as "Hundred Operas Enter Anhui · Stars Shine Hefei," it links major scenic spots, nearly one hundred hotels, specialty dining, and core commercial districts, launching multiple benefits such as exclusive discounts, consumption subsidies, and cultural tourism rights, breaking down consumption barriers across the entire cultural tourism and commerce ecosystem. Tour parks with tickets, enjoy discounts with tickets, stay overnight with tickets. With a package of benefits, after watching a performance, tourists no longer need to rush back. Instead, they have the possibility to deeply roam the city, savor Luzhou's bustling life, and experience local customs, thereby achieving the transformation from "passing traveler" to "overnight guest," and from single consumption to in-depth experience, maximizing the multiplier effect of the performance economy. At the beginning of this year, the main venue branch of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala landed in Hefei, becoming the year's top traffic trigger point. The subsequent "Follow the Spring Festival Gala to Tour Hefei" series of activities carried forward the momentum, launching the "Ten, Hundred, Thousand, Ten Thousand, Hundred Million" cultural tourism activities (namely "ten check-in spots, one hundred linked enterprises, one thousand special events, ten million tourist target, one hundred million yuan consumption subsidies"), converting short-term popularity into stable consumption increments. Data shows that in the first half of this year, Hefei's domestic tourist reception increased by 5.5% year-on-year, and domestic tourist spending increased by 3.8% year-on-year. Using opera as a medium and culture to invigorate the city. Unlike traditional travel focused on viewing mountains and waters, normalized, high-quality performance content can also become a city's core competitiveness for retaining tourists and building reputation. Hefei is continuously updating performance content, upgrading viewing experiences, revitalizing scenes across the board, deeply cultivating the "performance+" integration model, opening cross-border integration channels for cultural tourism, commerce, technology, and intangible cultural heritage, and striving to convert instantaneous on-site traffic into long-term "retained volume" of tourists who return repeatedly and actively recommend the city. "Hefei with Opera" is becoming a lever for the integrated development of urban cultural tourism and is gradually becoming a new IP for Hefei's urban cultural tourism. In the future, will more people travel to Hefei and fall in love with Hefei because of a single performance? Let us look forward to it together!