Linchuan in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province is the hometown of Tang Xianzu, a famous opera scholar and writer in Ming Dynasty. Adjacent to Fu River in the south, the project covers an area of about 140,000 square meters. It is a live-action performance venue for " The Dream of the Peony Pavilion " and a cultural slice of urban renewal and evolution.

This project brings together old and new, commerce and culture, and reality and fantasy in providing an extraordinary setting for the play The Peony Pavilion by the Ming era playwright Tang Xianzu – a contemporary of William Shakespeare. Performances can last almost a day so the design is suited to day and night, as well as hosting performances and acting as public space. Visitors can wander where they may have seen or be about to see actors perform, playing out their lives against a backdrop of real and unreal buildings including one of the city's temples and statues of the Buddha. It also includes elegantly conceived ancillary accommodation such as a staff dormitory with an ingenious section that gives each room its own balcony, and in encouraging cultural tourism aims to kickstart regeneration of the old city.

Inspired by the scenic and interactive show “The Dream of the Peony Pavilion” at the backdrop of three 500m long background, the architect creates an experience in the reality, hell and heaven to the best of his imagination.  Beyond the common stage setting and different from the way of creating a simple garden, the architect aims to incorporate the classical Chinese play into a real space featuring “the traditional gardening and architecture” where composite functions integrating night performance and daytime garden tour are both satisfied. With extraordinary imagination and differentiated material utilization, the architect team makes use of the surrounding old residences through the ages to transform the reality into a dream and the dream into a poem, and creates a real utopia in a Chinese classical vein.

The simple and modern tourist service center is close to the old residential area, with concrete wall against the white walls and grey tiles of the folk houses, which integrates the old and new. With the increasing attraction of live performances, the tourist service combining with reserved residential area will serve as the most real life stage, attracting tourists and at the same time improving the cultural life and economic level of the local indigenous people.

Different from fixed seat, tourists need to follow the stage and switch dynamically in the garden while watching the drama, which is similar to the Chinese classical garden tour way. The viewing area is combined with the landscape terrace, which is made of old brick and gravel that have been removed during the course of repairing folk houses, which echoes with the white wall and grey tile eave and evocates the traditional experience and ancient memory of watching the play on the wall.

In the design practice, while thinking carefully about the old residence renovation around the site, the architect has perfectly integrated traditional Chinese garden and classical architecture design with outdoor drama-performing stage. Leveraging the tourism boom brought by the scenic show, it is helpful to enhance the cultural and artistic value of the area and the commercial value of the surroundings. This architectural practice of the architect seems to be a positively pragmatic and innovative exploration in stage design and old town regeneration of tourist attraction.

The performance " The Dream of the Peony Pavilion " is produced by Sunshine Media Group, with its chairman Yang LAN as the producer. The project has a high positioning and has strong Chinese characteristics and cultural genes. In the whole process of promoting the project, the client and the architect promote each other in the level of consciousness. The professional knowledge and experience of the architect in urban construction become the catalyst for the perfect combination of cultural gene and urban renewal, thus promoting the urban evolution and development.