Every autumn Kaifeng fills with a million chrysanthemums — and almost no foreign visitors. That makes the next six weeks the best-value window of the year to see the city that was probably the largest on earth in the 11th century, the place where the Chinese night market was born, and the home of one of the strangest and best-documented communities in Chinese history: the Jews of Kaifeng.
The 44th China Kaifeng Chrysanthemum Culture Festival is scheduled for October 18 – November 17, 2026. Kaifeng is 25 minutes from Zhengzhou by rail, and Zhengzhou's airport is a 240-hour (10-day) visa-free transit port whose permitted stay area is the entire province of Henan — so you can walk into this festival with no visa at all.
This guide covers the festival, the visa route, the Song-dynasty sights, the city's Jewish history, what to eat at the night markets, ticket prices and a two-day itinerary.
Kaifeng (开封) is nicknamed the capital of eight dynasties. It was the Northern Song capital from 960 to 1127 — then called Bianjing or Bianliang (汴京 / 汴梁) — when its population is estimated to have passed one million, making it plausibly the biggest city in the world.
Two Song-era documents explain why the city feels different from Xi'an or Beijing. Zhang Zeduan's handscroll Along the River During the Qingming Festival (清明上河图) shows Bianjing's bridges, inns and shops in obsessive detail; Meng Yuanlao's memoir Dream of Splendors of the Eastern Capital (东京梦华录) records noodle stalls and wine houses trading deep into the night. Food historians trace the world's first true restaurant culture — menus, takeaway, all-night markets — to Song-dynasty Kaifeng rather than to Europe.
Kaifeng is also, right now, the hottest ticket in Henan. Official figures from the city's culture and tourism bureau for the Mid-Autumn holiday (September 25–27, 2026) show 614,000 visits to Kaifeng's 4A-and-above scenic areas and 46.3 million yuan in ticket revenue, with Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden ranking second in the whole province for both visitor numbers and revenue. Provincial reporting from early October placed Kaifeng's two big immersive parks — Wansui Mountain Martial Arts City and Qingming Riverside — first and second among Henan's key 4A-and-above attractions.
In other words: this is a city Chinese travellers have already discovered, with an English-language infrastructure that has not caught up. Go before it does.
Kaifeng has held a chrysanthemum festival every year since the early 1980s, and it has opened on October 18 without interruption in recent years. The 2026 edition, the 44th, is set for October 18 – November 17.
The scale is the point. In 2025 the city planted 2.8 million chrysanthemum pots across 32 display sites — parks, squares, ring roads, even traffic islands — and laid on competitions in 13 categories and 31 sub-categories, with dozens of cities and units entering. You will see displays weeks before you reach the main gate.
| Venue | Chinese | What the festival adds |
|---|---|---|
| Longting Park — main venue | 龙亭公园 | The biggest themed installations, evening illumination, opening ceremony. Built on the site of Song imperial palaces, between the Pan and Yang lakes. |
| Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden | 清明上河园 | Chrysanthemum gardens plus a Song street scene: acrobats, boatmen, sword-fight shows, and the night show Song Dynasty Dream. |
| Wansui Mountain Martial Arts City | 万岁山武侠城 | Floral displays worked into a wuxia theme park that stages more than a thousand performances a day. |
| Iron Pagoda Park | 铁塔公园 | Flowers at the foot of a 977-year-old glazed-brick pagoda. |
| China Hanyuan Stele Forest | 中国翰园碑林 | Calligraphy steles and one of the festival's quieter corners. |
| Tianbo Yang Mansion | 天波杨府 | The Yang-family generals' hall, dressed for the festival. |
Henan has one port in China's 240-hour visa-free transit scheme: Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport. The permitted stay area is the entire province of Henan, which includes Kaifeng. The scheme covers 57 nationalities, 24 provinces and 65 ports, and was extended to Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam in August 2026.
To use it you need a confirmed onward ticket to a third country or region departing within 240 hours, and you must enter through one of the 65 listed ports. Ten days is more than enough for Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Luoyang and the Shaolin Temple in a single loop. If your passport is from one of the roughly fifty countries with full visa-free entry for stays up to 30 days, you do not need the transit route at all — check our visa-free entry guide for the current list, and the 240-hour transit guide for the fine print. Since November 20, 2025, the arrival card can also be filed online before you fly.
| Route | Typical time | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Zhengzhou Xinzheng Airport → Zhengzhou East station | 45–60 min | Metro / airport city rail. Allow buffer if you land in peak hours. |
| Zhengzhou East → Kaifeng North | 20–25 min | High-speed and intercity trains run through the day; the intercity line was completed in 2025. |
| Kaifeng North → old city (Gulou / Longting) | 20 min by taxi | The station is about 10 km west of the walled centre. Budget 25–35 yuan. |
| Zhengzhou East → Beijing West | ~2.5 h | Direct high-speed trains, dozens daily. |
| Zhengzhou East → Xi'an North | ~2 h | Continue west on the Silk Road corridor. |
| Zhengzhou East → Shanghai Hongqiao | 4–5 h | Frequent departures; book a day ahead at holiday weekends. |
Book rail tickets on the official 12306 app or via Trip.com once you have a passport number — see our high-speed rail guide. Kaifeng's two useful stations are Kaifeng North (开封北站, high-speed) and Kaifeng Station (开封站, conventional and intercity). Inside the city, Alipay and WeChat Pay both work on buses and for taxis.
Almost nothing in Kaifeng is genuinely ancient — the Yellow River drowned the city repeatedly, most catastrophically in 1642 — but the reconstructions are unusually well done, and two of them are among the best immersive attractions in China.
A full-scale, walk-through recreation of Zhang Zeduan's Song painting, laid out along a canal with boats, bridges and costumed staff. It is a 5A-rated attraction and regularly ranks as one of Henan's most visited. The day ticket is about 120 yuan and, unusually, stays valid for three days. Do not leave before the evening show Song Dynasty Dream (大宋·东京梦华), a large-scale lake-and-light production; tickets including park entry cost around 249 yuan. Daytime shows include Yue Fei at Yancheng and a Yue Fei spear-fighting set piece.
A lakeside terrace with 72 steps climbing to a hall built on the axis of the Northern Song imperial palace, flanked by the Pan and Yang lakes — on the same site as palace after palace for six dynasties. This is the chrysanthemum festival's main stage and the best place to be after dark during the festival. Entry is roughly 45–60 yuan.
Kaifeng's other phenomenon: a wuxia-themed park staging more than a thousand performances a day, from street theatre to the blockbuster Three Attacks on Zhujiazhuang. The interactive matchmaking show Wang Po Finds a Match (王婆说媒) went viral nationally — expect audience participation and a lot of laughter even if you speak no Chinese. The 120-yuan adult ticket is the best value in the city: it also covers three days of entry to the Iron Pagoda, the city wall and the Hanyuan Stele Forest.
Kaifeng Fu (开封府) is the reconstructed government office associated with Bao Zheng (包拯), the incorruptible judge who became Chinese folklore's Sherlock Holmes. Day tickets are around 65 yuan; a separate night tour costs 90 yuan and plays out courtroom scenes after dark. Ten minutes away, Daxiangguo Temple (大相国寺) is a working Buddhist temple with a thousand-hand Guanyin carved from a single ginkgo trunk — and the courtyard from the tale of the monk Lu Zhishen uprooting a willow tree. Entry is about 40 yuan.
The Iron Pagoda (铁塔) is the city's one great survivor: a 55.9-metre, 13-storey tower of glazed brick completed in 1049, iron-grey in colour, which has shrugged off floods, wars and earthquakes for close to a millennium. Tickets are around 30 yuan. From there, walk the restored city wall, then drop into Kaifeng Museum (开封市博物馆, free, closed Mondays) for Northern Song porcelain and Zhuxianzhen woodblock New Year prints. Finish on Shudian Street (书店街), the old bookshop lane that runs to the Drum Tower.
| Attraction | Chinese | Approx. price (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden | 清明上河园 | ¥120 (3-day validity) |
| Evening show Song Dynasty Dream | 大宋·东京梦华 | ~¥249 incl. park entry |
| Wansui Mountain Martial Arts City | 万岁山武侠城 | ¥120 (includes Iron Pagoda, city wall, Hanyuan) |
| Longting Park | 龙亭公园 | ~¥45–60 |
| Kaifeng Prefecture | 开封府 | ~¥65 day / ¥90 night |
| Daxiangguo Temple | 大相国寺 | ~¥40 |
| Iron Pagoda Park | 铁塔公园 | ~¥30 |
| Kaifeng Museum | 开封市博物馆 | Free, closed Mondays |
Prices move and festival-period tickets are sometimes bundled — confirm on the official WeChat mini-programmes, where foreign passports are accepted for real-name booking. Our museum booking guide walks through that process.
For a thousand years, Kaifeng had a Jewish community — probably the longest-lived in East Asia. According to the community's own stele erected in 1489, they arrived during the Song dynasty and built a synagogue, which was destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly as the Yellow River flooded the city. Two lanes in the old town still carry the name 教经胡同, the scripture-teaching lanes.
The community was known to its neighbours as 一赐乐业教 — the religion of Israel — and, less reverently, as 挑筋教, the sect that removes the sinew, after the kosher practice of cutting out the sciatic nerve. By the mid-19th century the community had declined, its last rabbi was gone, and the synagogue fell into ruin; their descendants are still in Kaifeng today, and a scale model of the synagogue stands in the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Israel.
There is no grand monument. What is left is a quiet residential neighbourhood and two stele inscriptions — which is exactly why it is worth half an hour of your time. Walk the lanes politely, remember these are people's homes, and read up beforehand.
Kaifeng's real claim to fame may be culinary: Song-dynasty Bianjing abolished the old separation between residential wards and market wards, and the night market was born. Meng Yuanlao's memoir lists the snacks sold after dark; a thousand years later, three markets still do the same trade.
| Market | Chinese | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Gulou Night Market | 鼓楼夜市 | The big one, beneath the Drum Tower. 3,000+ square metres of food stalls, tourist-facing, English menus patchy, brilliant atmosphere. |
| Xisi Night Market | 西司夜市 | Locals' favourite, near Bao Zheng Lake. Cheaper, fewer crowds, better for sitting down with a beer. |
| Lao Heda Night Market | 老河大夜市 | By Henan University. Student prices, endless small eats, excellent for grazing. |
| Dish | Chinese | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Soup dumplings | 灌汤包 | Kaifeng's signature. Thin skin, pork and soup inside; bite a hole first or you will regret it. Locals say a good one is "lifted like a lantern, set down like a chrysanthemum". |
| Carp with baked noodles | 鲤鱼焙面 | Sweet-and-sour Yellow River carp under a lid of hair-fine noodles. Once a Song imperial dish, now Kaifeng's banquet classic. |
| Fried jelly | 炒凉粉 | Bean-starch jelly fried on a flat iron with chilli and garlic. Cheapest and most addictive street snack in the city. |
| Mutton pocket bread | 羊肉炕馍 | Shredded mutton and scallion pressed into a shallow-fried flatbread. |
| Bucket chicken | 桶子鸡 | Brined and slow-cooked whole chicken, sold by weight, ideal picnic food for the train. |
| Peanut cake / almond tea | 花生糕 / 杏仁茶 | The classic sweet finish: crumbly peanut brittle and hot almond-thickened tea. |
| Pepper soup | 胡辣汤 | Henan's breakfast: pepper-hot, thick, with beef and gluten. Get it before 10 a.m. |
Vegetarians and halal travellers are fine here — see our vegetarian guide and Muslim-friendly guide for ordering phrases. For the wider picture, compare our regional cuisine map, or the night markets of Xi'an and Changsha.
| Time | Plan |
|---|---|
| Day 1 09:00 | Daxiangguo Temple, then walk Shudian Street to the Drum Tower. |
| 11:00 | Kaifeng Prefecture — courtroom shows run through the morning. |
| 13:00 | Lunch: soup dumplings and fried jelly near Gulou. |
| 14:30 | Longting Park and the chrysanthemum displays; the lakeside walk takes about two hours. |
| 17:00 | Into Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden for late-afternoon shows. |
| 19:30 | Dinner at Gulou Night Market. |
| Day 2 · 09:00 | Iron Pagoda Park, then the city wall. |
| 11:30 | Kaifeng Museum (free) for Song artefacts and woodblock prints. |
| 14:00 | Wansui Mountain Martial Arts City — afternoons are peak performance time. |
| 18:30 | Xisi Night Market by Bao Zheng Lake for a slower, cheaper dinner. |
| Optional 3rd day | Zhuxianzhen for woodblock New Year prints, or back to Zhengzhou for Henan Museum and the 240-hour clock. |
If you are building a longer Henan loop, pair this with our Luoyang guide, the Shaolin Temple and Mount Song guide, and Xi'an two hours further west.
Sources: Kaifeng Municipal Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau (Mid-Autumn 2026 tourism summary); 21st Century Business Herald, October 4, 2026 (Henan 4A-and-above attraction rankings); National Immigration Administration of China (240-hour visa-free transit list, 57 countries / 24 provinces / 65 ports); Chinese Consulate-General visa-free transit tables (Henan: Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport); Xinhua and People's Daily reporting on Golden Week 2026; Kaifeng Chrysanthemum Culture Festival coverage, 2022–2025 (Xinhua, Science and Technology Daily, China News Service). Ticket prices are indicative 2026 gate prices and change without notice.