The first sound at Cai’er Teahouse on October 1 was a nursery rhyme. Children and adults gathered at the waterside stage on the Laodaohe river in Changsha’s Kaifu district to sing “The Moon Cake, with Daddy Sitting Inside,” their local accent drifting over the tea steam. The performance series “Teahouse Elegance, Celebrating National Day” opened there that day and drew close to 3,000 residents and visitors.
Kaifu’s culture, tourism and sports bureau hosts the run, with the district culture centre organising it. Cai’er Teahouse stands in Daxing village on Laodaohe street and is one of Kaifu’s new public cultural spaces, as well as a provincial base for passing on Changsha nursery rhymes. A stage over the water faces an indoor theatre, and the hall holds a large collection of Republican-era Changsha objects, which is why opera fans and visitors already used it as a gathering point.
A Stage on the River
Shows run daily from October 1 to 6, from 2:30 to 5 p.m., with free admission for the public. Six performances in all, each about two hours long, carrying folk craft and old Changsha street life onto one stage.
The warm-up sets the tone: local opera melodies rise, guofeng music plays through the hall, and performers in guofeng costume walk between the tables, posing for free photos that visitors retrieve by scanning a livestream code. Reciting a nursery rhyme, matching a line of poetry or finishing an interactive game earns a small holiday gift.
On the waterside stage, Guqin, dongxiao, pipa and guzheng take turns, moving between old Hunan instrumental pieces and new guofeng arrangements. Classic Huaguxi excerpts, face-changing and Changsha tanci follow, with standards such as “Guazi Hong” and “Liu Hai Chops Firewood” performed by established and younger artists on the same bill. Applause rises with the tea steam as the singing carries across the water. The familiar Changsha nursery rhymes return too, with families invited up to learn them and to hear stories of old city life.
Inside the Craft Market
Beside the stage, the heritage market draws its own crowd. Sugar painting, palm weaving, cicada-wing rubbing and Laodaohe knife-making are set out for visitors to watch and try. An auction of old objects and new cultural merchandise raises the tempo: lots include Republican-era pieces from the hall’s collection, Laodaohe knives and Xiang embroidery, and the proceeds go to the fund that protects and passes on Changsha nursery rhymes. Residents bid actively.
According to the Laodaohe street office, the market generated more than 60,000 yuan in spending during the event. The guofeng performers moved among the tea tables, where holiday decorations, lantern riddles and photo spots were laid out across the hall.
Around the teahouse, the slow holiday along Laodaohe was busy in its own way. On the street office’s tourism map, Cai’er Teahouse became the hottest stop, and the tea-and-opera routine that older residents call laokouzi life drew young visitors. Despite steady autumn rain, people followed the map: the Changsha Garden Ecological Park’s near-20,000-square-metre flower sea was at its best, with five-colour lilies, sulphur cosmos, garden cosmos and zinnias running along the lake bank, and had drawn 20,000 visitors by October 4. At the 800-mu Ousu racing circuit, nearly 1,000 visitors and residents came for wet-weather karting.
